Are You Pregnant?
Helping you make an informed choice
An unplanned pregnancy can come as a shock and is often accompanied with feelings of confusion, loneliness, and a sense of being overwhelmed. This is a time where you will make a decision that will impact the rest of your life, whether you choose to keep your child, place your child with adoptive parents or have an abortion.
It is important that you talk to someone about how you are feeling during this time - someone you trust, whether it is a school chaplain, counsellor, parent, friend, etc. If you have been sexually assaulted, there are specialist services that can help you deal the with trauma you have been through. However, this decision is ultimately yours to make.
Let's look at the three options:
Keeping your baby
This option will require a lot of hard work, commitment, patience and love, but the effort will be well rewarded with a beautiful baby to love and cherish. With this option you will need to consider where you will live and how you will cope financially. You may have support from your family or you may need to look at other support alternatives.
There are support agencies and networks in your local community that will be able to help you, and you can find information about these services at your local council. It would be a good idea to discuss this option with a counsellor, school chaplain or support group for unplanned pregnancies, so they can help you find the relevant information, get well prepared, and give you a safe place to unload.
Adoption
Adoption is worth consideration if you feel unable to cope with keeping your baby. Adoptions have changed a lot over the years and you now have the choice of whether you would like an open adoption where you can maintain an agreed amount of contact with the child and adoptive parents, or a closed adoption where there is no contact.
It is important that you receive counselling right through the whole process of adoption, from pregnancy until after the child has been handed over to its adoptive parents, as for some this is a difficult journey to walk through. An adoption agency would offer this counselling to you. Your school chaplain or counsellor will be able to help you locate the closest agency to you.
There are many couples that can't have children who would love the chance to adopt your baby and in most cases you can have some input in the selection of family for your child.
Abortion
While you may be told that having an abortion is the 'best' or 'easiest' way out of your situation, there can be short-term and long-term effects that will impact your life afterwards that you will need to consider. Having an abortion is a serious matter to be thought through in much depth. The events leading up to and including the abortion itself are frequently of such a traumatic nature that Post-Abortion Syndrome is often the result.
What is Post-Abortion Syndrome?
Post-Abortion Syndrome (PAS) is a form of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS), which is the result of having suffered an event so stressful and so traumatic that the person is taken beyond his/her ability to cope in a normal manner. Victims of PTSS are unable to simply resume their lives where they left off before the traumatic event. Instead they experience a variety of reactions that do not go away merely with the passage of time.
The symptoms of PAS are varied, and may surface immediately following the abortion or in many cases people re-experience the trauma years later.
Some of the symptoms of Post Abortion Syndrome are:
- Depression
- Sudden and uncontrollable crying
- Deterioration of self-esteem
- Disruption in interpersonal relationships
- Sleep, appetite, and sexual disturbances
- Reduced motivation
- Thoughts of suicide
- “Anniversary Syndrome" (An increase of symptoms around the time of the anniversary of the abortion and/or the due date of the aborted child.)
- Re-experiencing the abortion
- Preoccupation with becoming pregnant again
- Anxiety over fertility and childbearing issues
- Disruption of the bonding process with present or future children
- Survival guilt: ...the decision boiled down to a sorrowful conclusion: "It's me or you, and I choose me."
- Development of eating disorders
- Alcohol and drug abuse
- Other self-punishing or self-degrading behaviors: abusive relationships, promiscuity, failing to take care of yourself medically or deliberately hurting yourself emotionally and/or physically
- Brief reactive psychosis: an episode of drastically distorted reality within two weeks of the abortion
If three or more of the symptoms listed above describe what a person has recently experienced in relation to an abortion, it is likely they are experiencing Post-Abortion Syndrome.
Medical Complications
Unfortunately, many women who have had an abortion also experience medical complications, ranging from general lower health through to more serious illnesses.
Medical complications can occur straight after the abortion, days or weeks after the abortion, or in many cases, years later. Abortion increases rates of breast cancer, placenta previa, preterm births, and maternal suicide…. statistically, all types of deaths are higher with women who have had induced abortions.
- Breast, cervical, ovarian & endometrial and liver cancer
The increased cancer rates for post-abortive women areapparently linked to the unnatural disruption of the hormonalchanges which accompany pregnancy and untreatedcervical damage.
Including infection, excessive bleeding, embolism, ripping or perforation of the uterus, anesthesia complications, convulsions, hemorrhage, cervical injury, and endotoxic shock. The most common "minor" complications include: infection, bleeding, fever, second degree burns, chronic abdominal pain, vomiting, gastro-intestinal disturbances, and Rh sensitization.
The leading causes of abortion related deaths are haemorrhage, infection, embolism, anesthesia, and undiagnosed ectopic pregnancies.
- Other medical complications
Uterine perforation, Cervical lacerations, Placenta previa, Handicapped newborns in later pregnancies, Ectopic pregnancies (a pregnancy outside the womb resulting in the death of the baby or the mother), Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), Endometritis, organ system failure, and lower general health.
The risks are significantly increased for teenagers and women seeking multiple abortions.
The Providence Foundation has endeavoured to help you make an informed decision, briefly explaining the choices available to you and some of the outcomes associated with those choices. This decision is one of the most important decisions you will have to make in your lifetime, so try to think it through, try not to rush into anything, talk to someone you trust and make sure this is a choice that you will feel proud of when you look back in years to come.
Because everyone is significant
This information has been made available for general personal use only, and is provided without any express or implied warranty as to its accuracy or currency. All access to, and use of, the information is at the user’s risk. The Providence Foundation accepts no responsibility for the results of any actions taken on the basis of information provided, nor for the accuracy or completeness of any material contained herein. The Providence Foundation expressly disclaims all and any liability and responsibility to any person in respect of the consequences of anything done or omitted to be done by such person in reliance, whether wholly or partially, upon this information. Before relying on any information, users should seek confirmation from the originating or authorising faculty, area or other body.
Are You Pregnant? Second Edition June 2010
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Copyright © 2010 Providence Foundation Ltd
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