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Operation Outcry shatters 'aborton helps women' myth

During the presidential election campaign last March, a pretty, blonde woman named Rebecca Porter went with a friend to a rally for Sen. John Kerry in Tampa.

Rebecca carried a sign that read simply, “My abortion hurt me.”

The two women went inside the event and stood at the back of the crowd.

“We held our signs silently,” she told pro-lifers at the March for Life Conference in Washington, D.C., January 23.

After Kerry’s speech, Porter made her way to an area where the senator was shaking hands, and found herself just 15 feet away from him.

“He reached up to shake a hand in the back and his eyes went up to my sign.  He read it and then he looked directly in my eyes,” she recalled.

Within seconds, a Kerry campaign staffer approached Porter and grabbed her sign.

“You can’t have that sign here,” he said, and tore it to pieces.

But Rebecca had achieved her goal:  the “pro-choice” presidential candidate had read the sign and gazed in her eyes.

“I hope he saw my pain,” she explained.

Rebecca is the Florida director of Operation Outcry:  Silent No More, an organization of women who are working to end abortion by telling America how their abortions have hurt them.

Operation Outcry is assisting the Justice Foundation by submitting Friend of the Court briefs in support of the petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.of Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade.

McCorvey is asking the court to revisit her case and reverse its 1973 decision.

Their briefs describe the physical, emotional and mental damage caused by their abortions.

Janet Morana, co-founder of the Silent No More awareness campaign, told the conference that after the annual March for Life, the National Organization for Women holds a vigil in front of the Supreme Court, thanking them for their decision legalizing abortion.

“NOW claims to speak for all women, but that’s not true,” said Morana.  “We are the voice for babies and women.”

In January 2003, when actress Jennifer O’Neill agreed to be their spokesperson, Silent No More countered NOW’s vigil with a vigil of their own at the Supreme Court, in which members held signs saying, “I regret my abortion.”

They repeated that vigil in front of the court after this year’s March for Life.

By showing the humanity of the unborn child, the pro-life movement has done a good job of knocking down one of the twin “pillars” of the pro-abortionists:  that the unborn is not really a human being, said Morana.

“But people still say it’s okay to abort it, because somehow, abortion helps women.  We are conducting an awareness campaign to knock down that second pillar.”

Rebecca was one of eleven women from Operation Outcry who recounted their personal experience with abortion at the conference.

As they read from prepared statements, their voices cracked with emotion, and several could barely hold back tears.

Rebecca said that she was 21 when she had her first abortion.  Twelve years later, after having two children, she found herself pregnant again.  

She did not want the burden of raising another child, she said.

“I was not a Christian, and I was just waiting for my children to grow up.  

“But I told my boyfriend I could not have another abortion; I would place it for adoption.  My boyfriend disagreed, so once again, I went back to the abortion facility.”

Feeling trapped and desperate, Rebecca cried during the whole procedure.  The nurse and doctor, however appeared indifferent.

“All they cared about was the money,” she said.

When it was over, the nurse, standing at the foot of the operating table, looked down, then smiled and said to the doctor, “Oh, look!  Twins!”

“I became hysterical and tried to get off the table,” said Porter, “but they held me down.  I wanted to die right on the table.”

After the abortion, she tried twice to commit suicide.

“But the Lord did bring healing to me,” she said.

“I speak out because I don’t want women to go through the pain and desolation I went through.  That’s why I signed the [Friend of the Court] affidavit.”

The other women’s stories varied in their details but were similar in their degree of pain and anguish.

Barbara was 17 and had ambitious plans for college and graduate school when, finding herself pregnant and urged by her boyfriend and father, she had an abortion against her own judgment.

“I changed forever,” she said.

She spent the next five months in a haze of alcohol and drugs.  Seven months after the abortion, she too attempted suicide.

“It took me 16 years to go back to school,” she said.

Michelle had an abortion at 18, just before she went off to college.  She struggled with panic attacks and anxiety for almost 20 years before she found peace.

“Abortion not only destroys the child, it destroys part of the mother’s soul,” she said.

When Jackie underwent an abortion at age 25, “The staff at the clinic was as cold as ice,” she recalled.

“There was no counseling, I got no medications.  I could see the jar filling up with the remains of my baby.”

Jackie suffered panic attacks, then one night, cut her wrists and swallowed a handful of pain pills.  She was unconscious for three days.

“The next three years were filled with drugs and sex,” she said.

Although she later married “a wonderful man,” she suffered clinical depression when she learned she could never conceive a child due to scar tissue from the abortion.

After “a miraculous healing,” she and her husband were eventually able to adopt a son and daughter.

“The aftermath of abortion is horrendous,” said Joyce Zounis, director of women’s outreach for Operation Outcry.

Zounis, who had seven abortions, the first when she was 15, said, “I was told it would be over real quick; it lasted 27 years.”

She urged pro-lifers to watch Outcry’s program, “Faces of Abortion,” on Sky Angel One on the Sky Angel Satellite System.

Outcry also sponsors “Voices of Abortion,” live, call-in talk radio at www.crusaderadio.com, and has a website, www.operationoutcry.org.

Kendall, the last woman to tell her story, promised the conference, “We’re going to be silent no more!  We’re going to shout from the rooftops about the pain and the exploitation and victimization that abortion does to women.

“I believe with all my heart that this is how Roe v. Wade will be overturned.”