Christine Northrup is a former abortionist who wrote about her experiences in her book Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom. Although she stopped committing abortions long ago, Northrup remains pro-choice. She says:
Abortion as a means of contraception will be necessary in this country for a long while to come, and I will support its availability. (page 388)
But she found committing abortions to be emotionally difficult, and was troubled by seeing women come back for repeat abortions:
I always felt as though I were sitting in the middle of a minefield when I performed abortions. Sometimes I got angry when I performed a fourth abortion on a woman who simply didn’t use contraception… I stopped doing abortions. I was tired of mucking around in women’s ambivalence about their fertility, and I was tired of performing repeated abortions on women who came back every year for the procedure. (pages 384, 388)
Some women were ambivalent about ending their pregnancies, while other women came back for abortions again and again with little thought.
Pro-abortion activists often argue that abortion is merely the removal of a blob of cells or, as abortionists say, “tissue” or “products of conception.” Yet this abortionist was angry at women who came in for multiple abortions. If abortion is a benign operation, like removing a tumor or pulling out a wisdom tooth, why would a doctor get angry when women have more than one?
Despite committing many abortions, Northrup knew that there was more to abortion than removing “tissue.” She would have seen the torn-apart bodies of preborn children. She knew that abortion was far more momentous than pro-abortion activists often claim.
Although a supporter of legal abortion, Northrup can’t help but think that repeat abortions are not good for women:
Despite the safety of abortion, I believe that repeated abortions weaken the hara or body energy of the female. (page 387)
Northrup describes taking part in a ritual meant to give healing to those who have experienced or committed abortions:
[I] participated in a healing abortion ritual performed by Janine Parvati Baker, author of Conscious Conception. Baker had learned the ritual from a Native American medicine woman. All the women at the meeting who had had abortions and those who had been deeply affected by them sat in an inner circle… In an outer circle surrounding this one sat all of us had ever seen or done an abortion. We were considered the “eyes” that had witnessed abortion. The outermost circle also included people whose friends and loved ones have had abortions. They were the “ears” that had witnessed abortion. Throughout an entire afternoon and into the evening both men and women spoke of – and let go of – years of previously unvoiced personal pain surrounding abortion. Baker, representing a conduit between the worlds, helped release the energy of the aborted spirits. (page 390)
Northrup’s new age beliefs are about “haras” and spirit energy, but it is clear that she has experienced pain from the abortions she committed. She also acknowledges the pain abortion has caused others – both men and women.
One wonders why Northrup maintains her pro-abortion stance. Perhaps she is not ready to face the full implications of a her career as an abortionist. The guilt that she would feel upon acknowledging her part in the deaths of many preborn children might require more than a healing ritual to assuage.
Yet she is more sensitive to the negative effects of abortion on herself and others than many abortion doctors.
Sadly, no healing ritual can make abortion moral. An abortion always results in a dead child. Whether the “spirit” of the baby can be released, the baby has been denied his or her life on earth. Abortion takes away the only life we know a child can have.
Source: Christiane Northrup, MD Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom (New York: Bantam books, 2002)
