Post-Abortion Grief Masking Deeper Traumas: Counsellor

Anne Lastman treated one woman who had 11 abortions.

A woman displaced by war wipes tears during a counseling session as two psychologists listen in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, on May 03, 2022. John Moore/Getty Images

Experienced grief counsellor Anne Lastman warns that abortion is not as simple as it sounds and is a decision that follows women for life.

Ms. Lastman, a post-abortion and sexual abuse counsellor, herself had two abortions but said she ended up suppressing her grief.

But being denied access to her granddaughter made her reflect on those decisions she made years ago.

“I don’t believe any woman ever wants an abortion. She doesn’t,” Ms. Lastman told The Epoch Times.

“Her boyfriend, husband, and parents won’t support her, so she feels she’s got no way out, as I did.”

She criticised the messaging spread by abortion proponents that almost trivialises the range of emotions women feel after the procedure, including relief, guilt, or regret.

Planned Parenthood, one of the leading abortion providers and lobbyists in the United States, says on its website that, “Lots of people have all these feelings at different times. These feelings aren’t unique to having an abortion.”

“Most people are relieved and don’t regret their decision,” the organisation said on its website.

“It’s rare to have serious, long-term effects on your mental health after an abortion.”

But Ms. Lastman said this was a cruel message to spread to young women.

“She will believe them, and later she starts dreaming about her baby,” she said. “At first, it’s not killing a baby, it’s killing ‘it.’”

These girls or young women who believe that they have a problem that they need to get rid of, will buy into the message that abortion may be a simple, easy solution.

“They go ahead with the abortion and then it becomes a lifelong problem,” Ms. Lastman said.

“You never forget it, just as you would never forget a miscarriage. You put it away, but you never forget it. Because it’s a baby—it’s your son or daughter.”

Anne Lastman, a qualified post-abortion grief counsellor and sexual abuse counsellor, and founder of Victims of Abortion. Courtesy of Anne Lastman

She noted that while many young women feel “a big sigh of relief” after getting an abortion, the decision stays with them for life.

“Time passes and you go from 15 to 25, to 35 and 75, and when you slow down a bit you start thinking,” Ms. Lastman said.

In her experience, one of the first triggers for women to start thinking about their abortion is when they have a “wanted” baby.

“The baby comes, and he’s gorgeous or she’s gorgeous. And suddenly she has a memory of another baby who would have also been gorgeous,” she said.

There is More to Abortion Than ‘Choice,’ There’s Also Abuse

In Australia, about one-quarter to one-third of women will get an abortion in their lifetime, according to the Public Health Association of Australia. It is also not uncommon for one woman to get multiple abortions.

Behind the choice to get an abortion is often a history of childhood abuse and neglect, according to grief counsellor Lyn Varty.

“I have never treated anyone that’s had an abortion or been impacted by abortion who has not had childhood neglect and abuse,” she previously told The Epoch Times.

Meanwhile, Ms. Lastman, who is also a sexual abuse counsellor, said behind the trauma that women experience from abortion is usually a deeper trauma stemming from other causes.

She said one woman she worked with experienced 11 abortions and two miscarriages.

“I asked her a question, ‘Why do you miss so much and regret the miscarriages, but not the 11 abortions?’ And she said because with the miscarriages, she had no control,” Ms. Lastman said.

“There was a control issue, at some point in her life she had no control over her body,” she explained, adding that this indicated she had been abused in her early childhood.

Ms. Lastman added that due to her trauma, the patient also did not see the aborted babies as human, but associated them more with the “bits of men” who had abused her.

Recounting their first few sessions, she said, “My belief is she wasn’t prepared to look at the real cause of the abortions, even the miscarriages, and that was going back to the abuse and dealing with that first.”

‘Not Empowering’

Commenting on the state of society, Ms. Lastman said abortion had hurt and damaged women.

“Women don’t care about their own bodies. We think we do because we buy designer clothing but it’s not,” she said.

Italian shoppers browse for Christmas gifts at Via Condotti in Rome, Italy, on Dec. 18, 2003. Franco Origlia/Getty Images

She emphasised that there was a difference between needing and wanting to get an abortion.

“A woman’s body is designed to carry a baby, so it’s not empowering to be able to have an abortion.”

Ms. Lastman further noted that the sexual revolution has similarly been damaging to women.

“If it’s one of those one-night stands and she says ‘yes’ to that, she’s not empowered. That’s not empowerment, that’s giving in to an instinct that can lead to something else, which leads to something else, which leads to an abortion,” she said.

The sexual revolution, which was influenced and encouraged by neo-Marxism, came to the fore in the United States in the 1960s and led to the weakening of traditional family values.

Louise Perry, a British journalist and author, said this experiment has not worked.

“What we have found, having rejected the sexual norms of the past, is that they were there for a reason,” she told the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference on Nov. 1.

She added that traditional sexual ethics fostered a “good culture” that encouraged people to “make decisions that are good for us long-term and also good for our descendants.”