Potential for Abuse

Aborting women are vulnerable to the predatory behaviour of unscrupulous doctors.

While there are a number of medical risks associated with abortion, including a significant increase in the likelihood of contracting breast cancer, the greatest threat that abortion poses to a woman may come from the abortion providers themselves.

No matter what anyone believes about abortion in theory, no matter how adamantly a woman argues for abortion rights in public, most women go to great lengths to ensure that their own abortion remains a secret. Why is this so? Because abortion, unlike any other common surgical procedure, carries with it very high levels of guilt and shame. Whether this is the product of social expectation or internal conviction, the end result is the same. Women want to keep their abortion hidden and get it over with as quickly as possible. This intense desire for secrecy makes them vulnerable on two fronts.

The first threat is levelled specifically at underage girls. It is illegal in illegal in most of the world for adult men to have sex with minors, whether the girl consents or not. Statutory rape laws exist to protect young girls from predatory men. Nevertheless, in the United States, Planned Parenthood has been shown to repeatedly break the law so as to conceal the sexual relationships between underage girls and adult men. Life Dynamics went undercover, calling more than 800 Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation facilities around the country, to see if they would report or conceal and abet the sexual relationship between a 13-year-old girl and a 22-year-old man. More than 90% of the clinics contacted failed to comply with mandatory reporting laws, and ensured the girl they would keep her secret safe. The same ninety percent offered to provide the girl and her boyfriend with birth control pills to make sure their sexual relationship could “safely” continue. Planned Parenthood’s refusal to report rape cases that come to their attention means that statutory rapists can continue, unchecked, in their exploitation of young girls. While no undercover work has been done here in South Africa yet, it’s not hard to imagine that the same kind of law-breaking rape-coverups are happening in abortion clinics all over the country.

The second threat to women comes from within the abortion industry itself, from abortion providers who have private and intimate access to young women, and know that these women are desperate to avoid drawing attention to their abortion. If women in such circumstances are sexually assaulted or mistreated, their only two options are to report the abuse (thereby making their abortion and sexual activity known) or keep quiet and try to move on with their life. Which course do you think most women choose?

Lest you think such a suggestion is wildly speculative, we invite you to the brutal and disturbing evidence contained in Lime 5. Lime 5 is a gritty exposé of the abortion industry in America, documenting case after case of women who have been sexually assaulted by the men performing their abortion. Of course, can we really be surprised by the fact that many of the doctors who have no moral qualms with suctioning tiny, unborn human beings into pieces would have no moral qualms about raping their patients? It is a simple reality that the moral character of a man in one realm of life will eventually leak out into all realms.

Lime 5, however, doesn’t stop with sexual assault. It deals with abortion related deaths, the CDC’s interest in sanitizing their abortion numbers, and the common and general safety hazards of the almost completely unregulated abortion industry.

In most areas of medicine, state legislatures operating through medical licensing and/or medical examiner boards will, to some degree, police bad medical practitioners. However, in the case of abortion they have shown a remarkable unwillingness to pursue bad doctors or clinics. And even when they do, it is not at all uncommon for the abortion industry to search for a court to rule that governmental oversight of abortion is an unconstitutional infringement on a woman’s right to abortion.1

Because abortion enjoys such broad and unregulated protection from the South African government, it has become a haven for mistreatment and abuse. The documented cases are staggering enough and since so much of what happens inside clinic doors is completely undocumented (California, the state responsible for more abortions than any other, does not track or report on abortion in any way), one can only assume that the abuses are, in fact, much worse than anyone imagines.

  1. Mark Crutcher, Lime 5. Denton: Life Dynamics, 1996, p. 105.

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