Customer Reviews

Giving Sorrow Words: Women's Stories of Grief After Abortion

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I would like to commend Melinda Tankard Reist for her courage in her care to detail in recounting the experience of women
and abortion.

Her book gives an insight into the real damage, of both the physical and psychological pain women have encountered through
their experience of abortion.

Reist also exposes the coercion, the inadequacy of current pre-abortion counselling practices, the lack of informed consent, and more deeply troubling pro-choice ideology that does nothing to promote the true rights of women and their unborn children.

I believe that Reist successfully challenges the attitude that talking about abortion and the grief is politically incorrect. Afterall there remains an element of pro-choice ideology that would have us still believe that women should be grateful for their so called right to choose. Thankfully Reist's critique restores the balance in promoting the dignity of women and the real tragedy of abortion.

Like the woman of days gone by, who were encouraged to forget about their stillborn children, "Have another baby", "you've already got children", this is a hidden grief that can't be reolved unless it is acknowledged.

Some women who miscarry are given such unhelpful information, and other gems such as "you're grieving for the baby that would have been" (so then, what was the mother pregnant with, if not a baby), and "it's normal to feel a bit sad for a while" (doesn't really cover the shuddering waves of grief some women experience). Generally, though, miscarriage management has come a long way in the last few decades. hopefully when this generation of women is elderly, we won't be nursing distraught old ladies who are still struggling with a miscarriage or stillbirth that they were told not to talk about. But we may well be nursing women at the end of their lives still struggling to come to terms with the abortion they weren't allowed to talk about.

No matter where our politics lie, it is clear that abortion is a womans issue. Any unresolved grief is too much, and we need to be open about this issue.

It's too easy to dismiss this book as "pro-life", rather than challenge our idea that abortion is easy.

A brave, woman- centred approach.

This book leaves a lasting impression, but is hard going emotionally and can only be read one chapter at a time, one woman's story at a time. The genre of a personal account of suffering is refreshingly sincere and to the point. These are clearly ordinary women-next-door and the emotional devastation they suffer after abortion is likely to be the same story for a hundred thouseand similar women whose stories will never be told. So the idea of giving them a voice is a worthy one, and hopefully has helped them work through their grief.

Many readers will identify with some of these stories. The creation of a place of death in a woman's body where there should be a place of life must be the most profoundly disturbing physical and psychological event. The act - however excusable in terms of pressures and panic and ignorance - of ending the life of one's own offspring is not one that can be forgotten, but only forgiven - and that search for transcendent forgiveness is the one ray of hope in this otherwise inconsolably sad book.

There may never be a document like this one. It is a book of insight and first-hand truth about an emotionally "subterranean" catastrophy in our midst.

This book took my breath away. I cannot believe there are so many women living with tragedies of such epic proportions and yet until now not permitted to voice their sorrow. Society tells us that women's rights are a priority, but this book shows the other side - that many women have been persuaded or co-erced into denying their right to have a healthy happy baby simply because it was seen as inconvenient to their partner or parents. It is time we listened to these heart-broken mothers, who are expected to go on with life as if nothing had happened.
This book really opened my eyes to the cruelty of abortion.

The author is clearly pro life and I feel she has expoited these women. What are her qualifications? I suggest you locate a book written by someone who KNOWS about abortion.