‘This pain did not need to happen’: Women who regret abortion mourn death of Jennifer Morbelli

 

Kirsten Andersen

   
 

GERMANTOWN, Md., February 13, 2013 (LifeSiteNews) – The tragic death of Jennifer McKenna Morbelli after a late-term abortion is a wake-up call that there are always “better choices” than abortion, even in cases of fetal abnormality, according to two women who themselves had abortions, and have since regretted their choice.

Georgette Forney and Janet Morana are co-founders of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, which gives post-abortive women a platform for sharing their experiences and regrets and educating people about the dark realities of abortion.  

Jennifer Morbelli, a New York resident, reportedly died after a third-trimester abortion at the Germantown, Md., clinic of abortionist LeRoy Carhart on February 7.

Instead of attending a baby shower, Jennifer’s friends and family will attend her funeral today,” the women wrote. “The pain this family is experiencing did not need to happen. The women and men of Silent No More are broken-hearted and we are praying for this family.”

According to the pro-life group Operation Rescue, and pro-life blogger Jill Stanek, Morbelli sought the abortion of her wanted daughter, Madison, after being told by doctors at 33 weeks of pregnancy that the child showed signs of “abnormalities.”  The Silent No More founders said that pressure to abort is common in such situations. 

But Nancy Kreuzer, a Silent No More Regional Coordinator in Illinois, who found herself in a similar circumstance, says that the decision to abort simply isn’t worth it.

She was advised by her physician to terminate the pregnancy when her daughter was discovered, late in the second trimester, to be suffering from hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. She took the doctor’s advice.

After the two-day procedure, Kreuzer said, “I left the abortion clinic with no baby to bury, no doll-sized casket, no funeral service, no grave to adorn with flowers.

“No one brought meals, no one sent cards, no one called, because I had been too ashamed to tell anyone what I had agreed to. In the months and years afterward, there were clear signs that the scars of my abortion existed.  There was an internal sadness, not visible to the world.”

Forney said she would not have had an abortion as a teenager if the procedure had not been legal.

“Jennifer Morbelli’s tragic death should be all the convincing we need in this country to make late-term abortion illegal,” said Forney.

“But until then, we want to protect women from abortionists who are willing to do anything for a price, and count the occasional dead mother as the cost of doing business.  We want the media and the medical profession and pro-choice organizations to talk about Jennifer with the same ferocity they demonstrated when a woman in Ireland died, according to her husband, because she didn’t have an abortion. A woman died here in the United States from a legal procedure that is unregulated, uninspected, unrestricted. This is the war on women.”

Morana concurred.  “No matter what hardship this young couple was facing, there were better choices to be made,” she said.

“There are perinatal hospice programs for babies who will die shortly after birth. There are support groups for every kind of disability the baby might have been facing.  And there’s adoption. People who are committed to life do adopt multiply disabled children; I know of many such families. There are better choices than abortion in these circumstances.”

Wrote the pair, “We know that abortion harms women, and we see all too often that abortion also kills women. We have solid evidence that abortion clinics are getting more reckless, offering sub-standard care and sending more women by ambulance to the hospital. Abortionists seem to get away with operating above the law, and women and their children are the victims.”