ARCH Response To BPAS High Court Ruling

15th February 2011

Margaret Cuthill, National Co-ordinator, Abortion Recovery Care and Help-line.

'As a support Group working in the area of Abortion Recovery and Post Abortion Trauma Education for 20 years, we are encouraged by the High Court Judgement not to alter the provision of the 1967 Abortion Act to allow Early Medical Abortion to occur in women's homes.

Abortion is not good medicine for women and does damage the emotional and psychological lives of those in crisis that make this decision. Every woman is impacted by the pregnancy loss but this procedure adds another mentally traumatic dimension to the abortion process.

Women in the crisis pregnancy are vulnerable and will react from fear and panic wanting to be un-pregnant. To be offered a bedroom abortion is an emotional get out clause many in ignorance will choose but it is really an abuse too far and will add to the trauma of guilt and grief they may experience at some future stage in life.

BPAS say they are concerned for the woman whose symptoms may begin on the journey back from the clinic. There is no substance to this concern or reliable studies to back up this statement but I am appalled that they are not concerned for the woman who is in her home, in pain, bleeding and struggling with the choice she has made. Where is the concern then for not only women's physical safety but their psychological health and well-being?'

Forgotten Fathers and Their Unforgettable Children

8th June 2010

This month we celebrate Father's Day in the UK. On a day we celebrate, honor and remember our fathers, there will be many men who will be forgotten, overlooked or silently grieving: men who have been involved in or lost a child to abortion.

While researchers and mental health professionals are beginning to understand the many ways in which abortion exploits and harms women, the field of research and outreach to men hurt by abortion is only beginning to be explored. Some of the available research offers insights from those who work with men and men who have been there.

In the early 1970s, Arthur Shostak accompanied his partner to a well-groomed suburban abortion clinic. They had both agreed abortion was best. But sitting in the waiting room proved to be a "bruising experience." By the time he left the clinic, he was shocked by about how deeply disturbed he had become.

A professor of sociology at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Shostak spent the subsequent ten years studying the abortion experience of men. His study included a survey of 1,000 men who accompanied their wives or girlfriends to abortion clinics.

Shostak's study was published in a book, Men and Abortion: Lessons, Losses and Love, in 1984. The value of this study is limited to reporting mostly the short term reactions of men to the pregnancy and the decision to abort. In addition, because of the selection process, this study did not reflect the attitudes or experiences of men who did not accompany their partners to the abortion clinic--which could be because they were unaware of the pregnancy and abortion, because they were casual or unsupportive partners, or because they were opposed to the abortion. Despite these significant limitations, Shostak's study, using the largest group of men ever surveyed about their abortions, is still the benchmark study in this understudied field.

Shostak reported that the majority of the men surveyed in clinic waiting rooms felt isolated, angry at their partners or themselves, and were concerned about the physical and emotional damage abortion might cause their partner.

To read this entire article click the link below:
http://www.theunchoice.com/Men/forgottenfathers.htm

"That Day Ripped My Gut Out"
One Man's Story of Abortion

8th June 2010

For every woman who has had an abortion a man has been involved. For me it was two abortions.

I think that because we live in such a visual world where we can't see the baby from conception, it just doesn't seem real. I know this may seem like a simple analogy, but ... we cannot see corn that was just planted; yet, that doesn't make it any less a vegetable.

My story begins at 16 when I heard that first "I'm pregnant" from my girlfriend.

To read this entire article, click the link below:
http://www.theunchoice.com/UnChoiceStories/rippedmygutout.htm

Marie Stopes International advertisement

21st May 2010

Marie Stopes International will be broadcasting its advertisement for abortions from 24 May 2010 onwards on television and radio. These adverts are targeting any woman faced with an un-planned pregnancy and particularly young girls and their parents.

The crisis within an unplanned pregnancy, especially for the young, is huge and their instinctive reaction is to solve the problem.   Become unpregnant, have an abortion and life will get back to normal.

The reality of abortion is that one problem may be exchanged for another problem that can never be changed.   It is a death experience, it is final, there is no turning back. It can involve feelings of guilt, grief, loss and remorse, feelings that may affect the future quality of life for the many that make this decision.   They may live either justifying what has happened or in the emotional pain of remorse and unresolved grief.

Although Marie Stopes states that it is a non-profit making organisation, they do have a vested financial interest in the provision and promotion of their abortion services.

Abortion Recovery Care and Helpline have been involved in the recovery process of thousands of women over 20 years of counselling support in the UK.   Post Abortion Trauma is real; the women who hurt are real and the impact of the death of their unborn children is the decision most would wish they had never made.