Illustration: Lisa Nolan
“At the heart of science lies discovery which involves a change in worldview. Discovery in science is possible only in societies which accord their citizens the freedom to pursue the truth where it may lead and which therefore have respect for different paths to that truth.”
-John Polanyi, Canadian Nobel Laureate (Chemistry);
Commencement Address, McGill University,
Montreal, Canada, June 1990
If you haven’t read Part I of this series, it’s worthwhile, as it sets the table regarding the issue of scientific orthodoxies. The two main areas of scientific contention arising from the post-abortive experience are:
1. Post-abortion syndrome.
2. Increased risk of breast cancer.
We’ve been dealing with the breast cancer link for a few weeks. For now, we need to turn our attention to post-abortion syndrome. Is it real, or artifact? It’s a valid scientific question, and pro-lifers should not shrink from the rigors of the scientific method in analyzing just what signs and symptoms constitute this syndrome and the extent to which post-abortive women are affected by it. Further, there should be a collaborative research project designed by pro-life and pro-choice scientists, rigorously designed and executed, whose data and conclusions could not be legitimately open to partisan sniping from either side.
But what if the data suggest that post-abortion syndrome is real? Would the anonymous peer reviewers, to whom a potential article would be submitted, kill the project with endless sniping and suggestions for alteration-as happens in real life? As was discussed in Part I, scientists have their established orthodoxies and don’t let go so easily. The fields of psychology, sociology, biology, and medicine are well-populated by pro-choice proponents who have much invested in the current pro-choice orthodoxies. It’s doubtful that such a proposed study would make it past peer reviewers and the editorial boards of the more mainline journals.
The matter of funding is another nightmare altogether. Still, It’s worth the try.
In the coming weeks, I’ll have guest-posters who run post-abortive counseling and healing ministries describing post-abortive syndrome as they understand it. But is it real and do we need science to pronounce on it to make it legitimate?
The answers are yes, and no, respectively.
I don’t mean to suggest that science isn’t necessary. Quite the contrary. However, science discovers truth, it doesn’t create truth. As seen in Part I, science often blinds itself to truth until it is no longer capable of doing so. Currently, we are in the denial stage.
The beauty of science is that we often observe what we believe to be a phenomenon, and then set out to ascertain just what it is we are seeing. Often, we are afraid or unwilling to entertain someone else’s hypothesis because it contradicts our own, and the work we are trying to do based on our world view.
That’s why I lead off with that beautiful quote from Prof. John Polanyi, which is worth a great deal of serious contemplation. How willing or open are the pro-choicer’s to make a change in their worldview if the emerging data continue to point in the direction of abortion as an experience that hurts women? This would challenge the very mechanism employed by modern feminism to advance its own cause-the liberation of women from motherhood and its demands through birth control and abortion. The suggestion by so many of feminism’s founders that motherhood prevents women from being all that they can be is at once a statement of women at war with their very biological and ontological identity, and a bold-faced lie.
To say the least, it is belied by the body of literature showing that latch-key children have higher rates of substance abuse and juvenile delinquency, and that home schooled children score higher in the aggregate on standardized exams than their traditional counterparts. These mothers must know something that the feminists do not. That isn’t to say that women who choose career over children and family are any less accomplished than their domestic sisters.
The three women who have had the greatest influence on my life and development as a Catholic and as a scientist all poured their lives into nurturing students. One took a vow to live her life as a single lay woman in service to the Church. The other two were on my dissertation committee in graduate school and were mentors extraordinaire. I owe these three women a great deal. Much of who I am is because of them, because they had the time to offer, and the generosity to extend themselves. It’s not necessary for women to become mothers in order to have fulfilling lives. Nor is it necessary for mothers to eschew family to have fulfilling lives.
Then there are women such as my wife who combine both career and motherhood.
The more strident feminists are not so given to equanimity and belittle their domestic sisters, and the agony of those whose abortions torture their souls. Unfortunately, the post-abortive literature must gain the approval of these same feminists in order to make it into mainstream professional journals.
It will happen one day. For now, pro-life professionals must continue to adhere to the highest standards of scientific record keeping and data reporting. The timbers supporting the Culture of Death are beginning to creak under the strain.
They’ll yield in due season.
Coming Home 
Two comments:
“That isn’t to say that women who choose career over children and family are any less accomplished than their domestic sisters”.
By this I hope you are saying that women who choose career over domesticity are not necessarily any less accomplished as mothers.
“Further, there should be a collaborative research project designed by pro-life and pro-choice scientists, rigorously designed and executed”
I couldn’t agree more. This is the only way post abortive syndrome, if it exists, would be recognized by the medical and psycological communities.
Gerard, by the way, this illustration is beautiful. Heartwrenchinly so. My sons are much bigger, but if I were to lose either this captures what I would feel. And my heart breaks for any woman who feels or has felt this sorrow.
You do a wonderful job with graphics on your blog.
Asitis,
Thank You. The blog is a labor of love. I agree with you about this illustration.
It was purely the grace of God that a good friend of mine who is a high risk OB looked in on Regina on Joseph’s due date ad caught the fact that he was within hours of being stillborn.
This photo hauntingly grabbed me when I saw it.
Gerard, I can’t find a single point in this post to disagree with. Let me work backwards, starting with the concept of “liberation” from children. Its not “all the feminists’ fault,” but there WAS a current within feminism that “kids are a drag.” Even if it was recognized that kids are all right, or essential, they were to some extent viewed as a burden, so the point was to make men “share” the suffering. Somehow, our economic and financial and business communities took off with this in their own inimitable capitalist way. Now we have an economy where both parents have to work to sustain a family, meaning less time with the children, and God help the single mother trying to raise four children, because her employer doesn’t want to hear about it.
What we must come to terms with is that children take time, lot’s of it, some of it frustrating, some of it a great joy, all of it rewarding if we take the time. It doesn’t have to be mommy staying at home, it doesn’t have to be daddy, ideally it should be some of each and some of both, but our culture simply does not prioritize the time. There has been no substitute for the stay-at-home-mom, and we need to find a way to put that quantity and quality of time back into the equation of work and family. Multi-tasking is a myth.
I have no doubt that abortion takes an emotional toll on a woman. That should be explored. No doubt this could be cast in terms of hormonal changes, and some might even look for the right pill to “counter-act” this “condition.” I wouldn’t totally write that off, but I don’t buy it as a primary response. We have hormones for reasons, even if they are haywire sometimes, and at the very least, abortion interrupts the process of growing a child, which the mother’s body was totally focused on. (That is more or less the point at which we meet, which I know isn’t satisfactory to you, but its a lot better than “its nothing.”)
As you might expect, whatever the outcome, I would not favor imposing criminal penalties. Women should be fully informed of all the risks, preferably in a manner that is not partisan, but accurate. I still favor letting the individual woman make her choice, including those who choose life.
And of course you are entirely correct that science doesn’t create truth, it can only find truth.
SJ, I’d have to disagree with you on one point, “now we have an economy where both parents have to work to sustain a family”. This isn’t necessarily the case. Certainly there are some jobs that simply cannot support a family of any size by themselves and so both parents must work. But this isn’t always the case. Sometimes one parent working is enough (either in one or two parent households). And sometimes the second parent works by choice, for a variety of reasons.
One thing to note, is that our expectations and “needs” have changed in the decades since women started to have careers. The second parent may feel they have to work to provide for their family whereas in the past one income might have sufficed. I wouldn’t blame it all on our economy.
I think there are two issues with which we need to deal: One is, as you said, we need to be able to balance work and family better in the US. Other countries do this better. Another is, we have single women with low income jobs trying to pay for daycare, provide for their children and give them the time they need. We need to support them better and reduce the number of families in this situation.
Gerard,
I love seeing the words “pro-life and “professionals” used in connection with each other as you did in the last paragraph of your article. 🙂 Pro-lifers are so often described negatively on blogs.
Janet, it is always good to see stereotypes shown up for what they are. Pro-lifers, measured by any other characteristic, cover the whole range: high income, low income, advanced education, never finished high school, urban, rural, there is even a group called godlessatheistsforlife. And, ditto for pro-choicers, who even include life long Christians. And we all love babies, and Catholic parents don’t all beat their kids. Etc.
prochoicers love babies?
hmmm, coulda fooled me! 😉
“Women should be fully informed of all the risks, preferably in a manner that is not partisan, but accurate.”
Would you be willing to have each and every woman who seeks an abortion be required to view and sonogram of her child before aborting him/her?
Oh yes, we do! I love babies. Especially my own!
yes but not other womens, especially poor black women’s babies
whom PP especially targets
Oh no, I love all babies. 🙂
Puppies too!
And btw, PP doesn’t “target” black babies Mary Catherine. TBlack women abort their babies at a higher rate than white women do largely because their unintended preganancy rate is similarly higher.
Well Janet, we’re going to change that reality and shoew just who the cave dwellers truly are!
Mary Catherine, I would not be willing to have each and every woman who seeks any medical procedure REQUIRED to view much of anything. I would agree that it should be OFFERED. I also agree that you have as much right as anyone else to courteously urge a pregnant woman to view a sonogram, advice she may take or not, as she chooses.
Although I have had no children of my own, because I am not married, I also love babies, including my niece, my nephew, my little brother (BB/BS), and a dozen or so of my friends’ grandchildren, I couldn’t begin to list them all. They come in many colors, including my niece’s cousins on her father’s side of the family. Children generally seem to like me too. We really must pay a little more attention to what we have in common — don’t suggest killing live children we all AGREE are fully human persons, just because you want to make a point!
Siarlys,
do you not believe that abortion is such a serious procedure that women should know all before they have it?
Should they not be able to see exactly what it is that they are “terminating”? If not, why not?
as for baby killing, it seems to me that those in favor of abortion like only those babies they consider as persons
unborn babies generally are not included……
I never suggested that proaborts don’t like “live” children – that was YOUR projection, not mine! 😉
“I never suggested that proaborts don’t like “live” children – that was YOUR projection, not mine!”
No Mary Catherine, you actually did suggest this:
“prochoicers love babies?
hmmm, coulda fooled me”
You did the same thing on another post here where you claimed your never said anything about your religious views on using birth control when in fact you had…. loud and clear.
I can’t figure out of you are dishonest or just have a bad memory.
Asitis: if you believe in abortion you don’t love babies
You only love the babies that are wanted.
It’s quite simple! 😉
I can’t speak for asitis, or for anyone else, man or woman, except me. For myself, every baby I have ever loved has been a person, a unique individual. I did not love them as “the baby” but by their own name and face and personality.
The way you talk about babies reminds me of the man who rented a room down the hall from mine some years ago, who asked “Do you like black women?” He himself happened to be… well, a deep shade of brown really, I’ve never met anyone “black,” but anyway, the next morning, seeing him sitting on the edge of his bed, literally holding his head in his hands with a terrific hangover, I responded: “All the single women I know, of any color, are born-again Christians, so ‘women’ has nothing to do with it. I can only love one.” Of course I can agape or philo more than one, but we all know what he meant and what I meant.
I don’t love babies, plural, as a category, there are many babies whom I have, individually, loved.
I won’t wait for Mary Catherine to ask: it is quite true that I believe that there is a period of time during which the pregnancy a woman is carrying is not yet a person. We’ve gone around and around on why you disagree. It is a very fundamental thing to be apart on, when one says “this is a human being” and another says “no it is not.” But we aren’t going to get very far spouting axiomatic premises at each other.
I can speak for me SJ! I do love babies. I think most of us are programmed as such. Isn’t that why babies, like puppies and kittens and all new creatures are born so cute? So that we can’t help but love them?! Large features, oh-so-soft skin (or fur!), sweet smelling! Even if it weren’t for their cuteness I think I would love them for their newness, their preciousness, their promise of such much to come…. oh the places they will go! It makes me think of Louis Armstrong singing
“I hear babies cry/I watch them grow/They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know/ And I think to myself, what a wonderful world” .
Wonderful indeed, babies are.
Wondeful indeed, “wanted” babies are! – mantra of feminists, contraceptors and PP.
Mary Catherine, you object to a baby being wanted?
Hello i’m newbie here and would like to introduce myself
I’m from Luxembourg and come to this forum from search engine.
Nice to meet you all 🙂