Abortion and the Unwanted Child
by Fr. Jim Hewes
In the 1990’s I was invited to be a presenter to a non-profit organization who was considering moving to support abortion rather than continuing to stay neutral. It was in a home filled with quite a few people. There were two of us on the pro-life side and two on the pro-abortion side. I asked the facilitator if I could go first. At that point I had be involved in the pro-life movement for about 10 years, but I had discovered a new insight that I shared with the group.
I grew up in a home with the disease of alcoholism. My dad was what you would call a functioning alcoholic. He wasn’t bad or mean, but the disease took a toll on our family. That is why alcoholism is called insidious, baffling and powerful. What happens is the focus of the family is on the disease of alcoholism, not the children; they become secondary, a fallout from the disease. This was affirmed for me with others who I met with for years in Adult Children of Al anon groups.
What this meant was I grew up with a sense of feeling of being unwanted. I knew that most abortions were done because the child was unwanted. It was a “light-bulb” moment because I realized that was why I was so involved in the pro-life movement — to help unwanted children not be devalued and destroyed. After sharing this, on my way home, a friend who had come with me said that I changed the whole atmosphere in the room.
In the last pro-life talk I gave, I began with this story. A young woman came up to me after the talk and thanked me. She said that her father always made clear to her that he wanted a boy; now she realized why she became a strong feminist. So, I now begin every pro-life talk this way, inviting people to reflect on what experiences have influenced their decision about abortion.
Do We Kill for Unwantedness?
Kathi Aultman
Dr. Kathi Aultman, a former abortionist and Medical Director of Planned Parenthood of Jacksonville, stated this clearly in her testimony before Congress: “The fact that the baby was unwanted was no longer enough justification for me to kill it. I could no longer do abortions.”
This belief—that the unwantedness of a child justifies ending its life—is a completely distorted belief. If the timing of an unexpected pregnancy is “wrong” for the parents, it doesn’t mean life is wrong for the child. An unexpected pregnancy may come at an inconvenient time for some—but it doesn’t follow that all unwanted pregnancies translate into unwanted children.
What happens if there is an unwanted situation of a child after birth? One doesn’t kill the child. Rather, the child is given protection and support by society.
Unwantedness Beyond the Womb
It would be wonderful if there were not only no unwanted children, but also no unwanted frail elderly, no unwanted people of color, immigrants, etc. The key is how someone is treated whether they are unwanted or not. Being wanted is not the measure of the dignity or value of one’s life.
History gives tragic examples of what happens when society deems some people unwanted. Hitler’s Germany, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, the Rwandan genocide, slavery in the United States, demonization of enemies in war, of those on death row, of immigrants from other countries, all began with the belief that certain lives were less worthy. The same logic is applied today subtly to groups of people, especially to pre-born children.
Feelings Can Change
Many women initially feel overwhelmed by an unexpected pregnancy, especially under difficult circumstances. But these feelings often change as the pregnancy progresses. When women see their baby via ultrasound or feel that first movement, a powerful connection can form. In fact, Save the Storks reports 80% of women who board a Mobile Ultrasound Van, and see their child, choose life.
Cheryl Meyer and Michelle Oberman, in Mothers Who Kill Their Children, document numerous cases of mothers who have killed their children after birth, and they discovered that for one reason or another their children only became unwanted after they were born. This demonstrates once again from another perspective how unwantedness is subjective and changes. A human life shouldn’t hang in the balance.
Additionally, placing a child for adoption is a loving option.
The Power of Support (or Lack of It)
In surveys of women who have had abortions, they were asked: “what would it have taken for you to have had the child?” A significant number answered: “if the father had wanted the child.” So, the mother often first feels unwanted by the important people around her. Sadly, that unwantedness is transferred to her pre-born child. Unwantedness often stems not from the child’s nature, but from the loneliness or pressure or rejection the mother feels.
Offering support can make all the difference.
A May 2023 peer-reviewed study by the Charlotte Lozier Institute surveyed 1,000 women who had abortions and found that a staggering 60 percent said they would have carried their child to term if they had greater emotional or financial support, or both. Two-thirds said their decision to abort violated their own values and preferences.
Child Abuse: Wanted Doesn’t Always Mean Loved
Dr. Edward Lenowski did a study of 674 battered children that were seen in a medical center (Heartbeat, vol.3 no. 4 Dec.1980). He was surprised to find that 91% of these children were planned and initially wanted. Apparently, these children at some point after birth, failed to satisfy unrealistic expectations or emotional needs of their parents, who reacted with violence toward them.
In fact, since abortion has been legal, society has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of reported cases of child abuse. In 1972, before the abortion law was changed, it was reported that there were 167,000 cases of child abuse; but in 1999, there were 1,220,000 cases of child abuse reported. Although there have been better ways to report child abuse today, the significant increase may in part because of the fact that at the earliest stage of life ( gestation) we treat children as unwanted objects that can be discarded violently through an abortion, and this mentality begins to spread in our society like a deadly virus even after birth.
See more on this at the CLN blog post: Prevention of Child Abuse.
A Profound Example
When I was pastor of an inner-city parish, I received a call one day from a couple that I had married over a year before. They asked me to come to a nearby hospital to baptize their son Jose who had been born prematurely. I met them in the waiting room and then we went into the neo-natal unit. My jaw dropped when I saw Jose because he was born at only 22 weeks gestation. Even though I had seen all the pictures of the pre-born child at various stages of development for many years, this was the tiniest human being I had ever seen outside the womb. He was so small that I could literally hold him easily and completely in my hand. The nurse brought me an eye dropper and I baptized this incredible gift of life.
I left them and went outside the door at this hospital. As the cool breeze hit my face, a profound realization came to me; somewhere in another part of this same hospital there probably was a baby like Jose having his or her life ended through a late term abortion. Intrinsically they were both in the image of God, but Jose was wanted by his parents and thus valued and protected, whereas this other nameless vulnerable life was ended, simply because he or she was not wanted or valued. I wondered what terrible things would happen to us as a society if we continued to use the external and passing notion of being wanted or not wanted to determine the value of life and who will live and who will die.
We Deserve Better
Violence at the beginning of life has made us more tolerant of violence in other areas. It won’t heal the deep pain of an unexpected and unsupported pregnancy, nor fix societal wounds. These women and men, their pre-born children, and society deserve a better solution than the violence of abortion.
Through violence like abortion one can kill the unwanted, but one can’t kill unwantedness. What we need is a culture that affirms the dignity of every life—born and pre-born—and surrounds women, men, and children with real love and real options, before birth as well as after birth.
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For similar posts, see:
Book Excerpt: Preventing Child Abuse
How Abortion is Useful for Rape Culture
What personal experiences influenced my anti-abortion activism? That’s clear. My father divorced my mother, very much against her will, when I was 12 years old. I understand that developmentally that’s the worst time to do that, and at age 66 I still haven’t entirely recuperated from the blow. It wasn’t really that I was suddenly “unwanted” in contrast to before; my father and I still got along well and loved each other deeply in the ensuing decades before he died at 90. But the pain and the injustice I felt about it made me empathize with any child who has to face anything like that. My experience was mild compared to many of them, and considering how badly it hurt, that it was mild make me all the more empathetic for those for whom it’s way, way worse.
Even in the case of rape or incest, two violent acts (rape and abortion) do not cancel each other. Abortion is never the best option.
Adoption is. A birth mother has all the power to choose a future for the child she is not able or willing to raise.
God doesn’t make mistakes. He has a plan for each child He sends to us .