Making Abortion Rare Television Program Airs
Host of New ” Television Series Comments
Springfield, IL (Jan. 4, 2004) — “The abortion industry is a house of cards ready to collapse,” said David C. Reardon, Ph.D., host of a new television program that will premiere in January on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), during the week of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The program is based on Reardon’s book Making Abortion Rare: A Healing Strategy for a Divided Nation, which has been endorsed by the leaders of many national pro-life organizations.
“A recent public opinion poll has shown that most Americans, even those who call themselves pro-choice, believe that abortion causes more harm than good in women’s lives,” said Reardon, director of the Elliot Institute, a post-abortion research organization based in Springfield, Illinois. “This is a sign that the winds are changing. The collapse of the abortion industry will happen much faster than most people imagine, just like the fall of the Berlin wall.”
Reardon, the author of numerous medical studies on abortion complications, says the public’s increased awareness of the “ugly side” of abortion is the unavoidable consequence of exposing over 30 million women to one or more abortions. He says that nearly every American has either been directly scarred by an abortion or has seen ways in which it has affected loved ones.
“Most people today know that abortion is an ugly, haunting experience,” he said. “This intuition has people oriented in the right direction, but most are still unaware of just how devastating the effects of abortion have been in the lives of so many women, men, and families.
“This unawareness is similar to the way most Americans viewed Jewish persecution under Hitler prior to the Allied victory. They knew from scant reports and rumors that Jews were being oppressed, even killed, but they had no conception of the extent of the Holocaust until after the war. When the truth became known, the resulting shock, shame, and compassion permanently changed many aspects of our culture. The same will happen as Americans become more aware of abortion’s evil.”
Reardon compares today’s abortion advocates with Holocaust deniers who were aware of the problem but said nothing.
“The denial of the Holocaust didn’t originate with skin-heads and neo-Nazis of the 1980s,” he said. “American political leaders and the media downplayed the extent of Jewish persecution both before and during the war for many different reasons. Some were eugenicists who were sympathetic to the Aryan agenda. But the majority of these leaders of public opinion, who had seen at least some evidence of the problem, dismissed, understated, or ignored the issue simply because they wanted to avoid drawing ‘too much’ public attention to the problem of Jewish genocide. They wanted to protect and promote ‘more important’ political concerns, and they didn’t want the suffering of a ‘few’ to distract from ‘bigger’ issues.
“The same phenomenon is occurring today. There are abortion holocaust deniers who have little or no regard for how abortion is hurting individual women because they are far more concerned about their overarching social agenda: advancing population control efforts, eliminating the birth of handicapped persons, suppressing the birth rate of low-income minority groups, or merely protecting the abortion industry’s profits.
“These are today’s holocaust deniers. They insist that the deaths of girls like Holly Patterson are such ‘rare exceptions’ that should not arouse a review of medical protocols or changes in public policy. They insist that the testimonies of disabling depression and grief from post-abortive women like actress Jennifer O’Neill are just the ‘whining’ of a few women who were already psychologically ‘weak.’ They insist that every study linking abortion to breast cancer, miscarriage, premature birth, substance abuse, psychiatric illness, and elevated mortality rates is flawed or should be concealed from abortion patients, at least until more research has proven the causal connections between abortion and these complications to their satisfaction. In short, there will never be enough evidence to convince abortion holocaust deniers that the injuries women suffer outweigh the ‘benefits’ of population control, or whatever their favorite cause may be.
“Because the denials of Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates are faithfully reported by the media, they have largely succeeded in preventing most Americans from fully waking up to the devastation that abortion is wreaking on women and families,” Reardon said. “But the nation is stirring. More and more are waking up, because every abortion adds new evidence on the side of truth. Every abortion spiritually and emotionally scars another woman, another man, another family. And with every scarred heart, there is another soul that yearns for understanding, compassion, mercy, and, eventually, a chance to proclaim the truth.
“The fall of the abortion industry is inevitable precisely because it is creating its own pool of witnesses and accusers. Just as the Nazi’s evil was exposed by the testimony of the victims who survived, so the evil of abortion is being exposed by the women and men who, through the healing mercy of Christ, are now coming forward to proclaim the truth.
“This is why a key aspect of the pro-woman/pro-life strategy discussed in ‘Making Abortion Rare’ is simply to serve the real needs of abortion survivors. We are helping them to find spiritual, emotional, and physical healing. We are helping them to defend and secure their authentic rights. We are helping to call attention to their voices, which give the most powerful witness to the abortion holocaust. And through these means, the house of cards will collapse much faster than most people imagine. God willing, this will happen within years, not decades.”
Reardon believes the public has never been better prepared to receive and respond to a pro-woman/pro-life message. In addition, he says, Christian and pro-life groups are steadily integrating the pro-woman/pro-life strategy into all of their efforts.
“As the public begins to more clearly see the pro-woman side of the pro-life movement, they will quickly join in our efforts to protect women from unwanted, unnecessary, and dangerous abortion,” he said. “Most people do not object to the goal of ending abortion; they just want it done in a way that helps women. The more we help women, both before and after their abortions, the more public opinion will follow our lead.”
The six-part television series, “Making Abortion Rare,” is hosted by Reardon and Dr. Theresa Burke, founder of the Rachel’s Vineyard post-abortion retreat ministry and author of Forbidden Grief: The Unspoken Pain of Abortion.
The series will begin on Friday, January 16 and continue Monday through Friday, January 19-23, at 4:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m Eastern Standard Time on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). EWTN the largest religious media network in the world, airing in more than 85 million homes worldwide. The series will also be rebroadcast at other times throughout the year.
“Making Abortion Rare” reviews a three-pronged strategy for ending abortion through a compassionate and comprehensive program of pastoral, political and educational reform that is logically derived from an understanding of the ways in which abortion hurts women physically, psychologically, and spiritually.
In the first half of the series, Reardon and Burke discuss the factors that drive women to have abortions in violation of their moral beliefs and maternal desires. In this context, they also discuss several of the studies Reardon has authored which have been published in major medical journals, showing that abortion is associated with elevated rates of suicide, death from other causes, depression, psychiatric hospitalization, substance abuse, and more.
In the second half of “Making Abortion Rare,” Reardon and Burke examine the impact of these findings on the pastoral approach to women considering abortion and on women and men who have been involved in past abortions. They also examine ways to protect women from unwanted, unnecessary, and dangerous abortions by holding abortionists more fully liable for the injuries women suffer. Finally, they review how the synergy of all of these methods will result in the creation of a pro-woman/pro-life society where abortion is not just illegal, but unthinkable.
