Printer-friendly versionIn this article, Georgette Forney, President of Anglicans for Life, explains how abortion hurts women.   “The truth must be told… abortion hurts women.” I use this phrase often when I speak about the after-affects of abortion. However, as I recently prepared for a speech, I realized I’ve become myopic. I only focus on the truth about the painful consequences of abortion.   Sharing the truth also means sharing the realities of what is happening in the bigger picture of abortion. Unfortunately, the mainstream media doesn’t publish a lot of the abortion news, so the truth isn’t being told. I believe that if the majority of Americans really knew the truth about both the after-affects and the day-to-day realities of abortion, people’s tolerance for abortion would begin to erode. Here are a few examples of recent news items that should be shared.   State medical boards in Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania have suspended two abortion doctors and authorities arrested two abortion clinic owners. All of them face a variety of charges, ranging from operating without a medical license1, practicing without malpractice insurance, giving expired drugs to patients, permitting unlicensed staff to administer drugs, failing to check patient’s age and identity, professional misconduct, conducting abortions without a licensed registered nurse present, and medical negligence.   The medical negligence involves a woman who went to the clinic for an abortion at 23 weeks. On the second day of the abortion process, the doctor determined he could not reach the unborn child to perform the abortion. He told the woman to rest in the recovery room and he left the clinic. The woman began to have contractions and bleed profusely. She asked the staff to call an ambulance and notify her mother in the waiting room. Despite several pleas, the employees refused and said the doctor would return. After screaming, the woman’s mother came into the recovery room and delivered the woman’s stillborn baby. Despite the childbirth, the staff refused to call for paramedics, and the woman’s mother called them on her cell phone.   One of the doctors has already had his license revoked in New York and New Jersey and is being sued for perforating a teenager’s uterus and colon during an abortion.3 The other doctor bought his clinic from a different doctor facing charges of sexual abuse filed by women who came in for abortions.   Since January 2005, four women have been taken out of late-term abortion doctor, George Tiller’s abortion business in Kansas by ambulance. At least two of the women have died. One of whom was Christin, an active high school graduate and a beloved member of her softball team and community. She had Down’s syndrome and was sweet beyond the norm. She was taken by her family at 28 weeks pregnant to Tiller’s clinic. A drug was administered to kill the baby and another drug to open the cervix for delivery or removal of the dead baby. After starting the procedure, which normally takes 3-4 days, Christin was sent to a local hotel to begin her labor. Somewhat surprisingly, she returned to the clinic the next day, and the abortion procedure was completed. She was once again told to return to her hotel room. Immediately her condition began to deteriorate. When she returned to the clinic, her symptoms were misdiagnosed as dehydration. She was given an IV and again sent back to her hotel where she began having episodes of vomiting and unconsciousness. She was advised to return to the clinic where she became unresponsive. A clinic employee called 911 and the ambulance took Christin to the emergency room at Wesley Medical Center, but it was too late. Christin died. According to the medical examiner’s report, her death was a direct result of the abortion.    Felicia Bautista who was 15 years old at the time of her abortion won an out-of-court settlement against an abortion facility in Oregon in January, becoming the first woman to win a lawsuit against an abortion business for not telling about abortion’s risk of increasing the chance of contracting breast cancer.   The Bush administration settled a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit three emergency medical personnel filed against the District of Columbia’s Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department. Three women that were seeking jobs at Washington’s FEMSD said they had to undergo pregnancy tests and were told they would be fired if they became pregnant while working there. The Justice Department said the FEMSD illegally told women during training that their jobs were subject to negative pregnancy test results during their first year of employment. Shortly after the training class, each plaintiff discovered she was pregnant and had an abortion. The agreement requires the District to train supervisors about the rights of pregnant employees under Title VII.   A recent article by Cathy Cleaver Ruse entitled, “Partial Birth Abortion On Trial” published in Human Life Review, Spring 2005 (http://www.humanlifereview. com/2005_spring/ruse-rev.pdf), captures the truth about PBA directly from court testimony. This article is a must read for everyone who believes the truth must be told. While very graphic in nature, the testimony reveals the abortion doctor’s reasoning as well as actual descriptions of their procedure methods.   In the last month, I have shared the truth about abortion with people in England, Arizona, and Toronto, and this issue of the NOEL News is full of ‘truths’. As partners in upholding the sanctity of life, I encourage you to remember that ‘the truth must be told.’ To assist you in sharing these truths with others, we have additional copies of the newsletter available upon request.