Pro Life in TN

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Pro Life thoughts in a pro choice world through the eyes of a convert. I took early retirement after working in the social work and Human Resources fields but remain active by being involved in pro life education, lobbying and speaking .

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Monday, September 20, 2010

Study:Women, Abortion, and the Brain



This is an interesting article that is not written as a specific pro life  or pro choice piece but makes such interesting points about the psyche of a woman and how that relates to the issue of abortion. The video at the bottom was not part of this article but seems to point out some of the  feelings that are expressed in this article by a woman recounting her abortion experience and conflicting emotions before, during and after.

Women are hard-wired for relationships—and a woman’s relationship to her baby is one of the most powerful of all, whether she realizes it or not. The hard-wiring of the brain may explain many women’s disturbing post-abortion feelings.

The part of the brain that processes emotion, generally called the limbic system, of women functions differently than that of men. Women experience emotions largely in relation to other people: what moves women most is relationships. Females are more personal and interpersonal than men. (Differences show up as early as a day after an infant’s birth: newborn baby girls look at faces relatively more than boys, who focus more on moving robotic figures.) There is wide consensus among scientists and researchers on this fundamental issue.
Thus, though a woman can decide rationally to have an abortion, afterward the other shoe may drop—and it may drop very hard indeed. For the thousands of women on afterabortion.com and similar websites, a terrible and shocking reaction sets in after their abortion. Many women have discovered that somewhere down in their psyche—deep in their limbic system—they were already in a living relationship with the fetus, their “baby” (though they may have thought they thought it was just a random clump of cells). Often what lasts is not the relief or the power of the logical arguments: these may prove very short-lived. It is, rather, the failed, betrayed relationship between the woman and her fetus—now, in her mind, her dead baby—that has staying power.

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