A leading figure in America's growing post-abortion healing movement,
Dr. Theresa Burke of Rachel's
Vineyard Ministries, had this to say about the Supreme Court's recent
Stenberg v. Carhart decision:
I believe this decision is a blow to women. It will continue
to take advantage of women's fears by promoting a violent and tragic
solution to difficulties encountered during pregnancy. Often pregnant
couples facing possible fetal abnormalities or maternal health risks are
encouraged by medical professionals to see late term abortion as the
solution to difficult pregnancy or post-birth complications. The effects
upon the physical and mental health of the mother, not to mention the
baby, far outweigh any supposed advantages of second and third trimester
abortions.
The experience of giving birth, even if the child dies shortly
thereafter due to some abnormality, is advantageous to abortion. The
parents would have the opportunity to hold the child and grieve the life
that has been lost. They can later treasure these intimate moments in
the short life of their child and have pictures and footprints to
remember them by. Abortion takes away the right to grieve the death of
one's child or the potential to offer a childless couple the gift of
life. The trauma to the women's physical and psychological health far
outweighs any advantages of late-term abortion. So often, women are not
given the proper information to make a truly informed decision
concerning this horrific practice that has the potential to inflict
enormous trauma.
This law means certain death for children who are not wanted or
welcome into a world that would rather see them dead-and ambivalent and
painful conflicts for those who have inflicted such violence on their
own children. Everyone wishes that, when having to contemplate such
matters, to sanitize the reality by using words like reproductive
freedom and hiding behind the legitimacy of an unethical decision. This
is not a realistic metaphor to describe the carnage and blood of dead
infants. There is little available but our own denial and justification
to dull the impact of such brutal realities. This decision means that
children awaiting birth have just received a death sentence. It also
means that the physical and psychological integrity of the women who now
nourish those lives will be profoundly violated.