What is Abortion?
Abortion ends the life of your baby before he or she is born.
Don't let anyone fool you. That baby inside you is a tiny human life. See for yourself.
Even before your baby's heart starts beating at 5 weeks, she has all the genetic information that makes her uniquely special.
To find out more about abortion methods, read a
concise, factual explanation of the available
abortion techniques, including suction aspiration, medical abortion, dilation & curettage, dilation & evacuation,
saline injection, and dilation & extraction.
Before you abort, be honest with yourself, and look at the actual
results of abortion (GRAPHIC)
or watch a short video of what abortion really does (GRAPHIC).
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Reasons for Abortion
You may be thinking about having an abortion for several reasons.
Maybe your boyfriend is threating to break up with you, or your parents are trying to make you abort. Remember this is
your choice, and you will live with the consequences for the rest of your life, after your boyfriend is gone and you have moved out.
Read what 15-year-old Heather says
about being pressured into an abortion that she didn't want.
Are you still in school, and don't know how you will take care of your baby? People are ready to help you with your
financial, housing, and emotional needs.
Perhaps you just don't want a baby because you have other plans. Your career is too important, or you don't have time for
a baby to interfere with your social life. Sound selfish? Then let someone adopt your baby, and love her more than you would.
Maybe you were raped, and now you are pregnant. You don't know what to do. Before you decide,
read about Jen's mom,
who was raped when she was twelve. Jen is alive and best friends with her mom today, because the abortion didn't work. Don't be
traumatized by abortion in addition to being raped. Your baby is an innocent victim of violent crime, just like you are.
If you need counseling or help, you can search for help in your area.
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I Need Help
Option Line's trained, caring consultants are available 24 X 7
to connect you to a pregnancy resource center that can give you personal help.
Call them at 1-800-395-HELP (4357) or write them online.
Birthright's network of nearly a thousand U.S. pregnancy help
centers offers pregnancy testing, counseling, medical and financial help, as well as care after your baby is born.
Call them at 1-800-550-4900.
The National Life Center's 24-hour hotline can direct you to
the nearest Crisis Pregnancy Center in the U.S. or Canada. Reach the hotline at 1-800-848-LOVE (5683).
Bethany Christian Services has 56 local offices to support you
in your crisis pregnancy. They offer one of the best adoption programs in the nation. They give you a community-based
support system, whether you choose to adopt or to raise your own baby. Reach them from 8 AM to midnight, 7 days a week
at 1-800-BETHANY (238-4269).
The Nurturing Network puts you in touch with a volunteer who gives individually tailored support
to college and working women with unplanned pregnancies including counseling, medical, residential, educational, employment and financial resources.
Call them at 1-800-TNN-4MOM (866-4666)
Several Sources Foundation connects you to a local pregnancy help resource, including
Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, and others. Call them at 1-800-662-2678.
Don't know where to start? Why not start at the top of the list?
Many thanks to Priests for Life from which this list was condensed.
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Medical Risks of Abortion
By former abortionist Dr. Beverly McMillan, M.D., excerpt from How Safe is Abortion?
"The most common, immediate, and short-term complications include excessive bleeding, chronic and acute infections, intense pain,
high fever, convulsions, shock, coma, incomplete removal of the baby or placenta (which can cause life-threatening infections and
sterility), pelvic inflammatory disease, punctured or torn uteruses, and even death.
"Abortion can also result in uterine scarring, a weakened cervix, blocked fallopian tubes, and other damage to reproductive organs that
can make it difficult to conceive or carry a child to term in the future. This latent morbidity of abortion results in long-term and
sometimes permanent damage.
"Women who have had abortions also experience more ectopic (tubal) pregnancies, infertility, hysterectomies, stillbirths, miscarriages,
and premature births (the leading cause of birth defects) than women who have not had abortions. Abortion has also been linked to
increased risks of developing breast, cervical, and uterine cancer."
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Emotional Effects of Abortion
If you talk to almost any woman who had an abortion, she will tell you it was one of the hardest things she has done.
Studies show increased risks among women who have an abortion for psychological problems, depression, suicide, hypertension, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and sexual dysfunction.
A study in Finland found that women who had an abortion in the past year were six times as likely to commit suicide
as women who gave birth in the past year. They were even twice as likely to commit suicide as women who miscarried
in the last year.9
A five-year study in Canada found that 25% of women who had an abortion visited psychiatrists, compared to
3% of the women in the control group.10
In another study, 30-50% of women reported sexual dysfunctions starting immediately after their abortions.11
For more information, see Mental Health Risks of Abortion
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Spiritual Consequences of Abortion
Will God Forgive Me if I Abort? A hard question. Read the answer here.
Abortion has serious spiritual consequences. Do you belong to one of the religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.) that
believes the section of the Bible that Christians call the Old Testament? See what it says.
Genesis 1:27 says God
made mankind "in His own image." Obviously we are different than the animals, and God views us as special--including the baby He
has made in your womb.
People often consider pregnancy an accident, but God takes credit for forming the baby in the womb. "This is what the LORD says--he
who made you, who formed you in the womb, and who will help you."12 David told God, "[Y]ou created
my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb."13
God personally knows your baby before birth. God told Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were
born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."14 The prophet Isaiah
said the same thing. "Before I was born the LORD called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name."15
In fact, God loves your baby so much that when He gave the Ten Commandments, He said, "If men who are
fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined....
But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life...."16 That's a stricter penalty
than God established for any other accidental death, so God really values babies' lives.
Ritual infanticide was common in the cultures around Israel, but God ordered anyone who murdered a baby this way to be put to death.17
The same God who said, "You shall not murder," also said, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die."18 The Bible continues to promise unending
punishment in Hell to murderers in the New Testament. "But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who
practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars--their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur."19
If you have gone through an abortion, please go to our Abortion Recovery page to learn about finding forgiveness and healing.
You can read more about Abortion in the Bible and Church History from Eternal Perspective Ministries.
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