CONGRESSIONAL RECORD--HOUSE
June 24, 1980

ABORTION: A CASE OF CHILD ABUSE

(Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks and include extraneous matter.)

Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, child abuse has reached epidemic proportions. It is estimated that in the United States there will be 1.5 million children battered by their parents in the next 10 years, resulting in 50,000 deaths and 300,000 permanent injuries. These are frightening statistics, and even the most callous among us must cry out at this holocaust of the innocent.

For years some have argued that aborting the unwanted unborn would asure [sic] that each child allowed the prerogative of being born would be wanted and loved, and this would reduce or eliminate the battered child syndrome. Frankly, I was always baffled how a careless disregard for the sacredness of life under one condition would enhance the regard for life under another condition.

Logic has always told me that if a healthy, unwanted, not-yet-born life could be arbitrarily destroyed out of mere personal preference, then less than perfect life, of no seeming "social value," could not be safeguarded by arguing only that it deserves our protection because it passed through that fleeting moment in human development called birth.

The fear that many of us have for the introduction and promotion of infanticide and euthanasia as a consequence of our callous attitude toward the unborn, is well founded-philosophically, morally, and historically. A large amount of evidence in the medical literature now verifies that the attitude toward abortion has contributed
significantly to the rapid rise in child abuse.

I would like to call the following article from a medical colleague in Vancouver, British Columbia, to the House [sic] attention. Dr. Philip Ney explains this from a psychiatric point of view. This essay is so important for everyone to study, since many who champion the abortion ethic express moral indignation, and rightly so, at seeing a defenseless child beaten unconscious by its parents. Can we survive asa [sic] human race if we are so careless with the value and the dignity of life? I say we cannot. Tragically, world events today support my position. This subject deserves a moment of your thoughts.

The article is as follows:

Is ELECTIVE ABORTION A CAUSE OF CHILD ABUSE?
(By Philip o. Ney, M.D.)

A presumably plausible argument in favor of elective abortion is that it would make each child really wanted. What could be better, it is often argued, than preventing the birth of unwanted children who will be neglected and battered? Unfortunately for this seemingly cogent claim, there is now reason to believe that elective abortion has the reverse effect.

Child neglect, abuse and murder is increasing. Having to treat so many battered children, I began to worry that using abortion to make every child a wanted child might be backfiring. When I examined the evidence, I became convinced that most of the abused children resulted from wanted pregnancies and that elective abortion is an important cause of child abuse.

Early elective abortion became available in Canada in 1969. From then on there has appeared to be an increase in deaths of Canadian children from social causes. The provinces with the highest rates of abortion -- British Columbia and Ontario -- also have the highest rates of child abuse. Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick have low abortion rates. They also have low rates of child abuse.

DISQUIETING FIGURES

The figures on this relationship in the United States are equally disquieting. Since elective abortion became available in 1972, there has been a continuing increase in child battering as indicated by a report of 22,683 battered New York children in 1974, and 26,536 in 1975. V. J. Fontana and D. J. Bersharov, in their book, The Maltreated Child, estimated that there will be 1.5 million battered children in the United States during the next ten years, resulting in 50,000 deaths and 300,000 permanent injuries.

The following mechanisms might help explain how abortions can lead to child abuse:

Having an abortion can interfere with a mother's ability to restrain her anger toward those depending on her care. Abortion might also weaken a social taboo against harming those who are defenseless. With wholesale abortions discarding nondefective [sic] unborn children, the value of children might diminish, resulting in less care and protection.

Higher mammals respond with parental care to signals of distress from their young. An aborting person, having already repressed her instinctive caring for her unborn young, might be less Inhibited in giving vent to her rage at a whimpering child.

Having repressed that taboo, those people are more likely to be passive and indifferent to the distress of a battered child and more reluctant to intervene. What a contrast with the past when people did not stop to think about defending a child, even at the sacrifice of their lives.

The decline in the value of children (and I am not discussing attempts to limit population growth) has had some significant side effects. Only two decades ago parents were willing to suffer major deprivation to have and raise children. It seemed like a sacred obligation or a great privilege. Nowadays, people balance having children, with wanting a country house, another car, better vacations and early retirement.

This might be observed by children in such families. As a result they might feel less confidence in their parents' true concern for their welfare. They might then become so importunate in their demands for care and attention that their parents feel threatened. Not infrequently, the parental response to those attention-demanding children will be physical violence. What might cause children to question whether or not they were really wanted is that their mother had one or more abortions.

Society is beginning to believe that a child has no right to exist and is therefore valued only when it is wanted. If It is permissible to kill an unwanted, unborn child, then one can defend killing children already born when they are no longer considered to be valuable. Judging from the leninent [sic] attitude toward those who maim or kiil [sic] children today, children nowadays probably have a legal value similar to their value during the Middle Ages -- which was not very much.

Recent evidence indicates many women harbor strong guilt feelings long after their abortions. Guilt is one important cause of child battering and infanticide. Abortion also lowers women's self-esteem and there are studies reporting a major loss of self- esteem in battering parents.

Children who are aware of an abortion in the family might bring on themselves parental violence. As abortion survivors they experience a combination of guilt and anger.

These feelings could lead to behavior that appears disrespectful or aggressive to parents -- behavior that might trigger parental rage. Such guilty and angry children might turn on their siblings. The ensuing fighting might provoke parental battering. When these children mature, their unresolved guilt could lead to battering their own children.

Marital stress plays a strong role not only in the "battered-wife" syndrome, but also in the "battered-child" syndrome. Some women resent their male partners impregnating them and then coercing them to have an abortion. Fathers, on the other hand, might feel hostility toward women because they have no rights in decisions about which infant gets aborted and when. The "battle of the sexes" aggravated by elective abortion, can all too easily be turned violently against children.

There is increasing evidence that previously aborted women become depressed during a subsequent pregnancy. Depression interferes with a mother's early bonding with her infant, and children who are not bonded to their mothers are at a higher risk of being battered.

If these hypotheses are valid, then as abortion rates increase, child battering rates will increase proportionately. In separate studies, Schoenfeld and Barker have reported that women who have abused their children had higher rates of abortion. Preliminary results of our own study show a greater frequency of child abuse by women whose first pregnancy either miscarried or was aborted.

AN EVER-EXPANDING CYCLE

The argument that unwanted children will be abused, and should therefore be aborted, has been heard in varied guises throughout history. It has been a stock justification for doing away with those undesirable and those unwanted because they hampered the privileges and wants of those in power. But if the mechanisms here described are accurate, not only will abortion on request increase child battering, but the "abort and batter" syndrome will increase in an ever-expanding cycle in future generations.

I wonder why, when we are so interested in preserving nature's delicate balance, we do not have a similar concern for the long-reaching implications of elective abortion on the human species. What war, pestilence and famine could not do to us, medicine, In [sic] the name of humanism and emancipation might yet achieve. By helping to disrupt a major species-preserving mechanism -- the mother-infant bond -- medicine not only threatens the welfare and safety of large numbers of children, It [sic] might also be endangering the future of humankind.