Termination trauma recalled
I READ your last column, Nadine dorries, and with hand on heart, wept to learn of the time you witnessed the abortion as a nurse, seeing that baby boy twitching and gasping for breath.
You say it scarred you for life. It has scarred me for life, too. Thank you for sharing the memory. I wish I hadn’t read it but I was hooked after six paragraphs. My ‘Catholic’ view on abortion remains intact. I am 63, my wife is 57 and we couldn’t have children because of my wife’s serious childhood illness. These unwanted babies could have had a caring and much-loved life with people like us. My tears have now dried but that tight, choking feeling remains. the rev Joe ellis,
sellindge, Kent. I WAS horrified to read of the proposal to legalise abortion by pill right up until birth. Apart from the rights of what is effectively a baby at that stage, the psychological and physical damage to the mother could be immense. often, very young women seek pill abortions as a ‘private’ method, but people can be traumatised even by medically managed births and some still die in childbirth. unsupervised abortion at home could be extremely dangerous. And how to dispose of the ‘corpse’? My 18-year-old daughter became pregnant and obtained abortion pills by post. The foetus didn’t abort completely and, with only a helpline to call and anxious to keep it a secret from us, she suffered in great pain and silence until she lost so much blood she was in danger of collapse, or worse. She was rushed to hospital for an operation to remove the remaining pregnancy tissue. Even putting aside the rights of the child, there is still a real chance this situation could cause women lasting damage.