From the September 2003 Psychology Today (not online):

"According to Jane Adams, a social psychologist and author of When Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us, previous generations emphasized education and financial independence over all else for their children. In contrast, 'Boomers are the first generation for whom their children's emotional fulfillment is a primary goal. Their parental mantra has been: Be happy or I'll kill you.' In an effort to gratify their kids, Boomers have become unusually invested in their lives--determined to have an authentic, intimate relationship with their children."

Be happy or I'll kill you??

Nearly half the Boomer generation has aborted one or more children (again, the relevant statistic is that 43% of American women have aborted one or more children by the time they reach age 45). This huge rate of abortion of course affects how the Boomer generation as a whole sees children.

And how do they see them? Unfortunately, half of the Boomer generation saddled itself with "wanted children", the children you wanted and chose versus the children that got aborted.

What those surviving Boomer children got, in turn, were parents who were bound and determined that their "wanted children" be charming, healthy, well-adjusted, perfect little offspring. Oh, and happy, too.

"Be happy or I'll kill you" is the sad flip side of "If I don't kill you, you damn well better be happy."

House committee in Florida hears testimony on abortion notification.

From the Tallahassee Times:

"State lawmakers were warned Thursday that a proposed constitutional amendment requiring pregnant minors to notify their parents before getting an abortion would lead to more deaths from depression and suicide, as well as more babies thrown in trash bins."

Right. That makes sense. Teenagers in a crisis pregnancy are so emotionally vulnerable that the pregnancy will throw them into a suicidal depression or lead them to throw the baby in a trash bin. But, on the other hand, they are simultaneously emotionally mature enough to make the life-altering decision in favor of abortion without parental involvement.

Alameda County woman may have died from abortion pill.

From the Bay Area Mercury News:

"Menlo Park - An investigation has been launched into the death of an Alameda County teenager who died several days after reportedly taking the abortion pill R-U 486.

The 18-year-old girl's father told the San Francisco Chronicle she got a prescription for the drug from a Planned Parenthood office in Hayward on September 10th. She was seven weeks pregnant at the time.

Planned Parenthood told the newspaper it is working with the family to find the cause of her death.

Monty Patterson said his daughter Holly visited Planned Parenthood last Wednesday. She began taking the drugs Saturday. He says his daughter was bleeding and in acute pain from Sunday to Wednesday.

She was treated at a Pleasanton hospital and released Sunday. She went back in Wednesday and died yesterday afternoon.
The coroner's office says it has not established a cause of death.

R-U 486 has been available in France since 1988. It was approved by the Food and Drug Administration three years ago to end pregnancies of 49 days or less."

Woman recounts abortion at Brigham's New Jersey clinic.

I've heard so many stories about behavior from abortion clinics that I didn't think another one could make me upset and angry. This one does, not because it features any lurid revelations or unusually bad behavior, but because of what Hannah Arendt calls the banality of evil.

A Step Beyond, another new post-abortion ministry.

Russia turns spotlight on abortion from BBC News Online.

"Russia could be on the point of a significant change in direction on
morality and sexual issues, as a major debate looms over the rights of
women and unborn children. "

Does early psychological intervention promote recovery from posttraumatic stress?

This article (from the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest) says: No.

By "early psychological intervention", they mean those teams of trauma de-briefers who show up when a traumatic episode has occurred, and convene de-briefings and group sessions for the survivors and witnesses.

I've always wondered about this from the point of view of PTSD caused by abortion, imagining teams of debriefers in the recovery room...

Link courtesy of Heart, Mind and Strength.

Often when people write about their abortion, they already have a perspective on it, or they are writing for a certain audience (the pro-life community, others who regret an abortion, the pro-choice community, others who are determined not to regret an abortion, etc.).

This short essay about an abortion was written by a young woman for a bulletin board where people talk about why they got a particular tattoo. It seems unusually innocent of any particular perspective.

Why the Sigur Ros Angel?

It is a moving article.

"I was lying in recovery listening to the girl beside me ball her eyes out, and I realized I could not cry if I wanted to. All of a sudden I had to run to bathroom and throw up. I barely made it; I didn't have time to close the door. The nurse just looked at me and said "it feels better doesn't it?" Feels better?"

Here is a picture of the Sigur-Ros angel fetus that became her tattoo.

Thank you to a reader for sending me these links.

Cause $315 ain't worth your soul.


Boomshock at Priorities and Frivolities has an excellent long post on some hip-hop songs about abortion.

Highly recommended.

When Love Can't Cure.

This article is from the September-October issue of Psychology Today.

"When Love Can't Cure" is a story about a psychiatrist who fell in love early in his career with a woman who suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder.

This article is interesting for many reasons, not the least is that the psychiatrist who writes it never shares his reflections on what inner demons might have led him to fall in love with this very disturbed woman.

Also, in the opening paragraphs--and only the opening paragraphs are available online--we learn quickly that when the psychiatrist met her, she was in the hospital following a suicide attempt. And that suicide attempt although oh so very blandly seems to be related to an abortion:

"She had been dating a guy and found out she was pregnant. Neither of them wanted the baby, so she had an abortion. After that he stopped spending time with her. 'He told me I was suffocating him,' she said. 'Men fall in love with me and then they leave me. Obviously, I'm not good enough. So I took a big piece of chocolate cake and I swallowed a whole bottle of pills, and then I went to bed.'"

The psychiatrist never mentions this again, but one does wonder why he starts the story of her distress with the abortion. He could have left out the first two sentences of that paragraph and simply said that she was distressed because her boyfriend left her.

From my perspective, the abortion probably was part of her distress, and the psychiatrist doesn't really know how to report that in this very mainstream, very pro-choice magazine. So he just puts it out there in an enigmatic way.

"Neither of them wanted the baby, so she had an abortion."

"The baby". That is also a way that this psychiatrist reveals his thoughts about this.