The Hidden Epidemic: Forced Abortions In America
New Elliot Institute Report Exposes America’s Forced Abortion Crisis
Many women are offered only one choice–abortion.
The epidemic of coerced, unwanted abortions is rarely reported. Yet every week, thousands of girls and women face threats and abuse from people who want them to abort without regard for their own feelings or desires.
A homeless woman was denied shelter until she submitted to an unwanted abortion … a teen was ridiculed by a school counselor and bussed to the abortion clinic … a daughter was pushed into an abortion clinic at gunpoint by her mother … a girlfriend was injected with an abortifacient outside a parking garage … a 13-year-old was returned to her molester after her abortion … three sisters were raped repeatedly by their father and forced into abortions for nearly a decade … a wife miscarried after her husband jumped on her stomach to force an abortion … a waitress was fired after she became pregnant. 
The headlines above represent just a few of the many women who were offered only one choice–abortion. They are just a few of the hundreds of appalling stories of abuse, violence, and manipulation that are found in the Elliot Institute’s 21-page special report, Forced Abortion in America.
Forced Abortion in America is part of a larger series of materials being prepared by the Elliot Institute examining ways in which legalized abortion has exposed women to unwanted, unnecessary, and dangerous abortions. It includes citations to research showing that 30 to 60 percent of women having abortions feel pressured to do so by other persons. The free special report includes numerous examples of girls and women who were forced to undergo unwanted abortions by parents, sexual molesters, school officials, employers, and others.
The report also examines how pregnant women who refuse to abort face increasing levels of abuse and violence intended to intimidate them or cause them to miscarry. This violence against pregnant women has escalated to the point that the leading cause of death among pregnant women today is homicide.
Dozens of cases of women who have been shot, stabbed, choked, burned, or bombed for refusing to abort are also included in the report. You can download this free report here.
Feel free to make or print out copies and distribute them to others. And see other resources on this issue and abortion-related trauma and injustice here.
Originally published in The Post-Abortion Review 12(2) July-Sept. 2004. Copyright 2004 Elliot Institute.
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Learn More:
Modern Day Slavery of Human Trafficking
Forced Abortion in America Special Report
Concealing Sex Trafficking: Failure to Report Sex Crimes May Also Hide Human Trafficking
Empower Women, Not the State
Prevention of Coerced and Unsafe Abortion Act
Get Help:
Center Against Forced Abortions (legal help)
Find Help for Trafficking Victims
How to Identify Trafficking Victims
Help During Pregnancy
Help After Abortion
26 thoughts on “The Hidden Epidemic: Forced Abortions In America”
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Please contact me via the telephone if you live in Louisville,Ky and are around my age now, i’ll be 52 in September, and you were taken to have an abortion around age 17 and you are African American and you have a similar story as mine, the boy was 2 or 3 yrs older than you and he got familiar with you that is in a women’s bible I saw 2 years ago and you are having flash backs from it and hurt even though you know God forgives you. This is what happened to me. It will be a comfort to make a friend with you so maybe we can heal together because this is what happened to me , I was so dumb about everything I almost committed suicide 2 years ago because of what happened. My number is 502 509-8998. Thank you.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING MY LITTLE STORY, I HOPE IT WILL KEEP EVEN ONE MOTHER FROM ABORTING THEIR GIFT FROM GOD”+++
MANY BLESSINGS,BOB AMODEO+++
Hi all, Just looking at the bigger picture…there have been about 55,000,000 abortions in the United States alone since 1973. With the United states being only about 5% of the population of the world, there could be a grand total of about 1,000,000,000, yes one billion, abortions in the world since 1973 when “Roe vs Wade” made abortion legal.
In late 1939, my own Mother was on the abortion table getting rid of me.
Just as the Doctor was doing his deadly deed, my mothers sister Margret came running in and screamed to her to stop. She yelled out “Jean”, don’t do it, that child will take care of you in your old age!
Well, the Doctor stopped, and here I am today, with a wonderful wife of forty eight years, four great children, eight Grand Children, and a blessing of a Hot dog named Margret Mary, after my Aunt Margret, Thank you Lord!
Over the many years, I’ve had many jobs and meet many people in Church,Real Estate, and the Automobile business, and have touched thousands of people and acquaintances in many ways, and yes, out of 6 children, I was her favorite, and helped her till she went home to our Lord at the ripe old age of ninety two! Well, thats only one little story out of a Billion.
If woman only knew what one new life can mean in this world…….
Many Blessings to All,
Bob Amodeo+++
P.S. –This little story can be used by anyone who wants to, many blessings, Bob Amodeo”+++
Thanks for sharing your story. God richly blessed both you and your parents through Margret’s response to His grace. Instead of shrugging, she did something that save a life, and future generations, changing the entire world forever. May God continue to bless you and all of your family.
well im 16 years old and i had an abortion when i was 15 i didn’t wanted to have an abortion but i have too, because i have no job and no home how would i take care off the child and asks god to forgive me because i feel so
Please search for help in grieving and healing from a past abortion. Many churches can refer you to a post-abortion healing program. Most pro-life pregnancy help centers also can make a referral to a counselor.
The pressure that leads to thinking you “have not choice” but to have an abortion is very real . . . but there are also groups and people out there that can help women avoid an abortion, even if she at first thinks she has no other choice. The consequences of trying to deal with an abortion can be more difficult to manage than giving birth to a child, whether one places the child for adoption or even if one decides to raise him or her. Raising a child isn’t easy, but it is rewarding. Dealing with a past abortion isn’t easy, and the memory of an abortion is never rewarding.
I hope that some day soon women will speak up and together put forth a class action lawsuit and sue the whole institution both medical and governmental and take them for all their worth. Its only when you hit them in the pocket book that anything ever gets noticed. If you ever had an abortion and were not told in full disclosure all the possible side effects and consequences for having one and have suffered because of it then please contact a lawyer or something. Get the ball rolling and get justice for all the women out there that have been told the lie.
It is heartbreaking reading these stories and knowing what women suffer from abortion. I myself have been threatened by my employer (I am a male nurse) with losing my job because I refuse to teach that abortion is safe and ethical. One thing I notice mentioned a lot is the Roe vs Wade court case. Roe’s real name is Norma McCorvey and she later regretted everything in regards to that court case. She later became one of the United States most zealous pro-life supporters and ran with (two? I would have to check my facts) presidents in hopes to overturn the Roe vs Wade court decision.
I have seen in my practice women who suffer mental anguish from abortions and there is little to no help for them. It is like society wants to hide these realities from women but why? In the medical field it is our job to give our patients full and informed disclosure on any medical or surgical procedure so that they can make an informed choice. Why are we not telling women the very real and potentially life long consequences to this “choice”.
I say no more hiding the truth from women.
My prayers with all of you who have suffered from this.
Jesse
I’m only new to this and the impact it has on so many woman. In Australia they don’t encourage pre- abortion counseling or look for signs of ptsd. If only they got all of us to work together and tell the woman the truth size of baby how they realy extract the child and call it a child after 12 wks, if not before. My wife had an abortion after 21 wks. If she new the truth and I wasn’t on holiday we would have had our 3rd child at 45. Man, we were great parents at 20 how good would we be now. What a waste. Woodville abortion clinic SA, you need help. I’m here. Men love there children and feel the pain of abortion. It hurts and it’s real. Work together stop all the “my views are better than yours” rubbish. Let’s audit these clinics, save some lives and some heart ache.
Thanks for your comments Wayne. We pray that you and your wife will heal from your loss and that your efforts to help others get better counseling will bear good fruit.
Julie, Kat, Kim, Umkawthar,
My heart is resonates with your stories, and with Julie, Kim, Lynn and Linda’s insightful comments.
I hope that you have a support group in your areas, where you can continue your healing journeys. In our area, (California) we have a loving healing network of men and women who reach out to each other and draw in others who have been traumatized by abortion. We have healing retreats, SaveOne Bible study support groups, and also a yearly symposium to educate the public about abortion’s effects and how to promote healing.
It is a joy of my life to be part of this network of amazing survivors who have a rare depth of experience of God’s forgiveness and a zeal like I read in your comments.
Our IRMA Network is also here for you: http://www.theIRMAnetwork.org.
May the LORD open many doors for you to continue to experience and speak the TRUTH: Abortion hurts; but God heals!
I was forced into having an abortion of my 11 week baby two months ago, and im 40! Not coerced, I was forced to unrelentlessly, and not a day goes by that I dont grieve and regret not finding a way to have kept my baby.
I wanted to badly to keep her, i prayed for her for 7 years and finally i was blessed. I kept praying for a miracle i even kept taking folic acid and duphaston ( a baby securing medicine) right up to the day of the abortion while praying that he would change his mind.
I want to testify how badly the abortion damaged me mentally. I have changed forever, even towards my existing children whom are the 3rd victims, i am the 2nd and my innocent and ‘very much wanted baby girl’ was the first victim.
When the pressure was at its highest for me to abort my main concern was would my baby feel pain and having searched online i found a horribly misleading site that claimed that up to the 1st trimester so called ‘potential babies’ dont feel pain.
I was horrified at the late term abortions and how a needle is inserted into the brain during partial birth and i didnt want to have my baby go through that.
So i numbed myself believing that that my baby wouldnt feel.
Afterwards i became obsessed with what she went through, the last sonogram haunted me untill i found out ‘silent scream’ the old program that shows a sonogram of a live abortion killing.
The baby was just 1 week older than mine was and you will see that the so called ‘potential life’ the baby that these monster pro choice and money greedy social decaying politicians claim is not human…..the baby kicked and jumped and tries to get away from the suction vaccum, the heart beat goes up and the baby actually opened its mouth in a silent scream. THAT IS VERY MUCH A HUMAN RESPONSE and the abortion is the earliest doccumented excetution ever filmed.
THIS IS THE TRUTH.
My baby was murdered the same way. Thousands of babies will die like this too everyday.
You know what else I found out in these two months?
Most other mothers with amuputated motherhoods like me, weather they were pro choice or like me forced, WE ALL REGRET.
Just go to a abortion forum and read for yourself, some of them are decades past their so called choices. We all regret because none of us saw this coming.
A solution?
Take a 3d sonogram of an abortion and show that to the world.
Give these babies a voice through technology.
Let the politicians and celebrities & the abortion industry deal with reality unveiled in footage of these innocent baby deaths
http://www.ehd.org/movies.php?mov_id=228
http://www.ehd.org/movies.php?mov_id=226
Let coercing families and forcing husbands realise that they are committing murder…and guess who gets left behind with blood on our hands? . . . We do the mothers.
The reason we are changed permanently after an abortion because our instincts know what happened , we need to give this a voice.
I’m drowning in her blood and my only solace and reason to write is to uncover the truth about abortion and suggest that footage be taken.
Not just in sonogram in larascope like the one taken here
http://www.ehd.org/movies.php?mov_id=62
http://www.ehd.org/movies.php?mov_id=64
finally this footage
http://www.ehd.org/movies.php?mov_id=70
If the baby has the rooting reflex and can feel stimulus that makes it turn its head towards it and open its mouth to suckle, means without a shadow of doubt that it feels pain, that the 12 week baby IS HUMAN, that it is being executed.
I challenge that abortion be refilmed with this technology and as harrowing as it is, let the roe & wade people see the baby open its mouth in full colour and scream as it is being ripped to death
My baby died this way only two months ago, other babies dont have to.
I’m so sad. I wish I died too on that table.
We are praying for you. We pray you will find healing in Christ and the grace to forgive those involved. They too were the victims of lies and deceptions that encourage them to believe abortion is no big deal….in which case it is something that they can push on women like you. We are praying for you, and them, that this terrible loss will lead to repentance and a new commitment to help others, and yourselves, to cherish the great gift of life and to help promote a culture of life.
The pro abortion movement has had a successful campaign changing to the Pro-choice movement. Most people do not agree with abortions but support a women’s right to choose. The pro life movement needs to reach out more, to explain that when you are pro choice you are pro abortion. My best friend’s life was destroyed by the abortions she had. To this day she breaks down about the family she could have had. She is still living in grief and guilt some 20 years later. This is a strong competent woman who could have had it all. Instead guilt and loss have monopolized her life. Her decision had nothing to do with choice. She was pushed into this by her boyfriend who threatened to leave her. He ended up leaving anyway only to go on and have a child with someone else. The pro choice = pro abortion movement likes to tell women that abortion helps us control our reproductive rights. The truth is there are many men out there who want this option available so they have no responsibility, an easy way out, FOR THEM. They like to come off as these noble people who care about our rights. Its not true. The pro life movement needs to reach out to these women who regret their decision. Let them know we need their voice, their stories, their strength to finally end this barbaric age we live in.
Toria – Who the heck are you to suggest that a forced abortion can be a good thing?????? How dare you? You should have more respect than that for yourself and the many children who’ve died. I don’t know what you believe but wake UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s obvious that you have a issue with your self and self-respect and self-image. You should respect yourself and others lives including the aborted children. If you had self respect you wouldn’t be putting that kind of crap on a website that is trying to help a bad situation and give some kind of hope to those who need it.
I am one of those women who life has been inextricably altered by the death of my children in forced/coerced abortion. Who knows what benefit I might have brought to humanity were I not so traumatized by the effects of the abortion of my daughters. My oldest daughter, Maura, would be 30 on July 3rd. My other daughter, Sara, would be 20 this October. I entrust them to God’s care, but I ache for them every day. My life is forever changed by their absence and the tragedy I endured that took their lives.
Before abortion, I was a “mover and a shaker.” Everyone thought I was going to do something large in life. Me, too. Now I am permanently disabled, and I believe that post-abortion trauma had significant effect in my life. Rethink your positions, you who really don’t understand what abortion does to all.
Hello, Linda. Your comments are so very on target. Regarding whether girls and/or women suffer psychologically after abortions because they had pre-existing conditions: those who say this are not at all helpful or even informed. If it is true, and I would not deny that it happens, then we should be screening for pre-existing psychological disorders and taking a complete family history to identify predispositions, as well. But because no effort is made to do this, abortion as healthcare for women is exposed as medical malpractice.
In many cases, especially with young girls who are sexually active before they have reached adulthood, there are surely pre-existing psychological problems that led to the sexual behavior itself: a history of childhood sexual abuse is known to lead to precocious sexual activity.
Those who try to minimize or even negate the psychological harm of abortions by using the excuse that those of us who suffer were already sick fail to understand the complexities of the emotional response (and basic principles of psychology). An unplanned pregnancy can, in and of itself, be traumatic in a young girl who has no idea where to turn or what to do. In this heightened state of acute stress, she can lose the ability to make clear decisions.
Thank you for your insightful comments.
I am working with teens and they are being forced to have abortions. That is a fact. And everyone I have met who has had an abortion tells me that it is a cold indifferent experience and all they (referring to those who run the abortion clinics) care about is money.
In the last year many girls were forced into having abortions. One minor girl for example was forced by her mother to have an abortion because the mother thought it might be her husband’s-the man (referring to the step father of the victim) who is raping her daughter. Another girl was raped by a man and he forced her to have an abortion. He was in his 20’s and she was 13. He raped her again and this time her mother and father forced her to have an abortion. She is now 14 y.o.
I am a therapist and I am disgusted. I have started about a year ago to offer counseling to girls and women to heal from abortions. It is a struggle for women to come out and talk about their abortions. They are afraid of what other women will say about them because they were told in so many ways you don’t talk about your abortions. You accept it and move on. Don’t’ rock the boat. Yeah women are shutting other women up! But I decided I would not keep silent and I won’t be bullied into keeping things quiet. I am being bullied not to provide counseling.
Oh and there are some groups providing counseling and say that women are “suffering” but only because they have other mental health problems. Yes check the groups thoroughly before getting help. You might be getting the wrong help especially when women tell other women they want to “normalize” abortion for girls. Imagine such a thing. Women and girls come from different economic backgrounds, professional and non professional etc. for help. And I am going to offer help. And all of them are suffering the loss regardless of their political and religious view.
I think that anyone who thinks the issue of abortion is a black or white issue doesn’t have the maturity to understand the ramifications or consequences. Children under the age of 18 should not be allowed to have abortions without protection against abuses of power, if abortion is to be legal. I think we need to minimize abortion and help girls and women financially, educationally, socially and in every way and offer them a real choice. Choosing death and suffering is not a choice. Where is the love and compassion? Where is the hope after an abortion? Women have more when they can make decisions based on truth and not lies and manipulation. Thanks.
Regarding the “sanitary clinical environment” argument:
As a healthcare professional, I found it unbelievable that, since the Roe and Doe decisions, most states have had no standards for competence, sanitation or safety, for first trimester abortion clinics, because the courts deemed health regulations “impose an undue burden on a woman’s right to choose.” That is why I became involved in the process for drafting first trimester abortion clinic regulations in my state, South Carolina. After several years, and two challenges which took our regulations to the U.S. Supreme Court, South Carolina has regulations for competency, sanitation and safety for first trimester abortion clinics, thus, only recently, setting a precedent for other states to devise their own regulations.
Before we had our regulations, as an operating room nurse in the local indigent hospital, I interviewed many of the OB/GYN residents, as they rotated though my OR. All but one admitted seeing women with post-abortion complications, and one doctor told me, “I see them all the time.” Perforated uterus, retained products of conception, and undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy, were the main complications they treated.
This is just one little hospital, in one city. I wondered, what is going on every where else? The CDC showed no incidence of abortion morbidity or mortality for S.C. but we were seeing cases in my hospital. I checked on how this information would be relayed to the CDC and learned that there was no mechanism in place to record complications and the way any mortality stats would be found, was by reading death certificates. Who is going to put on a woman’s death certificate that she died from an abortion? No. It would be from hemorrhage, or sepsis, but not from abortion.
Abortion is not physically safe, or emotionally safe.
The CDC has no source of data to draw the conclusions that it claims that “abortion is safer than childbirth.”
Toria, as a teenager, I was forced to have an abortion by my mother. The fact that the environment was clinical, and perhaps sterile, did nothing to assuage the trauma and the resulting negative impact on my neuropsychological health. If abortion had not been legal, I can guarantee you that my mother would not have killed me. She would have kicked me to the curb, but the chances are very good that I would have found a way for me and my child to survive.
For centuries, we thought the Earth was flat. We know better now. Human society should grow and evolve as we accumulate knowledge. Perhaps women have been killed over the centuries over unwanted pregnancies (and they still are today even though the “sanitary” procedure is legal). It is absurd to think that this is a good reason to provide those with authority over pregnant women with the legal means to end their problems without having to kill the girl or woman herself.
Toria, I hope you also understand that forcing a woman to kill her own child is worse than killing her outright. It kills her soul. It killed mine – and it killed many of my hopes and dreams, including ever having children who lived that I could raise and love. It left me more broken than any beating ever could, because I was complicit. I did not want the abortion. I used every ounce of strength I had to try to change my mother’s mind. In the end, I failed – from that moment to the present day, I have seen myself as a monster, a weak woman who could not protect one small child.
I am not alone. Many women feel the same way after giving in to the pressure to have an abortion. I hope you will take this into consideration.
Julie, I agree with everything you have said. My mother also forced me into an abortion and the three psychiatrists she sent me to, supported her wicked ambition that I destroy what they said was only ’tissue’. (It was just before it was legal and you needed to have three professionals sign off for you).
Like you, I live with regret and grief every day. It has destroyed my happiness and profoundly impacted so many areas of my life in a negative way. If only we could take it back!
Julie, you are not a monster. You and I are victims of this insane world of parents and people without conscience who destroy not only the lives of our unborn but our lives as well.
There are those who have abortions and can go on with their lives and never give it another thought. Then there are those like you and I for whom that one act can impact their entire lives, for the rest of their lives. Thank God we are in the second catagorie. There is hope for us. There is forgiveness and there is the chance we will see our lost children one day.
Do not condemn yourself! You have enough pain without adding self hatred! Forgiving my mother helped me. Fighting to save the unborn helps too.
Kate <3
Yes, and it being done in a clinical atmosphere is SO much better when kicking and punching were the only options. There are no guaranties in anything in life, but a sterile clinical procedure is a better place for this to take place than a filthy room by someone who doesn’t know what they are doing. People have been forcing mothers to abort or killing mothers for centuries. Legal abortion makes it less likely that the mother will be killed.
Are you really suggesting that forced abortions are okay as long as a woman is in a clean environment when she suffers the psychological trauma that will haunt her for the rest of her life?
Do you think doctors have any obligation to intervene and prevent a forced abortion. Or should they just charge extra whenever they are asked to be complicit in this “sanitary” medical abuse?
Sorry for the sarcasm, but your argument seems to boil down to this: “It’s human nature to force women to abort pregnancies unwanted by others. Since that can’t be stopped, we should make sure these abortions are done in a sanitary environment.” And you would count that as a victory for women’s rights?
Toria, are you aware that your comments completely blow apart the argument of “Pro-Choice”. Advocates of abortion NEVER say they are “Pro-Abortion”.
Their case has always been predicated on a Woman’s right to choose; a woman’s right to have control over her own body. I ask you, does a woman being forced or coerced into a clean and sterile abortion clinic sound like she is excercising her rights, does it sound like she’s in control of her own body? The question answers itself. Abortion defenders continually say they want abortion to be “Safe, Legal, and Rare”. Well, it appears to me that you all are willing to settle for one out of three. It’s a shame.
Prior to the legalization of abortion. most abortions were performed by doctors. Also, the death rate of women in abortions fell drastically during the twentieth century well before abortion was legalized.
there is adoption for anyone who thinks abortion is the safest way to go. this way you known i gave my baby to someone who can take care of him/her and give the baby a life instead of aborting the baby
thankyou Deborah, Prolife. check out this website to find out about the abortions that people do. It is so inhumane it made me want to cry.
http://www.all.org/article/index/id/MjQ0NA