Coerced abortions in the Church of Scientology.

Sometimes boyfriends push for an abortion. Sometimes parents do--sometimes coaches, sometimes bosses. And here we have a federally tax-exempt 501(c)3 religious organization pushing for abortions:

"Children were forbidden at International, so these young women were forced to have abortions in order to remain there. I know several former Commodore’s Messengers who are no longer in Scientology specifically because they were unwilling to have any more abortions. Some of them now have lovely children; others less fortunate are unable to have children because of the damage they suffered from repeated abortions."

"Approximately 1½ years before I left, a new rule came out stating that if you got pregnant, you had to either get an abortion, which was heavily pushed, or leave. The rule had previously been that if you got pregnant, you had to get an abortion or be sent to a small and failing lower organization where you had to fend for yourself and your baby. I personally knew of three other girls who got pregnant and were convinced to get abortions. One was my sister-in-law who was 16 weeks pregnant when she was convinced to abort her child although she was strongly against it."

Melanie’s very strong advice and pressure was to abort the baby.

"She had gone on to say that at this point in my life it is better to do the greatest good for all.

She went on to tell me that the spirit doesn’t enter the baby’s body until the baby is born. She made the point that all I would be “killing” is a piece of meat essentially. We discussed this for a couple of days and she showed me definitions in the L. Ron Hubbard Technical Dictionary to persuade me to have an ABORTION.

I detached myself completely from the responsibility that I was about to kill a living human being so I could be on staff and do scientology."