The
Connection Between Abortion and Violence
Philip
G. Ney MD FRCP(C)
Public and
professionals alike are asking many questions about violence but
seldom see any connection with the most critical violence, that
is, the wilful, paid dismemberment and destruction of a small,
innocent human. Surely we have learned because we are all so tightly
bound in the bundle of life that what we do to others we do to
ourselves. Eventually the destruction of other humans kills our
humanity. There is a cascading effect. When the weakest and most
vulnerable are first destroyed there is a progression that leads
to the increasingly powerful so that in the end no one escapes.
As a child
psychiatrist who has consulted in prisons for young offenders,
it is not hard to see how violent and cruel young people can be.
Yet, when you listen to their stories it is not hard to understand
why it happens. There is a connection between how they have been
treated and how they treat themselves and others. In addition
to the clinical observations, we now have collected data that
shows the link between various facets of abortion and how people
become violent.
Violence occurs
in a tragic triangle involving a Perpetrator, Victim and Observer.
The Observers frequently have the most critical part, and yet
when confronted they are most likely to say they didn't know and
could have done nothing to stop the tragedy.
This triangle
rotates with time and circumstance so that very frequently those
who are Observers or Victims become Perpetrators and Perpetrators
become Victims. In matters of life and death there are no innocent
bystanders, even though the bystanders try so hard to convince
themselves that they are innocent by scapegoating either the Perpetrator
or the Victim.
For all the
ills in Society the most useful scapegoat is the person who is
innocent, viceless and unable to defend himself. The unborn child
is the perfect scapegoat. But scapegoats never resolve their problems.
It eventually rebounds onto all those who are doing the scapegoating.
The others that suffer the most are the siblings of the terminated
children. These are people we call those who are suffering with
the Post Abortion Survivor Syndrome.
Children
Children get
angry for the following reasons and in the following ways;
1. anger at
their parents because their existence is dangled on the end of
the weak thread of wantedness.
2. they have
no sense of intrinsic worth and therefore others are not worthy.
3. they feel
there is no right for them to exist, so no one else has that right
either, especially if one is not wanted. It is not hard to create
the impression that people are less than human, and therefore
not wanted. Terms used in the Press, e.g. "rightists,"
first progressively dehumanises children and consequently makes
it easy to terminate them.
4. they re-enact
their own early surviving by a thread by endangering themselves
repeatedly.
5. with all
their questions about their own existence, they use self injury
to reassure themselves they are still alive. "Pain and blood
show that I am alive."
6. because
the existential anxiety is so great, they cannot tolerate waiting
for the worst so they tend to make it happen before it happens
to them.
7. they are
told by parents who have had an abortion to be careful, so they
want to break out and become carefree.
Children also
feel anger because;
1. of being
deprived of the security they needed in order to develop. Therefore
they seek to establish their own security by possessing knives
and guns and karate.
2. they take
on their parents' guilt to relieve their parents' distress.
3. they do
abortions literally or figuratively on themselves because it is
too threatening to believe their parent did it.
4. they tend
to dehumanise their siblings and defend their parents.
5. they want
to bond to their siblings, because in unstable families siblings
become important, but they are afraid that sibling might still
be terminated by murderous parents. Therefore, their bonding tends
toward forming gangs.
6. there is
unresolved grief for their dead sibling. This produces depression,
which they attempt to treat with drugs and dangerous distraction.
7. there is
a rage at their impotent father who should have protected them.
8. they deny
the mothering and fathering capacities within themselves and,
if they become pregnant, promote abortions.
Mothers
Mothers become
violent for the following reasons;
1. they re-enact
being abandoned and then feel sorrow and rage.
2. they scapegoat
the unborn child for the rage they feel toward those who have
abandoned them.
3. the break
the instinctual restraint to their own aggression and feel fear.
4. they don't
trust themselves so they re-enact their aggression in an effort
to determine just how aggressive they are.
5. they have
been denied and deny their own mothering, therefore they espouse
masculine traits and there is a change in their hormonal pattern.
6. they cannot
deal with their guilt and so they use danger as a distraction,
including getting involved with questionable, aggressive men.
Fathers
Fathers react
with rage because;
1. there is
a deep sense of helplessness. Their impotence makes them want
to assert the fact that they are men and they do this in rage.
2. they feel
a deep anger at their partner, who denied them fatherhood.
3. the rage
at the mothers who have aborted their siblings and this is displaced
onto their female partners.
4. the dehumanisation
was so easy for the abortion that it becomes easier in attacking
others, e.g. rape results from a combination of helplessness,
rage and a desire to impregnate.
Grandparents
Grandparents
become enraged because they are suspicious and aggressively defensive.
Knowing what they have done to their children, they suspect the
same will be done to them when they become helpless. In order
not to be totally helpless they take their life in their own hands
by terminating their own lives, sometimes with assistance (euthanasia).
Observers
The observer's
indifference in the situation of abortion, when unresolved, makes
it easier for them to be indifferent in other situations.
