9 Horrible Reasons Women Gave for Their Abortions
Some of the frivolous reasons preborn babies had to die.
In most states with legal abortion, pregnant people can abort for any reason they choose. In some states, this extends all the way through pregnancy, including in the ninth month. (Elective abortions that late may be very rare, but they are legally allowed.)
I think that most people who abort genuinely struggle with the decision, and many are facing hard circumstances. Many feel their problems are insurmountable, and abortion is their only choice. Sometimes they are being pressured, some have been abandoned by family, friends, and the baby’s father, others are struggling financially and can’t imagine how to support another baby.
I would never say that people, in general, abort for frivolous reasons, or, as some pro-lifers have said, for “convenience.”
However, there are some exceptions to the rule.
In this article, I give examples of reasons women gave for aborting their babies. While I’m not trying to judge these women, I want to show that laws in our country are so lax that pregnant people can abort for reasons many of us would find trivial.
The women in this article aren’t representative of all aborting people. But the fact that they were able to get their abortions legally (in the US or otherwise) is disturbing and, I thought, a relevant topic for an article.
Please decide for yourself if these abortions were justified.
(Note: Some of these links lead to pages with pictures of aborted babies. Use your discretion following them.)
Here are some of the reasons.
Because of a Horoscope
In a book on abortion in India, the authors told the story of one woman who had an abortion because an astrologer told her husband that her preborn baby was bad luck.
P Balasubramanian, TK Sundari Ravindran and US Mishra wrote:
When I became pregnant for the second time, my husband injured his leg in an accident. He consulted an astrologer, who said that the (unborn) child may be inauspicious and suggested that we terminate the pregnancy.
My in-laws and husband compelled me by saying, ‘Is your unborn baby’s life worth more than your husband’s?’
Such things also happen in Western countries.
In her book, British author Mary Kenny told the story of a university professor she calls “a brilliant woman academic” who was head of her department at the school where she taught. To protect her identity, Kenny didn’t name the university.
This was not an uneducated woman. Nevertheless, she aborted her child due to a horoscope reading by an astrologist she hired.
The professor was in her thirties and having an affair with a married man who was an artist. She became pregnant, and Kenny says this made her “at the same time very pleased and very sad.”
According to Kerry, she wanted to have the baby but was concerned about how stable the relationship was. Uncertain about what to do, she went to an astrologist for a horoscope reading.
Kenny explains:
The astrologist was disturbed at what he saw in her future and warned her to try and avoid an event which might happen ‘about eight or nine months from now.’
That clinched it: she knew it was a sign that she must have an abortion. So, she did.
In a macabre coincidence, the professor’s married lover killed himself eight months after the reading. So, the professor decided, it was this suicide, and not the birth of her child, the astrologer had been warning her off.
According to Kenny, “The woman was, naturally, very distressed, though she stood by her decision, and felt the suicide of her lover would have been a bad omen for the child anyway.”
But as time passed, the professor became obsessed with getting pregnant again and having another child. Instead of having another relationship, she turned to artificial insemination by a donor. This failed-- but she continued trying by this method, having inseminations again and again, each one unsuccessful.
At the time Kenny wrote her book, the college professor had been trying for five years to get pregnant by artificial insemination. She couldn’t get pregnant again.
Whether this was due to complications from the abortion is unknown. However, the scraping of the uterine lining with a curette, typically done in an abortion after suction or forceps are used to remove the baby, can cause scar tissue to form on the uterine wall, preventing conception. This is called Asherman’s syndrome.
Because “I’m sinful by being pregnant and I’m sinful if I abort, so what’s the difference?”
In a pro-life book, a counselor at a pregnancy resource center told the following disturbing story.
A young woman came to the center and asked for a pregnancy test. She had already taken several and they were positive, but she wanted one more, just to be sure. When it was positive, she said she was getting an abortion.
According to the counselor:
She told me she was a Christian who regularly attended church and had put her trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. I know and hold high regard for the church she attended…
Even though she believed abortion was wrong, given her situation she believed she couldn’t have a baby – that God wouldn’t want her to have a child now.
Fears of bringing shame on her family and on her church were the key factors influencing her to think that her abortion was necessary…
She convinced herself that abortion, in her case, was a self-denying act.
The woman herself said:
My life is over. How can I keep going to school and ever hope to be successful in life? … I’m too young. We’re not ready to get married.
What if my parents found out I was pregnant? They would kill me. And they’ve already paid my tuition. If I show up obviously pregnant at my church my parents will have to step down from their leadership positions. Everyone will talk about us.
It’s tragic that the fear of judgment from church members caused this mother to feel that abortion was the only answer. When churches ostracize young people who become pregnant outside of marriage and punish their parents, they drive them straight to abortion facilities.
It’s what the woman said next that put her on my list:
I’m sinful by being pregnant and I’m sinful if I abort, so what’s the difference?
There is, of course, a big difference for the baby.
This pregnant woman, like many others, rejected the option of adoption because, she said, if she carried the baby for nine months, she would want to keep the child.
In the end, she claimed that abortion was best for the baby and that she didn’t have a choice:
If I can’t be a good mother, abortion is best, so the child doesn’t have to suffer a terrible life. I don’t want to, but you see I really have no other choice.
To test her fertility
In a book written to train future abortion workers, the authors presented a case study about one abortion patient they called Nancy.
Nancy was 25. As an adolescent, she’d had two abortions and been infected with gonorrhea. She’d heard that repeat abortions and sexually transmitted diseases could lead to infertility. Because of this, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to get pregnant when she wanted to.
Even though she didn’t want a baby at the time, she was driven to test her fertility by having sex without contraception. According to the case study:
She was no longer able to stand the agony of not knowing if she could get pregnant, nor was she able to verbalize the distress, so she started having unprotected sex while her boyfriend still thought she was taking the pill.
She got her answer to her doubts when she became pregnant and after some initial euphoria had to face up to the fact that she was still not yet in a position to be a mother. She decided to have a termination…
This is not the first time I’ve run across this phenomenon. Some people go off contraception to see if they’re still fertile, only to abort because it isn’t the right time. I’ve even seen pro-abortion people advise women to test their fertility this way.
In order to adopt twins
A doctor who did abortions told the following story.
A woman whom he had treated for infertility came to his office pregnant and seeking an abortion. Her husband was the infertile one of the pair, and he deduced, correctly, that she’d had an affair.
The doctor writes:
[S]he wasn’t concerned over having an abortion. She was worried her husband would find out she had been pregnant and had gotten rid of the baby. She wanted the abortion, and she didn’t want him to know…
Later, when this woman came back for her checkup, she told me the whole story. It turned out that the guy who had gotten her pregnant was a friend of her husband’s. He also was married.
But there was a specific reason she wanted to deceive her current husband. The couple had just been approved for the adoption of twins. But the adoption wouldn’t be finalized for another three months.
The woman knew the marriage would fall apart if her husband found out she’d been having an affair, and wanted the marriage to last for three more months so that the adoption of the twins could become official.
She was considering leaving her husband once the three months had passed and the adoption was finalized. She would, of course, then sue for custody of the twins and might marry the other man.
In order to adopt the twins, she decided to sacrifice her biological child.
Because abortion is good for the baby
A woman ironically named Charity gave her reason for having an abortion.
She said:
My decision to have an abortion was a decision I made to care for the child that was within me. To adopt a child would be more cruel to me than just ending it, because it’s giving the child no help. It saying “Well, it’s not my problem.”
My decision to abort will affect my child in a humane manner, because I’ve got my child’s interests at heart. That’s why I decided to terminate, for that child’s sake.
In case you need a reminder of how cruel and violent abortion procedures are, here are some videos from Live Action to remind you. In them, former abortionists use diagrams to illustrate the most common abortion procedures.
The abortion pill starves and suffocates the baby by breaking down the uterine lining which provides the child with oxygen and nutrition. Suction abortions tear the baby apart and, if she is far enough along, dismember her, pulling off arms and legs. D&E abortions also dismember the child.
None of these deaths are kinder than abortion, and the abortion procedure doesn’t suddenly become humane because the person aborting says she has her child’s “interests at heart.”
This woman, like many, is lying to herself. Her baby died a brutal death.
Because her baby might someday be raped
An article in the New York Times referred to a woman who was pregnant with a daughter diagnosed with Down Syndrome.
Tragically, this woman had been sexually assaulted and had been coping with the aftermath for many years.
Since her baby was a girl, and, the woman felt, even more vulnerable to sexual assault because of her condition, the woman was afraid she too would be raped. Because of this possibility, she aborted the baby.
The reporter said:
[The pregnant woman] was assaulted as a child, she knew that the statistics for sexual abuse were high for people with intellectual disabilities, and she was determined that her daughter would not experience that, so that was one of the reasons she terminated her pregnancy.
She referred to her abortion several times as “the protective choice.”
This is a truly tragic situation, where a wounded and emotionally scarred mother denied her baby a chance at life for fear of something that might never have happened.
The story shows how devastating sexual assault can be, and how the tragedy of such an assault can reverberate and harm people other than the victim.
Because they wanted to dance
Abortion clinic owner Norma Goldberger wrote a compelling book that spilled many of the abortion industry’s dirty little secrets. The fact that she was, and remains, pro-abortion makes the things she writes even more damning.
She gave the reason some of the women who came to her abortion facility had abortions:
Some of our patients were professional classical dancers. They could not have continued dancing on stage while being pregnant. Some occupations are not supportive of pregnancy.
Rather than take a leave of absence from dancing, these women chose to get rid of their babies.
To fit into a wedding dress
Stephanie Simon wrote an article in The Los Angeles Times called “Offering Abortion, Rebirth.” It was written in November 2005 and is no longer online. In the article, she interviewed several women having abortions.
She writes about one of them, a woman named Sarah:
… Sarah, 23, says it never occurred to her to use birth control, though she has been sexually active for six years. When she became pregnant this fall, Sarah, who works in real estate, was in the midst of planning her wedding. “I don’t think my dress would have fit with a baby in there,” she says.
Sarah had no thought of postponing the wedding or altering her wedding dress. She just didn’t want to be pregnant for her wedding. For that reason, a baby died.
To go on a ski vacation
Christopher Caldwell wrote in 1999 in The New Republic:
The British gynecologist P. Greenhalgh writes of a rich mother of three who came to her for an abortion. She wanted a fourth child, but not just yet, since the family had already reserved a ski vacation months down the line.
Many OB/GYN specialists have stories like this, and, when one hears them, it’s easy to see why women feel so guilty about owning up to the pedestrian nature of their reasons [for having an abortion.]
Currently in our country, and in many others, pregnant people can abort for any reason. The reasons listed here are just a handful of examples that show why preborn babies die.
Permission is given to pro-life organizations to repost or reprint this article, but please include the following:
This article originally appeared on Sarah Terzo’s Substack. You can read more of her articles here.