Some conservatives have taken abortion fear mongering to a whole new level
Abortion survivor syndrome is typically a term used by pro-lifers to try and convince women they’ll be harmed for life if they have an abortion. But one man, a Canadian psychiatrist, has found a rather odd new way to spin this phrase, and proof of that was seen on Fox News this recently.
A panel convened to discuss the horrific murder of 22-year old Christopher Lane by three “bored” teenage boys. One of the guests was Janet Morana, the executive director of Priests For Life, a pro-life group dedicated to ending euthanasia and abortion.
Ms. Morana spoke at length about why these three young men may have decided to kill Christopher Lane in cold blood, blaming everything from video games to television to lack of parental guidance and cell phones. It was when she mentioned Dr. Philip Ney and his “work” that my ears perked up. This was something new.
According to Dr. Ney, children born “post Roe v Wade” may suffer from something called “survivor syndrome,” and Janet Morana decided to whip this tidbit out during her appearance on Fox. Again, according to Ms. Morana and Dr. Ney, kids born after 1973 inherently realize that they could have been aborted and therefore are more likely to act out in negative ways.
If your jaw just fell into your lap, you are not alone. My son was born after 1973 and I asked him if he felt wonky, knowing he could have been aborted. Did he feel like grabbing his two best friends and a hunting rifle and driving around, shooting people? He looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
Philip Ney is a flaming Christian. His therapy methods are rooted in Christianity, often to the surprise of his patients and he is vehemently anti-abortion, going so far as to blame abortion for child abuse:
“People who have had an abortion are more likely to abuse their children and people who have been abused are more likely to have an abortion… Abortion results in more postpartum depression and therefore less bonding, less touching and less breast-feeding… It should be noted that one of the earliest arguments was that aborting unwanted children would diminish the incidence of child abuse. Statistics show precisely the opposite; that is, with more frequent abortions, all kinds of child abuse have increased.”
Luckily, the website where this quote can be found doesn’t have Dr. Ney proving any of that. I looked for these statistics, but was unable to find anything from a reputable source. The entire first page of Google gave me nothing but pro-life sites; nothing medically sound or unbiased.
Here’s one question for Janet Morana. Is this the 2013 version of the Twinkie defense? When Harvey Milk and George Moscone were gunned down by Dan White, his attorney stated that White’s severe depression was exacerbated by a change in his diet to junk food. White served five years for murdering two people in cold blood.
My second question would be to both Dr. Ney and Ms. Morana; do you truly believe that “post Roe v Wade” kids are sitting in their rooms right now, pondering the meaning of their existence and racked with survivor’s guilt? And if a teenager chooses to act out violently, that can it be blamed on some bizarre theory about abortion? Can you prove that?
No of course they can’t. Dr. Ney speaks of an unnamed patient who couldn’t bond with her new baby, and eventually disclosed that she had had an abortion. AHA bellowed Dr. Ney, abortion=lack of bonding, postpartum depression, etc. That’s how it works, you see, the right wing fear mongering about abortion. No facts, no figures, just fear and shame. Lots and lots of shame.
Because now, somewhere in America, a woman who had a secret (she couldn’t tell her conservative family) abortion twenty years ago is looking at her teenagers and wondering if (or when) they’ll snap. It’s all her fault, you see, for “murdering” her “baby.” Shame, shame, shame.
Video games, abortion, movies. It’s never just the fact that sociopaths exist and we have way too many damned guns and perhaps, just perhaps, moms and dads are working their collective asses off to try and pay the bills so yeah, Junior’s on his own sometimes.
No, it can’t be that.
http://mediamatters.org/video/2013/08/22/fox-guest-suggests-oklahoma-shooting-resulted-i/195544
“…do you truly believe that “post Roe v Wade” kids are sitting in their rooms right now, pondering the meaning of their existence and racked with survivor’s guilt?” I wouldn’t have been able to name it as “survivor’s guilt” since I had no conception of that and didn’t even know I was a survivor then per se, but that’s exactly what my upbringing was like – and to be honest, many of my peers as well. I vividly remember sitting in a darkening room alone at 4, wondering why I was alive at all. And no, I was not physically, sexually, or verbally abused, although I was afraid of my dad for some reason. And when I was growing up, whole herds of my peers were depressed and suicidal – it was common enough to be considered “cool”. Have we considered why?
I myself have struggled with depression with no known source for much of my life, and a persistent lack of resilience, sense of doom, disassociation, difficulties with attachment (difficulties relating with others in close relationships), low self-esteem, not being able to picture a future, not feeling like I deserved nice things like a wedding, marriage and stability, and hypervigilance – all of which I have undergone repeated counseling sessions and medication for, well before my mother ever made it known that she had an abortion, which I would never have even have guessed, since my parents became religious later on. My siblings also did in varying degrees. My parents loved me very much and always praised me, so it didn’t really make much sense. I also was extremely intelligent, and quite attractive. I felt like I was being a drama queen and making things up, and this made me fall even more into self-blame and self-loathing – because there was no apparent reason I should feel this way. However, Dr. Ney’s findings describe me to a T.
You are being extremely calloused and short-sighted in the name of your culture war stance. Even if you don’t believe that human life begins at conception, do you not think that millions of years of evolution geared towards optimal conditions for the creation of new human life will not deal out consequences if it is deliberately destroyed in the womb, in its purest form, when it has the most potential, and where nature has granted with the protection of another human body, so precious it has deemed it to preserve?
And you’re wrong, Dr. Ney has actually carried out studies on this, following normal research methods. You can look his papers up yourself.
If you’re looking for someone to blame for a less-than-respectful reference to the murder of Chris Lane, may I suggest Fox “news.” This article was to point out the fallacies being touted as fact by the right wing in order to ignore the facts of Lane’s violent death.
You think this is all “fear-mongering” nonsense? I’m not a survivor of abortion, but of IVF. I have two siblings who, like me, were created during the procedure, but did not survive more than a few days after their conception. My parents don’t consider them to be fully people, or to be their children like I am. I suffer from that every day. You ridicule the idea that “kids are sitting in their rooms right now, pondering the meaning of their existence and racked with survivor’s guilt”. That’s every day for me.
My parents didn’t kill my siblings: they simply refuse to acknowledge their existence. I can only imagine the suffering that someone would feel knowing that their parents had killed their siblings. Their pain must be ten times what I’m feeling now.
How can you mock their pain? Because, I assure you, it’s real pain. Some nights you cry yourself to sleep, not knowing how you’re meant to feel. You mourn the loss of your siblings, knowing that there’s no one else in the world who gives a damn about them, or about you. And if you dare tell anyone else how you feel, you’re ridiculed, told to shut up, and that it doesn’t matter, because your brothers and sisters weren’t people: their lives didn’t matter.
I’m not expecting a reply from you. If you do reply, no doubt you’ll tell me the same: that my siblings weren’t people, and it’s okay for them to be ignored and forgotten by everyone. I just wanted you to know that the pain is real, and must be far worse than my own pain.
You are obviously “pro-life,” which to me means you believe life begins at conception. I do not believe life begins at conception. I’m sorry you are in pain, and hope you find help to ease that pain.
you would not be in pain if they never told you… you create the pain because you feel alone and wanted that companionship that other siblings had… i feel sorry for you , i truly do…
would you morn for every zygote that didn’t make it to implantation in the uterus lining and was flushed out with the normal ministrations of your mother? you would hang you’re self being wrought with that kind of grief…
“would you morn for every zygote that didn’t make it to implantation in the uterus lining and was flushed out with the normal ministrations of your mother?”
Do you understand the difference between an unfertilized egg and a zygote? An unfertilized egg cell is just a single cell which is part of a larger organism, like a single skin cell or blood cell. It’s not an individual in itself. A human zygote, however, is a human being at their youngest stage of life. Egg and sperm cell have combined, and in doing so have created a new, distinct, living, and whole human being, which although only a single cell in size, has the ability to grow to adulthood given only nutrition and time. An egg cell, given nutrition and time, cannot develop any further, since it’s not a whole organism.
And you’re right: If they never told me, I’d never have known. But how does that prove anything? If I had a younger sibling who died at two years old before I was born, and they never told me, I wouldn’t suffer any pain either. But that doesn’t mean that my two-year-old sibling wasn’t a person, just because I don’t know they existed.
Um, how could someone survive an abortion? The person who was aborted wouldn’t be able to act violently. It seems like such a ridiculous claim. There is no scientific research done to prove any of the claims and there are hundreds of thousands of unchecked variables.
OMG! Just when I think I have heard it all…. So these two idiots were born way before Roe v. Wade wth is their excuse??