She Brings Joy

Gaslighting:


As a post-abortive woman, I’ve become accustomed to the methods used by powerful abortion advocates to silence dissent from their former clients, yet I’m consistently astonished at the lack of awareness from the average pro-choice individual regarding this duplicity. Utilizing methods which are more typical of abusive partners than caring physicians, organizations like Planned Parenthood and the NAF regularly trivialize the suffering of a large percentage of their post-abortive patients.

In addition, they encourage their supporters to ridicule women who have chosen to publicly share their despair over lost parenthood. What would easily be recognized as a sort of “institutionalized gaslighting“ if it were to be perpetrated by any other group, is seen as justifiable resistance by those who choose to disparage the regretfully post-abortive. Implying these women are delusional, religious fanatics, and supporters of a patriarchy which wants to control women’s bodies, abortion proponents claim justification to engage in overt incivility and outright violence.

After all, well-behaved women seldom make history.

While I’m not a proponent of victimhood culture, calling out abusers in a fair and concise way is an acceptable recourse for those of us who want no more than to set the record straight. Coming from a major political organization with universally favorable media coverage the abuse is more difficult to pick up on.

Like any abuser, their opening salvo is to isolate the potential victim — most people’s initial introduction to Planned Parenthood is through middle-school sex education. These controversial programs position advocate facilitators as the ultimate authority, and anyone who disagrees as ignorant and old-fashioned. Because the most efficient way to isolate potential victims is by discrediting critics, in conjunction with so-called  “comprehensive” sex education, attacks on anti-abortion initiatives, such as Pregnancy Resource Centers, is common. Abortion advocates want to be our only source of information a bout sexual health to the extent of openly advocating against parental knowledge or control of children’s sexuality.

Again, like abusers do, they lie, blatantly, about things which are easily disproven. Case in point— Planned Parenthood continued to publicly proclaim they performed mammograms, long after it had been proven they never offered them. Even now many of their most ardent supporters ignorantly persist in asserting you can get a mammogram at their facilities.

When caught in their lies, they revert to isolating the victim: instead of focusing on disputing the lie, they focus on (what they see as) the character flaws of the accuser. Critics are labeled as oppressors, part of a malignant patriarchy whose only goal is to control women. Everyone except for abortion proponents are the enemy, meaning your reliance on them for information becomes vital to your well-being. They’re the only ones keeping women safe. We saw an example of this after the scandalous undercover videos filmed by the Center for Medical Progress, in which abortionists were caught bargaining for payment in return for fetal body parts. Despite numerous affirmations that videos were not deceptively edited, Planned Parenthood and its supporters continue to refer to them as the “heavily edited videos”.


It does not matter how much evidence there is of their lies, they still assert a distorted version of the truth. For those who have relied on their ministrations, and still are, the evidence of their dishonesty often creates confusion which manifests in cognitive dissonance— you’ll note the inability to entertain dissent, from post-abortive women who have become activists. Their unwillingness to acknowledge basic scientific facts regarding fetal development, the eugenic nature of abortion, and the misogyny implicit in expecting women to kill their children to work on par with men, are also telling as to their motives.

One thing to remember in this, most gaslighting is an intentional act, with concrete goals: to make the potential victim(s) doubt their own recollection of events— it’s meant to distort your sense of reality. and to discredit you to those peripherally involved in the story. National abortion organizations spend a significant amount of money on lobbying, marketing, and peer-to-peer efforts. My accusation isn’t that they may inadvertently be gaslighting women who are unhappy with their efforts, but intentionally implying we are unstable, and our stories are anomalies so that they can continue to manipulate women for profit.

The accusations of instability are incredible, coming from an organization which promotes female empowerment as a brand; why would anyone who purports to support women — to “believe women” — be so dismissive of the claims thousands of us have made, regarding their grief and regret? Well, for the corporations making money off of the continued addiction to abortion, the answer is simple: money.



But when it comes to the average person,  the answer lies in the language of low-level abortion supporters themselves: internalized misogyny, class privilege, and ableism. Now, to be clear — I am not proposing we fall prey to the victimhood culture which seems to proliferate amid progressive orgs. I’m simply suggesting using their verbiage to describe the foundation of their smear campaign:

Pro-abortion supporters have internalized the idea of weak women, women who need abortion to succeed. Women can’t possibly finish school/have a career, and parent children at the same time.


Pro-abortion supporters promote the idea that hardship is somehow not part of building the American Dream, and is to be avoided at the expense of our offspring. Only when you are wealthy are you permitted to have a family sans censure.

Pro-abortion supporters have long been in favor of elimination of the weak through eugenic abortion. In their view, children with profound disabilities are better off dead, through abortion expansion during all 9 months of pregnancy.

Internalized misogyny.
Class privilege.
Ableism.

Like most abusers, their actions are rooted in the twisted reflection they have of what they see as their own deficiencies. They don’t believe in their own power, their own worth, their own abilities

They know they can’t win this argument on the basis of facts because the facts support the anti-abortion position. We know women are powerful, impoverished children have a right to be alive, and the disabled are not “better off dead”.

Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and the plethora of other abortion-rights advocacy groups have never been interested in helping women overcome difficulties. Their only interest is self--interest. Posh lifestyles and luxury cars.

We need to be louder and more persuasive. We need to keep our children away from abusers, in the classroom and within the structure of social clubs. We need to expose the abortion lobby’s hypocrisy to youth already entangled in an abusive relationship with an abortion provider. Just like we would try to help our children to avert an unsavory situation in dating and friendship we must encourage them to think critically about the organizations they choose to use for their care.

It’s time to identify the abusive behavior for what it is: dangerous manipulation, whose purpose is disenfranchising the vulnerable, for the sake of the almighty dollar.

Last week Oprah Winfrey fed into leftist rage by promoting the Shout Your Abortion movement in the "Inspiration" section of her magazine. For a few days all of Pro-lifedom was atwitter with moral outrage.... but the outrage fizzled out and was gone shortly after the story broke. 

People like Oprah just don't want to hear my shout.

I must admit, I’ve been all stopped up when it comes to writing.

I have been for almost a year now. The more I tried, the more overwhelmed I become.

Last year when the Charlie Gard story unfolded I began to feel a little lost.

You see — in the beginning, my writing had very little to do with abortion. It began as a grief journal for my little daughter. So when I saw Charlie’s parents fight so hard, and then lose, I was deeply affected. I felt like I’d lost my Bea again.

I stopped writing posts for other loss and/or pro-life advocates. I stopped working “behind the scenes” for any efforts at all. I stopped trying to push the message out there, even though it’s a message I believe so strongly in.

Charlie Gard’s story made me take stock of my position.

I understand he was not carried to term — his parents were unaware of his condition until after birth. They may even be pro-choice. But the situation they found themselves in was analogous to the situation many parents given prenatal diagnosis face, after their baby is delivered: doctors refusing to treat their child with a poor medical prognosis based on personal ideas about “quality of life”.

My own experience with carrying Beatrix led me into this part of the prolife realm. I was shocked and disappointed when my physicians showed little interest in giving her the best chance at living. However, my daughter's chances for survival were almost non-existent, so I (kind of) accepted this and moved on.

Then I read stories of children who were less-affected than my Beatrix being denied treatment, and I realized I was witness to a very subtle form of discrimination being cloaked under the umbrella of “compassionate” care, most often by people who had no understanding of what being the parent of such a fragile child, entailed.

Most disturbing were the stories of babies being denied care in one geographic location which was standard in another, based on their potential intellectual abilities.

In many cases, when a family learns their child will be born with a serious birth defect, but decides to continue their pregnancy doctors often encourage them to use palliative care only after birth — questioning whether curative surgical procedures are really necessary for a child who will never attend school, get married, or have his/her own children.

I learned that when families insist on treatment for their affected child, medical professionals may become passive with “slow codes” and DNRs placed in charts without parent’s knowledge. This enraged me, and my writing became a shout for babies with serious congenital anomalies. This is my passion.

Everyone has a right to their own life, lived on their own terms — no matter how long or short the life is, or what their intellectual capabilities are.

But I didn’t know how to write about this any more.

Because the only appropriate words to use are words like “euthanasia” and “eugenics”, and when people who are involved in this “branch” of the pro-life movement use these words, we’re ridiculed as crazy conspiracy theorists.... the words themselves have become linguistic kryptonite, effectively invalidating any rational argument we make.

This leaves me at a loss because these words have relevance. What do you call a philosophical system which places those with intellectual disabilities on a lower rung of the treatment ladder? What do you call a legal system which allows discrimination against those it seems less worthy?

Here in the US we watched as the NHS ended Charlie’s life, and the same people who fought for Charlie and screamed about the injustice of it all continued praising our American system for being more compassionate -- but it’s not.

Our laws allow physicians to override parents wishes for their children as long as they can keep it a secret.

In addition, a friend of mine who tracks state-level assisted suicide legislation, shares information showing that in nearly every potential assisted suicide law there is
a clause which would allow for the euthanasia of persons with disabilities.

I don’t know what to do with this reality; what words to use to avoid accusations of idealism.

What arguments can we use to avoid being called alarmists?

As the old saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.

It’s disappointing.

Because in the last few weeks another similar situation had come to fruition in the UK (actually more than one situation like Charlie Gard’s is being fought in European courts right now. This refusal of service is common in the UK. Some families didn’t even make it this far before their children were removed from life-support, against their wishes).

The parents of baby Alfie Evans are being pulled through the legal system because doctors refuse to release him to another hospital, and his family refuses to give up. The proceedings have been stretched out long enough to endanger the child involved, so physicians can then claim he is too deteriorated to respond to any care. The judge has ruled against the parents, and everyone involved gets to go home while these poor parents are left alone with their son who they’ve got no right to even touch, in some instances.

If he does pass away, those in charge will mumble and shake their heads and talk about how unrealistic the child’s family is. Another family will go home with empty arms wondering why they weren’t allowed to treat their child.


This child has no official diagnosis, is responsive to stimulation, and has physicians in a different hospital willing to try an experimental treatment on him (see here what the term “experimental” means for a baby like Charlie or Alfie). This child is alive, and has already been denied medical care which could improve his situation.

It’s appalling.

I’ve asked before — who decides? While a physician may believe they are acting in a child’s best interests, who are they to decide no other physician may care for the child (especially against parents will)? These parents are asking for a medical transfer for their son. They’ve fulfilled every one of the hospital’s requests.... yet, just like with Charlie, Alfie remains in limbo.

How many children does it take before we wake up?

Or is it acceptable as long as it’s only disabled children?

Do we brush it under the rug and pretend it doesn’t happen, unless it happens to us?

Do we continue to turn away, convinced those who cry out against this are fanatics, or out-of-touch with reality?

As I said in the beginning, this last {almost} year left me heartbroken and completely disillusioned.

But — then I saw THIS!!

And this beautiful boy, who’s parents were told he would not thrive, is verbalizing and trying to walk.

Even seven years ago, when I was pregnant with Beatrix, I couldn’t find any children like him on the Internet. Whatever anyone says about Facebook and analytics and sharing secrets, social networking has built a vast “underground” of parents committed to seeing their children live the best life they’re capable of.

I am a part of that.

My daughter was one of their children, and whether people view it as nutty or not, her life was so much more valuable than to end up being the after-story of a sad pregnancy.

There is so much to do and say in terms of coming legislation, and fights going on all over the world- and I don’t really want to sit it out.

There’s something I’ve heard Jewish people say, when someone dies:

“May their memory be a blessing”.

I’ve never looked deeply into the deep implications of this statement, or what context it has in Jewish culture— but I will say that on its surface it speaks to exactly what I want for my Beatrix. Her memory should be a blessing, a deep and fruitful blessing, for anyone who comes into contact with her story.

So for Beatrix, Charlie, Simon, Cassie and all the other inspirational babies who have given up their valiant fights: I’m rededicating myself to working hard to making sure no parent ever feels the way I did when I said goodbye.

If you or anyone you know has an interest in learning more about current laws which put our most vulnerable as risk, please let me know.

If you have questions about how these laws {or how a lack of laws} in your area, affect your family, please let me know.

Lastly: Over the years I’ve tried to fit into many shoes- I thought it was my job to “create” something, like other writers do- a how-to book, some crafty remembrance item, etc. I’ve learned that the organization and planning involved with these things isn’t my forte.

But what I can do: collect your stories. I have access to more than one pro-life group who would be willing to share your and your baby’s stories.

If you know anyone going through a pregnancy who has been given no hope, if you know someone who lost a baby due to passive euthanasia, or if you know someone currently battling with doctors to assure proper care for their child- please let me know. I can help you find the aid you need.

When I started this, I noted that most loss blogs went on for about 5 years, and I was determined mine would last for longer so people could see the “after-after”.

Heading on Year 8!

I didn’t think I would survive this long without her. Now losing the battle for survival after loss would be an obscenity against her sweet little name.

I know some people who've recently begun following my blog and liking my Facebook page are not loss parents, but people who've found me through pro-life advocacy groups.

(Originally posted 9/8/15. Updated 5/12/19)



So-- I got to thinking about what I was feeling from this post. My protest being love, I mean. It took over my entire week.

I started something I believe will be interesting. In hopes of connecting a like-minded collective of people who will decide to make love be their protest.... beginning next month, I’ll be sending out a newsletter with two to three opportunities to help families in need.

I'd like to begin making commitments to vulnerable families, either via financial donations to established pro-life charities which deal with helping those who choose to continue their pregnancies in less than optimal circumstances, or in tangible goods for the families who I know. I’d also like to begin supporting less visible ProLife organizations which may be helping a segment of the population we may not even be aware of.

If you're moved to do the same, please do so... and then email me images of your Love Protest at sarah@shebringsjoy.com.