Recently, abortion coercion has been in the news.
Missouri resident Kevin Smith has just been sentenced to fifteen-and-a-half years in prison for kidnapping his pregnant girlfriend and forcing her to drive, at gunpoint, to a Planned Parenthood facility, where he intended to make her have an abortion.
Police were able to apprehend Smith and rescue the victim after she found a way to text a family member, who alerted police and gave a description of Smith’s car. Police found Smith’s car parked in the Planned Parenthood facility’s parking lot; the couple never made it inside.
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Thankfully, Smith chose not to engage in a shootout with the police and threw his gun out the car window when he saw them. Therefore, the incident ended without bloodshed.
Research and surveys conducted over the years have shown that coercion is a factor in many abortions, though, thankfully, it doesn’t always rise to this level. Actual percentages vary, but these sources indicate that coercion is a widespread problem.
In a 2004 study, 64% of a sample of women having abortions said they were pressured into them by another person or people.
David Reardon interviewed numerous post-abortive women for his 1997 book Aborted Women, Silent No More. In the book, he stated, “Nearly 55% of the respondents felt they had been very much ‘forced’ to abort by others.”1 Fifty-one percent of the time, the pressure came from a husband or boyfriend.
Reardon has conducted many studies on the aftereffects of abortion. You can find some of his research here.
Later, in 2013, Frederica Mathewes-Green surveyed the reasons why women had abortions and found that the highest percentage, 38.2% said it was in response to pressure from a husband or boyfriend.2
According to a survey of post-abortive women for a study published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, 73.8% experienced some form of pressure from people in their lives. However, this pressure could be “subtle.”
More than half (58.3%) said they aborted to make others happy. Nearly 30% of survey respondents said that they were afraid that they would lose their partner if they chose life for their babies.
The study questionnaires were given to 987 women.
However, it should be noted that the women in the study were drawn from those who sought post-abortion help at pregnancy resource centers. Thus, the sample strongly represented those who experienced emotional trauma or regret after their abortions.
People coerced into abortion may be more likely to suffer trauma afterwards. Thus, the study results cannot be generalized to everyone who has an abortion.
Even some on the pro-abortion side have admitted that pregnant people are sometimes coerced into abortion.
The late Alan Guttmacher served as the medical director of Planned Parenthood. He was a lifelong pro-abortion advocate who committed abortions himself and campaigned to make them legal.
He once admitted that about 30% of women who have abortions were pressured into them by someone else, usually by the man involved.3
These studies and surveys, as well as a great deal of anecdotal evidence and many personal testimonies, show that while we don’t know the exact numbers, a sizable number of people having abortions are being coerced.
Some therapists who work with post-abortive people have also commented on how common abortion coercion is.
One was quoted in the book And Still They Weep: Personal Stories of Abortion.
She said:
Of the many women I’ve counseled, I would say that well over 90% of them aborted their babies to please someone else: their husbands, boyfriends, parents, or peer group… It’s a mockery to talk of a woman’s right to choose when she’s not the one doing the choosing.4
Clare Bremner is a counselor with the Abortion Recovery Care and Helpline in Scotland. Her experience shows that abortion coercion isn’t limited to the United States. She says:
In my long experience, typically 75 per cent of the women who summon up the courage and bravery to make a call for help regarding an abortion were pressurised or bullied into having one, in almost all cases by the man involved.
Many women have spoken out about the coercion they faced when considering abortion.
This is an excerpt from the testimony of one woman, who told her story in the David Reardon book mentioned above:
My family would not support my decision to keep the baby. My boyfriend said he would give me no emotional or financial help whatsoever. All the people that mattered told me to abort.
When I said I didn’t want to, they started listing reasons why I should. That it would have detrimental effects on my career and my health, and that I would have no social life and no future with men.5
She says, “I’m so angry at myself for giving in to the pressure of others.”
A woman named Alex told her story in Michaelene Fredenburg’s book Changed.
Alex wanted to keep her baby, but her fiancé immediately suggested abortion and tried to talk her into it. She writes:
I gently reminded him that we were already planning on getting married and that I really couldn’t have an abortion. His gentle persistence eventually became more forceful. He tried to convince me that our relationship wouldn’t last if I didn’t have the abortion…
My arguments grew weaker until I finally gave in to him. I still didn’t want to have the abortion – I knew it would end the life of our child. But I thought that if I got it over with quickly – that if I had the abortion early enough in the pregnancy – then I’d be able to cope with it.6
Alex had hoped she could manage the aftermath of her abortion and that her relationship would be saved. She says, “I thought I’d be okay – we’d be okay. I was wrong.”
The abortion had an instant, terrible effect on her:
I immediately regretted the abortion. I felt the loss of our child from the core of my being. I grieved over my child – our child. I grieved over my inability to stay true to my beliefs.7
Their relationship deteriorated. Her fiancé wouldn’t tolerate her grief:
I would cry, and he would YELL. Whenever I tried to tell him how I was feeling, he’d storm out. The distance between us kept growing until we finally broke up two months later.8
The two losses, of her baby and her fiancé, were “unbearable,” Alex said.
The research and testimonies presented here are only a tiny fraction of what has been written documenting abortion coercion.
LifeNews Note: Sarah Terzo covered the abortion issue for over 13 years as a professional journalist. In this capacity, she has written nearly a thousand articles about abortion and read over 850 books on the topic. She has been researching and writing about abortion since attending The College of New Jersey (class of 1997) where she minored in Women’s Studies. This article originally appeared on Sarah Terzo’s Substack. You can read more of her articles here.
