The Name
Every June 29th for the last three years, Stacey Smith has called in sick to work. “I just can’t get out of bed,” Stacey said, her voicing audibly cracking. “Everyday is hard, but June 29th, it is impossible.”

When Stacey (not her real name) was 21 years old, she drank too much at a work party, had unprotected sex, and got pregnant. On June 29th, 2002 she had an abortion. She was and is a devout Catholic. “I thought about killing myself almost everyday for about a year afterwards,” said Stacey. “I still do sometimes. I mean, I am a murderer after all.”

“I knew one woman who didn’t vacuum her house for a year because the noise reminded her of the sound of the suction machine.”

Stacey’s story is one of millions. There were close to 1.2 million abortions in 2003, the latest year for which there is recorded data. About one quarter of all pregnancies end in abortion, and the percentage of women who have abortions that are Catholic, about 27, is roughly equilavent to the percentage of Catholics in the United States. These women face agonizing decisions and painful memories. More importantly, those who talk about these women’s decisions often ignore the massive social and economic realities that make their choices feel inevitable, along with the visceral pain they feel for a lifetime.

When Stacey found out she was pregnant, she was going into her senior year of college. She was single, held a part time waitress job and lived in an apartment with a friend from high school. Stacey has been estranged from her father for 14 years, and her mother is a Director of Religious Education at an upper middle class Catholic parish. She told Stacey the baby was “[her] problem now” and that she “should take care of it.” In that same conversation, her mother disowned her. “She just stared at me for what seemed like forever and the she started screaming at me and calling me a slut,” said Stacey. “She told me to get the rest of my stuff out of the house and said she was ashamed of me.”

Feeling that she had no other options and no way to support the child, Stacey considered having an abortion. “[A priest] told me that if I did, I could never walk into a church again and that I was sinning to even think about it,” said Stacey. “When you’ve been condemned and you’re alone, it’s much easier to sell your soul.”

Three years later, she still has trouble sleeping. She has told only five people and often gets queasy when she walks in for mass. Looking back, Stacey is unsure if things could have been different. “I had no one to help me raise that little [baby],” said Stacey. “And I had no one there with me in that nightmare.”

The Numbers
The abortion rate had steadily decreased from its highest point (nearly 1.6 million) in 1985 until 1994, when the numbers began slowly rising again. Some research has pointed to the availability of and use of contraception as playing a factor in the drop in the abortion rate. “As much as 43% of the decline in abortion between 1994 and 2000 can be attributed to the use of emergency contraception,” said a 2001 report from the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), an organization focused on sexual and reproductive health research. The report stated that 47% of unintended pregnancies are from the 8% of sexually active women who do not use any form of contraception. Of course, the Catholic Church does not permit the use of artificial contraception, and the Bush administration has historically been less concerned with providing contraceptives than Democratic politicans.

The Bush Years – breaking the pro-life promise?
In October of 2004, Glen Stassen, the Lewis B. Smead professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, published a study that called into question Bush’s legitimacy as a pro-life politician. A trained statistician as well as a theologian, Stassen examined data that seemed to show an increase in the abortion rate between 2001 and 2003. He paid particular attention to how various intellectuals and community leaders, including the United States bishops, had cautioned that providing less assistance to low-income women might increase the abortion rate.

“Roman Catholic bishops warned at the time that this undermining of financial support for mothers would probably halt the decline in abortion rates or even cause them to increase,” said Stassen, a Southern Baptist, about the study. “I believe they were right in their warning.”

On May 18th, 2005 the AGI released a study that appears to contradict Stassen’s. The Institute estimated that 1,303,000 abortions took place in the United States in “Black women are three times more likely than white women to receive an abortion.” 2001—0.8% fewer than the 1,313,000 in 2000. In 2002, the number of abortions declined again, to 1,293,000, or another 0.8%.

Stassen, however, believes there is no contradiction—.8% is not only below the 1% margin of error, but also significantly lower than the rapid decrease of about 300,000 per year that the abortion rate underwent in the late 90’s. The rapidly falling rate, he said, has “stalled almost to a stop. “ He also pointed out that, according the AGI report, the abortion rate actually increased among poor women and women on medicaid, supporting his conclusion that the financial condition of mothers is one important factor in their having abortions.

Data from the Center for Disease Control also shows a 20% drop in abortions among white women from 1994 to 2000, while, at the same time, the abortion rate among black and Hispanic women increased. Black women are three times more likely than white women to receive an abortion. According to the CDC, because black and Hispanic women are much more likely than non-Hispanic white women to have low incomes, their abortion rates may be influenced by their greater economic disadvantage.

Experience of women
Despite the mystery of what is or is not causing fluctuations in the abortion rate, there is little confusion about the trauma abortions often bring to the lives of women who receive them. Women like Stacey often deal with incredible pain, regret, or, if nothing, else second-guessing, for years after an abortion. Valerie Jacobs, the Project Rachel Program Coordinator for Western Washington State, has heard many stories like Stacey’s. Project Rachel is a healing ministry in the U.S. Catholic Church for those who have been involved in abortion. Every state but Vermont has some form of Project Rachel in a diocese.

“I knew one woman who didn’t vacuum her house for a year because the noise reminded her of the sound of the suction machine,” said Jacobs. Some elements of Project Rachel differ from place to place, but all have one-on-one counseling for women. Jacobs says the counseling is a place for women to grieve and mourn for their loss.

Jacobs emphasized that women need to be able to tell their story and hear that they are not crazy or rejected. Often much of what she does when working on a Project Rachel hotline is listen. “We try to let them know they are loved and valued by God and there is still very much a place for them in the Church.”