Abortion and Child Abuse

I thought I'd do this post to expand upon a reply I made on Lindsay Mitchell's blog. Lindsay had done a post on a statement put out by Paula Bennett called "Why You Should Care", in which Paula reports on the number of child abuse cases in this country, and condemns them -

In the last year Child, Youth and Family received over 125,000 reports from people concerned enough about a child’s safety to notify authorities. In over 21,000 of these cases, child abuse or neglect was confirmed. So that’s over 340 notifications and 57 confirmed serious abuse and neglect cases every day. That’s 2,400 reports of child abuse and neglect every week in New Zealand.

There is no excuse for beating, abusing and neglecting our children. No child’s life should begin this way. And when it does, the harm is substantial and long lasting.

I left this comment on Lindsay's blog in reply -

If society has the idea in the back of it's collective mind that it's OK to kill a baby in the womb, and that it's OK to take action to prevent babies being born for convenience, then how does that affect the attitude we have toward the kids we already have?

Once upon a time, children were seen as precious - as a gift - something to be desired. When a couple fell pregnant, the whole village rejoiced in their good fortune. These days, people use contraception because they're not ready to accept children yet.

Children are a thing to be avoided until we're "ready" - a thing to be pushed back and pushed back until our careers have taken off and until it's almost to late to conceive. And if we do fall pregnant by accident, when we're not ready, then the baby is seen as a curse - an inconvenience - easier to kill in the womb now, and we can try again later when it suits us.

When you have a climate where abortion and (maybe soon) euthanasia are acceptable, the value we place on all life is lowered. If it's acceptable to kill 18,000 of these babies a year in the womb then of course it is going to devalue life across the board; we shouldn't really be too surprised.

I do believe that there is a connection there, although in a reply, Lindsay said that I was trying to tie together two separate issues. That led me to do an internet search to see if anyone else had tried to make that connection, or if there were any studies that supported the link between abortion and child abuse. Firstly I came across an article written in 1979 by Dr. Philip Ney in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry called “Relationship Between Abortion and Child Abuse,” in which he lists 8 "possible psychological mechanisms whereby an increase in the rate of abortion could lead to an increase in child abuse." These are -

1)      Having an abortion may decrease an individual’s instinctual restraint against the occasional rage felt those dependent on her care.

2)      Allowing infants to die by permissive abortion might diminish the social taboo against aggressing the defenseless.

3)      By lessening children’s confidence in their parents’ care, abortion may increase the hostility between the generations which may become violent.

4)      By discarding nondefective unborn children wholesale, abortion may devalue children, thus diminishing the importance of caring for children.

5)      When abortion increases guilt and self-hatred, the parent may displace it onto a child.

6)      A woman’s choice for abortion increases the hostile frustration of some men, intensifying the battle of the sexes, for which children are scapegoated.

7)      Abortion of the first pregnancy may truncate the initial developing mother-infant bond, thereby diminishing future mothering capability.

8)      A previous abortion may result in the depression which interferes with the mother’s capacity to bond to her new-born.

After this I found a study from 2005 that the Washington Post also reported on in an article

Women who have abortions are significantly more likely to physically abuse their children than women who do not have abortions, said a study by a research group and professors at Bowling Green State University.

Compared with mothers with no history of induced abortion, those who had undergone the procedure were found to have a 144 percent greater risk of physically abusing their children, said the study, published by the medical journal Acta Paediatrica. Women with pregnancy loss in general -- including abortion, stillbirth and miscarriage -- were found to be 99 percent more likely to commit child abuse.

I know that there are those who will say that studies can be (and are) produced to show anything, but I think results like this should give caution, especially in light of horror stories like those mentioned in this article of women killing infants that are contributable to how they were affected by abortion (effect of number 5 in the list above). The secular world now has a mantra that "every child should be wanted", and that therefore if we abort the ones we don't want, the ones that come into the world are wanted and therefore will suffer less abuse. If this was true then child abuse cases should have come down in the decades since abortion was legalized, but have they? It doesn't seem like it is the case here in NZ, going by the increasing abuse statistics that Paula Bennett quotes.

I don't think it is untrue to say that abortion is the ultimate child abuse, and that that mindset opens the door to other abuses. What do you think?