Editorial and personal reflection by Jessica Marie Baumgartner |
Vice President Kamala Harris refused to explain her stance on late-term abortion during the September 10 debate with President Donald Trump on ABC.
She went so far as to lie and claim that third-term abortions are not legal anywhere in the country, even though they are performed in various states.
As a “pro-choice” candidate, Harris considers abortion a human right and decries states’ rights by condemning local government’s ability to support their constituents’ values.
But one of the main things Harris continuously avoids during her lengthy speeches about “reproductive rights” is the long history of social, mental, and physical harm that abortions cause the women who have abortions.
This is a personal issue. Maybe that’s why it is so important to young liberal women. The women (and plenty of men) on the left truly believe that the government is robbing them of “healthcare” if they cannot kill a baby. And I feel for them. I used to fall for the “my body, my choice,” rhetoric as well — until I had an abortion as a teenager and spent more than 20 years agonizing over what I did.
Abortion is not a simple procedure. It’s not like taking an aspirin. It cuts off a growing life and that has various physical, mental, and social implications for the mother. Whether any doctors or news outlets acknowledge this on the national stage or not, abortion is not safe for all women, even when performed by a licensed “legal” doctor.
Harris’s murky stance on the issue
So let’s examine Harris’s stance. First of all, her commitment to abortion runs so deep that she is willing to lie about it to protect it. During the debate, after Harris went on a ridiculous rant about a fictional woman bleeding out in a car because made-up doctors somehow wouldn’t treat her due to state abortion bans (sounds totally real, right?), Trump asked a simple question: “Will she allow abortion in the eighth month, ninth month, seventh month?”
Harris refused to denounce late-term abortion, avoiding the question entirely. But she did note during her pro-abortion pledges that “nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion.”
Her lie that President Trump is currently banning abortion and her claim that full-term babies are not being aborted is laughable, being that more states have voted to allow late-term abortion than those restricting them at all.
Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont all currently allow abortion at any period in a pregnancy with no limits, via CNN. This means that if a woman is two weeks overdue and decides to kill the living child within her, it is legal in these states.
Similarly, California, Illinois, Maryland, Montana, New York, North Dakota, Washington, Wyoming, and North Dakota allow abortion until “viability,” an elusive term, which basically means abortion is legal until a baby can survive on its own. This is often medically distinguished within the third trimester, per What to Expect.
Alarmingly, Georgia, Kansas, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin have all legalized second-term abortion, along with Utah, Arizona, and Florida, which have bans that begin at the start of the second trimester.
A mere eight states have total abortion bans, leading to just four states enacting near-total bans, which make exceptions for rape or incest. Abortion in the United States is sadly as legal as it’s ever been.
So much so that in 2023, over 1 million abortions were performed –that’s an 11 percent increase since 2020, per the Guttmacher Institute.
Hardship and coercion for struggling moms
This issue has caused increasing hardship for the surviving mothers, but the mainstream media will never highlight it, and pro-abortion “leaders” refuse to acknowledge the measurable strife that going through an abortion causes a significant number of women post-abortion.
Instead of supporting all women’s health options, Harris socially opposes pregnancy resource centers and has decried them for using “predatory practices,” per the Washington Stand.
But when I went to Planned Parenthood to abort my baby as a mentally distraught teenage mother, it was the abortionists who preyed on me and didn’t question the fact that my then-boyfriend coerced me into doing it.
Although the decision was ultimately mine, and I have had to face that with my creator, I was reminded of my low-income social status and the “burden” of raising a child or finding adoptive parents. Planned Parenthood didn’t care about me or my health; they wanted my money and my baby’s remains.
Low-income women, and especially Black women, are preyed upon by the abortion industry. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Black women are more likely to have an abortion than any other female demographic in the United States. And liberal outlets like Vox herald this information to manipulate women into thinking that minority women are somehow disenfranchised by being encouraged to raise their babies instead of killing them.
Margaret Sanger’s chillingly racist roots
This insane line of thinking goes back to Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger. Her history of pro-eugenics racism was documented to the point that even Planned Parenthood of Greater New York announced the removal of her name from their Manhattan “Health Center” in 2020. The branch’s Board Chair, Karen Seltzer, noted that it was a “necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color.”
Even without these horrendous social blows to women, the individual personal experiences with abortion lead to serious mental, emotional, and physical harm.
Psychological abortion injury is not highly publicized but is well-documented by those seeking to actually help women. No one explained the depression and self-hatred I would experience throughout the ongoing mourning period or the grief and guilt I would carry due to not only having killed my first baby but also remembering the feeling of death and emptiness that filled me at the exact moment that little life was suctioned out of my body just eight weeks into my first pregnancy.
I suffered from Post-Abortion Stress Syndrome (PASS) for years and buried my pain because everyone told me I did the right thing. I was alone in my suffering, as are many women today, because of the medical industry and the corporate media’s refusal to acknowledge this very real and very painful mental ailment.
In 2020, Healthline danced around PASS symptoms, and Medical News Today carefully tightrope walked around the disorder in their 2023 article, claiming that researchers cannot conduct proper ethical studies on the subject.
Instead, the article blamed social stigmas and lack of self-esteem on the association between depression and abortion, but before my abortion, I was an outgoing, headstrong young woman who didn’t care what popular opinion was. My PASS symptoms were a direct result of feeling a death within my body and knowing that I was responsible.
The serious consequences of abortion for women
Despite a lack of care from the medical industry or Kamala Harris’s obvious disingenuous attempts to tie abortion to healthcare claims, millions of women have shared their abortion grief stories through organizations like Silent No More, Abortion Testimonials, Your Abortion Experience, and Hope After Abortion.
In addition, various women’s health care providers have admitted that PASS is a serious condition. The Aastra Women’s Center compares PASS to PTSD, and Dr. Brindusa Vanta, MD, DHMHS., noted in her 2023 Health News article, “While the condition called post-abortion syndrome may be controversial for some, psychologists believe that this condition is real and psychotherapy can help. Emotional symptoms should not be ignored.”
Dr. Susanne Babbel, a pro-choice German therapist now working in the United States, acknowledged the existence of PASS over a decade ago. She stated in her 2010 Psychology Today article, “Post-abortion syndrome exists and could be overcome, even if the women believe that they are not allowed to be happy again.”
What’s more, late-term abortions are more likely to cause emotional strife. According to a 2010 Journal of Pregnancy study, accessible through the National Library of Medicine, the data found, “Women who postpone their abortion into the second or third trimester experience elevated risk for certain forms of unwelcome re-experience of the abortion procedure, likely requiring active professional intervention.”
Further:
“As long as 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions are medical services that are freely available to women residing in the U.S, we have an ethical obligation to more fully understand the mental health risks involved and to convey this information in a sensitive manner to women as they struggle with difficult abortion decisions.”
The Charlotte Lozier Institute reported in 2023 that about 10,000 late-term abortions are performed annually. This is a rough number being that reporting requirements are lax in various areas of the United States. It is even more alarming since Kamala Harris claimed that late-term abortions were not happening, and even more so concerning due to the CDC stating:
“Although unlikely, the induced abortion procedure may result in a live birth. Should this occur, the report of induced termination of pregnancy is not to be completed and filed. Rather, a certificate of live birth is to be prepared for the infant. In the event the infant should later die, a death certificate would also have to be prepared and flied (filed).”
This raises the question as to whether or not a baby born alive during a late-term abortion is even considered aborted if it is killed post-induction (birth) or if the death certificate requirements will record the post-term death as an infant mortality — as if the child was a stillbirth born to parents who loved and wanted it. If so, that means that this could hypothetically a legal loophole to hide the post-abortion killing of babies and therefore underreport post-birth abortions, which will also likely lead to increased emotional issues for the mother as she will now have to fill out a death certificate.
But this increasing mental and emotional strife caused by abortion is downplayed and flat-out ignored by Harris and her abortion-loving supporters. And these side effects of abortion are unfortunately not the only women’s health issues caused by this deadly “procedure.”
The risk of physical side effects no one talks about
There are serious physical side effects linked to both surgical and medicated (chemical pill) abortion procedures as well, according to many documented healthcare sites and professionals.
According to the Louisiana Department of Health, abortion risks include: pelvic infection, heavy bleeding, clotting, perforation of the uterine wall, and an incomplete abortion where fetal parts remain within the womb and need a second procedure for removal.
The National Health Service of the U.K. lists different risks for surgical (suction) abortions and medical (pill) abortions, yet both are reported to expose patients to the risk of developing sepsis, infection, and injury to the womb, as well as lingering fetal parts in the body and future fertility issues.
The Tru Care Clinic also lists many of these potential side effects, as well as possible damage to the cervix, damage to other organs, breast cancer, and even death.
Just last month, The Federalist reported on an abortion death linked to the FDA-approved abortion pill Mifepristone. Georgia woman Amber Thurman died after experiencing side effects from a “medical abortion.”
The Federalist also reported that three women died after receiving chemical abortions – two babies were born alive during the process, and at least four underage girls received abortions without being reported to the state as required. But Kamala Harris continues to blame the tragic deaths of such women on a lack of access to abortion clinics due to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Harris also continues to ignore the fact that Mifepristone has been allegedly linked to a series of serious Adverse Event Reports (AERs). A 2021 study on the Deaths and Severe Adverse Events after the use of Mifepristone as an Abortifacient found that “significant morbidity and mortality have occurred following the use of mifepristone as an abortifacient.”
“The FDA AER system is inadequate and significantly underestimates the adverse events from mifepristone,” the authors concluded.
The argument that legal abortions are safe for all women is a lie.
Abortion clinics are not bastions of heroism
I thankfully experienced minor physical side effects after having an abortion, but it was still harrowing. I was told I could go back to school and work as well as resume sexual activity within days, but my body did not respond well. I was weak and bled heavily.
I couldn’t stand for long periods of time and was unable to resume my daily life for two weeks. This only added to the emotional turmoil I was experiencing. I felt like my body and my creator were punishing me for killing my baby, and I still believe that to this very day.
Abortion clinics are painted as heroic health providers by the left and the corporate media, but “safe and legal” abortions have not only damaged women, they have also emboldened abortionists to defy the law. In 2021, the Washington Examiner reported on the terrifying conditions of abortion clinics across the nation.
This is nothing new. In 2015, Operation Rescue reported on the closure of five abortion clinics that were operating dangerously, including the Ocala Women’s Center in Florida. This facility was shut down due to unclean conditions after the owner was charged with drug violations and performing abortions in his car illegally.
The Illinois-based Albany Medical-Surgical Center was shut down in 2015 after four women died in their care due to multiple health and safety violations, per Live Action. Connecticut’s Summit Women’s Center was shut down after countless malpractice suits involving botched abortions, via Live Action, while the Amethyst Health Center was closed after operating under disgusting conditions where doctors didn’t change gloves between patients and soiled conditions were found, amounting to 48 pages of health code violations from the Virginia Department of Health, and a second inspection report requesting corrections to their practices.
It seems that the individuals who perform and assist on abortions defy the law and even become obsessed with their power over women and the unborn. This is displayed by arguably the worst case of all. I reported on the horrific case of Kermit Gosnell for Evie Magazine in 2022 and it still haunts me. Gosnell is serving a life sentence for using his abortion practice to virtually become a serial killer.
During his 2013 trial, witnesses revealed that he specifically preyed on vulnerable women and kept their babies’ parts in jars, cat food containers, and other disgusting places, displaying them all over his facility.
Before he was shut down in 2009, he performed over 40,000 abortions and killed at least one woman after overdosing her with drugs to keep her quiet during his dirty procedures. His West Philadelphia clinic was randomly inspected through 1993, but for 17 years it went unchecked. To this day, he is proud of his work, even the fact that he killed viable babies born alive during his abortion procedures.
Kamala Harris can feign ignorance on this mountain of evidence against the lie that “abortion is healthcare” but the women harmed by these “safe, legal” procedures are not properly served by her or her rhetoric. She can claim that late-term abortions don’t happen or that women need “healthcare” in the form of killing babies, but she is lying for political purposes, and it’s not a winning argument.
In 2023, a Gallup poll on Americans’ abortion stances found that the majority of Americans oppose second and third-term abortions, and with good reason. A growing number of Americans are against abortion in most cases at all stages, myself included. This is why Harris is now avoiding questions regarding her abortion stance.
Instead of telling voters about her plan to allow women to kill babies at any stage of gestation, she dodges the question because she doesn’t really care about women’s health.
All she cares about is the political movement and her status within it.
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