Choice, Death, and the Aftermath

Fearfully and desperately wanting to hide my mistakes and deny the unwanted, but not totally unexpected ramifications of my earlier choices, I chose what seemed to be the easiest answer. I chose death, and then I moved into the aftermath of my choice. I, for a lifetime and beyond, will live in the aftermath of my choice. Although there is recovery, through forgiveness, there are lasting ramifications. No one told me that the ramifications of my choice would last forever. No one told me what my choice would do to my heart. No one told me that my choice was, in fact, a death sentence for my baby.

Are you, or someone you know, facing an unwanted pregnancy? Are you wondering if "choice" is the answer, the easiest solution?

After the "choice" comes the aftermath. A living choice not only gives life to a baby, but results in an aftermath of life. Abortion results in an aftermath forever shrouded in death, death of a baby, perhaps death of your own baby. For those struggling with the aftermath of abortion, you and your loved ones can find forgiveness.

This book is for:

Teenage moms wrestling with choice and an unplanned pregnancy

Loved ones who are seeking resolution after abortion

Anyone who needs hope and healing after abortion

This book is a great tool for teen pregnancy educators, pregnancy center advisors, and those seeking to learn more about the emotional struggles, post abortion. It is written out of love and understanding by a woman who thought her choice was the best answer. Whether or not you are a Christian, you will be inspired by the author's incredible faith, without which it would have been impossible to write this book.

Through my story, I pray that you will know that a living choice is the only real choice.

Join me in my story of running from my mistakes, hiding my choice, and slogging through the aftermath. Come with me as I discover a new truth about an old choice. Join me as I struggle with guilt and heartfelt shame, knowing the new truth. Observe the aftermath.

What choice would you have made? What choice would you recommend?

About the author

Sheila and her husband Wayne have been blessed with two beautiful daughters. She is currently on the Board of Directors of Elizabeth Ministry International and Wisconsin Right to Life. In 2010, Sheila received a certificate in equipping from The Masters Institute.

Sheila began her career following college working as an engineer for IBM. After three years, she resigned to attend law school at Marquette University Law School, graduating in 1985. In 2003, after nearly twenty years of being employed full-time as an attorney, Sheila retired and accepted God's call to begin writing Christian books and speaking for a variety of Christian organizations and schools. Sheila's current books include three Bible studies:

The Challenge of Change: Careers, Callings and Work-Life Crossroads

My Secret Loss: Finding Life after Abortion

Grapple with Guilt, Shed the Shame

Traditionally, the history of the birth control movement has been told through the accounts of the leaders, organizations, and legislation that shaped the campaign. Recently, historians have begun examining the cultural work of printed media, including newspapers, magazines, and even novels in fostering support for the cause." Broadcasting Birth Control "builds on this new scholarship to explore the films and radio and television broadcasts developed by twentieth-century birth control advocates to promote family planning at home in the United States, and in the expanding international arena of population control.
Mass media, Manon Parry contends, was critical to the birth control movement's attempts to build support and later to publicize the idea of fertility control and the availability of contraceptive services in the United States and around the world. Though these public efforts in advertising and education were undertaken initially by leading advocates, including Margaret Sanger, increasingly a growing class of public communications experts took on the role, mimicking the efforts of commercial advertisers to promote health and contraception in short plays, cartoons, films, and soap operas. In this way, they made a private subject--fertility control--appropriate for public discussion.
Parry examines these trends to shed light on the contested nature of the motivations of birth control advocates. Acknowledging that supporters of contraception were not always motivated by the best interests of individual women, Parry concludes that family planning advocates were nonetheless convinced of women's desire for contraception and highly aware of the ethical issues involved in the use of the media to inform and persuade.

Oh Baby, The Places You Could Have Gone was originally delivered as a sermon on the topic of abortion to a local congregation in January, 2012. The book contains numerous biblical references and current statistics as well as commentary on the issue, especially as it relates to 21st century America.

After the granting of the vote to women in 1918, the struggle for women's rights intensified with a nationwide campaign for the right to birth control. This campaign was met with a great deal of hostility; it threatened to overturn Victorian ideas about female sexuality, female empowerment and the traditional roles within the family. The most well known of the campaigners, scientist and early feminist Marie Stopes, opened clinics across England which fitted 'contraception caps' to women for free. The first history of this grassroots social movement, "Birth Control and the Rights of Women" offers a window into the social and cultural history of the period, and features new archival material in the forms of memoirs, personal papers and press cuttings. This is an essential contribution to the influential field of women's history and a vital addition to the history of feminism.

Have you ever wondered how it was possible that a large number of people could have ever come to accept the idea that it was all right for one set of men to enslave another set of men? Have you ever wondered how a society came to accept the mass extermination of the Jews? Fewer than a hundred years ago, doctors were doing experiments on people while they were still alive. Compulsory sterilization laws were on the books-in the United States-into the early 1980s. These are not events of the distant past. They occurred in our lifetimes, or the lifetimes of our parents, or grandparents. How did people come to not merely tolerate such things, but openly promote them, and even carry them out?

From the "Introduction" European Emperors, Kings, Kaisers and Tsars, and their Churches, forbade contraception, women's equality and divorce. Baptismal Certificates and class barriers dictated who could legally marry, attend school or the university, advance socially, and who could not. World War I finally swept them from power, but their dictates frequently remained as law, in a turbulent era of struggle for freedom and democracy, versus resurgent fascism and slavery. Hodann's History contains a clear discussion of these historical developments within the sexual reform and women's rights movements of Weimar Germany and Europe generally, in the early decades of the 1900s. The parallel advance of scientific knowledge on human sexuality is also detailed. Unlike many contemporary works on these subjects, History of Modern Morals is authored by a physician who lived the struggle, was a leader in it, got arrested by the Nazis for it, and intimately worked with other professionals who also had personally suffered for their work in the same social-sexual reform movement. His writings are therefore filled with a strong passion and vitality, and with many personal observations, anecdotes, and clarifying information not found elsewhere. Hodann's History is also unique in that he frequently and positively discusses the work of his contemporary and associate, Wilhelm Reich. This is especially important given their life-positive emphasis upon love and emotion in sexuality, and their distinction between natural-healthy heterosexual genitality versus neurotic and unhealthy sexual expressions. In the modern era of "politically correct" moral equivalence, this essential consideration has been diminished or erased from public discussion.

Everyday in America, pro-life students are ending abortion. The young people of this generation have survived abortion and have dedicated their lives to ending the greatest human rights tragedy our world has ever known. Yet, their stories, which are real and messy, won't make the news headlines. However, they must be told. It will be their stories that inspire and encourage others to join with us to abolish abortion in our lifetime.

..".a richly textured analysis of medical and lay abortion discourses and practices, artistic representations of the procedure, and of women's, particularly lower-class women's, own perceptions and experiences of abortion. Skilfully using an impressive variety of sources, Usborne provides a meticulous, insightful, and lively study that questions some of the continuing assumptions about the Weimar Republic.and provides an exciting example of how to approach the history of the body." . Medical History "Based on a careful reading of court files, this investigation reveals a rich and often ambiguous repertoire of perceptions and descriptions...Cultures of Abortion is not only the seminal study on one of the most contested and high-profile issues in Weimar politics, it is also a superb demonstration of how 'gender' can be used to complicate well established historical narratives." . German History "With inspiration from Alltagsgeschichte(history of the everyday) and body history, Usborne presents a fascinating collection of stories about how abortion was practiced in both rural and urban, medicalized and folk-healing contexts... It] performs several valuable services. It brings us far closer to the actual experiences of Weimar women who underwent abortions than we have ever been before, it usefully questions our tendency to respect complex medical procedures over simpler but often just as effective techniques, and it provides considerable evidence that the practice and social acceptance of abortion were far more widespread in this period than previously appreciated." . Bulletin of the History of Medicine "This revealing study teases out the various ways that official discourses often clashed with women s everyday experiences and attitudes towards abortion...Overall, this monograph is an important addition for any scholar interested in abortion, the body, medical discourses, gender and modern Germany." . H-Soz-u-Kult "Usborne provides a vivid picture not only of...individuals, but of the communities that they lived in and the social networks that facilitated their relationships and contacts. Many of her conclusions are fascinating... a] compelling book." . German Studies Review "The book includes introductory and concluding chapters that effectively place the story in the historiography of modern Germany and of modern abortion and, more broadly, the female body. Usborne's monograph contains much of worth and interest for scholars and students of modern Germany, gender relations, sexuality, medicine, and, certainly, abortion." . American Historical Review Abortion in the Weimar Republic is a compelling subject since it provoked public debates and campaigns of an intensity rarely matched elsewhere. It proved so explosive because populationist, ecclesiastical and political concerns were heightened by cultural anxieties of a modernity in crisis. Based on an exceptionally rich source material (e.g., criminal court cases, doctors' case books, personal diaries, feature films, plays and literary works), this study explores different attitudes and experiences of those women who sought to terminate an unwanted pregnancy and those who helped or hindered them. It analyzes the dichotomy between medical theory and practice, and questions common assumptions, i.e. that abortion was "a necessary evil," which needed strict regulation and medical control; or that all back-street abortions were dangerous and bad. Above all, the book reveals women's own voices, frequently contradictory and ambiguous: having internalized medical ideas they often also adhered to older notions of reproduction which opposed scientific approaches."

The second edition of The Wisdom of Abortion has a new publisher and is now available for the Kindle.

Despite its safety and efficacy, emergency contraception (EC) continues to spark political controversy worldwide. In this edited volume, authors explore how emergency contraception has been received, interpreted, and politicized, through the in-depth examination of the journey of EC in 16 individual countries.

Containing both medical and legal perspectives, Criminal Abortion is an important document from the early decades of the anti-abortion crusade. Dr. Storer led the medical campaign against abortion during the second half of the nineteenth century. His efforts were supported by Heard, a notable jurist and legal scholar. The motivations for both men were primarily racist, xenophobic and sexist. They were horrified by declining birthrates among Americans of Anglo-Saxon ancestry and the influx of immigrants, many of them non-white, Catholic and Jewish. In their minds abortion in the non-immigrant community, which they attributed to modern fashion and feminism, was leading to "race suicide" and a country overtaken by "inferior races." "The legal portion of the work will probably be of the greatest practical use. This seems to be a very full and thorough collection of all the statutes and cases of value relating to the subject." --3 American Law Review 149 1868 HORATIO R. STORER 1830-1922] received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1853. He specialized in gynecology in his Boston medical practice. Well-known as an anti-abortion advocate, he published widely in medical journals and wrote several popular pamphlets against abortion, including Why Not? A Book for Every Woman (1866) and Is it I? A Book for Every Man (1867). From 1865-1867 he was professor of obstetrics and medical jurisprudence at Berkshire Medical Institution and received his LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1868. FRANKLIN FISKE HEARD 1825-1889] was a Boston lawyer and coauthor, with John William Wallace of the fourth edition of The Reporters (1882). He was the author of The Principles of Criminal Pleading (1879), Shakespeare as a Lawyer (1883) and other titles.

"Dangerous Pregnancies" tells the largely forgotten story of the German measles epidemic of the early 1960s and how it created national anxiety about dying, disabled, and "dangerous" babies. This epidemic would ultimately transform abortion politics, produce new science, and help build two of the most enduring social movements of the late twentieth century - the reproductive rights and the disability rights movements. At most a minor rash and fever for women, German measles (also known as rubella), if contracted during pregnancy, could result in miscarriages, infant deaths, and serious birth defects in the newborn. Award-winning writer Leslie J. Reagan chronicles for the first time the discoveries and dilemmas of this disease in a book full of intimate stories -including riveting courtroom testimony, secret investigations of women and doctors for abortion, and startling media portraits of children with disabilities. In exploring a disease that changed America, Dangerous Pregnancies powerfully illuminates social movements that still shape individual lives, pregnancy, medicine, law, and politics.

Based on three years of extensive fieldwork, this ethnographic study of prostitution in the metropolitan city of Dalian, China, explores the lives of rural migrant women working as karaoke bar hostesses, delving into the interplay of gender politics, nationalism, and power relationships that inhere in practices of birth control, disease control, and control of women's bodies.

Mr. Chesterton's long essay on eugenics and other evils was written in 1922, just a few years after the close of the 'Great War.' This war was not yet known as World War I, and it could not then be imagined that a greater calamity could be possible. Chesterton ends with the acidic observation that if his readers don't believe how toxic materialistic philosophies are, "neither would they believe though one rose from the dead." Prophetic; Chesterton would die in 1936, a few short years before the horrors of World War II, carried out once again by the hands of those who rejected Christianity and embraced a secular humanism grounded in atheistic evolutionary theory. This deserves our careful consideration, and no author demands it with such wit, humor, and intellect.

This book innovatively re-envisions the possibilities of sexuality education. Utilizing student critiques of programs it reconfigures key debates in sexuality education including: Should pleasure be part of the curriculum? Who makes the best educators? Do students prefer single or mixed gender classes?

Every age believes it is more civilised than earlier ones. It abhors, as barbaric, the cruelties of preceding ages while, at the same time, justifying its own cruelties using its own fashionable logic. Abortion is currently justified, in modern Western civilisation, using reasoning that may have been similar to those used,in ancient civilisations, to carry out child sacrifice.

This book explores the experiences of pregnant teenagers, their partners, and midwives, from pregnancy realisation through the early years of motherhood. It examines changing attitudes to female sexuality and moral discourses on adolescent subjectivity especially as these pertain to teenage motherhood.

Explores the social world where abortion politics and mainstream medicine collide. The author interviewed physicians of obstetrics and gynecology around the United States to find out why physicians rarely integrate abortion into their medical practice. While abortion stigma, violence, and political contention provide some explanation, her findings demonstrate that willing physicians are further encumbered by a variety of barriers within their practice environments. Structural barriers to the mainstream practice of abortion effectively institutionalize the buck-passing of abortion patients to abortion clinics. As the author notes, ""Public-health-minded HMOs and physician practices could significantly change the world of abortion care if they stopped outsourcing it."" Drawing from forty in-depth interviews, the book presents a challenge to a commonly held assumption that physicians decide whether or not to provide abortion based on personal ideology. Physician narratives demonstrate how their choices around learning, doing, and even having abortions themselves disrupt the pro-choice/pro-life moral and political binary.|Willing and Unable explores the social world where abortion politics and mainstream medicine collide. The author interviewed physicians of obstetrics and gynecology around the United States to find out why physicians rarely integrate abortion into their medical practice. While abortion stigma, violence, and political contention provide some explanation, her findings demonstrate that willing physicians are further encumbered by a variety of barriers within their practice environments. Structural barriers to the mainstream practice of abortion effectively institutionalize the buck-passing of abortion patients to abortion clinics. As the author notes, ""Public-health-minded HMOs and physician practices could significantly change the world of abortion care if they stopped outsourcing it."" Drawing from forty in-depth interviews, the book presents a challenge to a commonly held assumption that physicians decide whether or not to provide abortion based on personal ideology. Physician narratives demonstrate how their choices around learning, doing, and even having abortions themselves disrupt the pro-choice/pro-life moral and political binary.

This book aims to be neither the first word on the tangled problems of human society to-day, nor the last. My aim has been to emphasize, by the use of concrete and challenging examples and neglected facts, the need of a new approach to individual and social problems. Its central challenge is that civilization, in any true sense of the word, is based upon the control and guidance of the great natural instinct of Sex.

This book aims to be neither the first word on the tangled problems of human society to-day, nor the last. My aim has been to emphasize, by the use of concrete and challenging examples and neglected facts, the need of a new approach to individual and social problems. Its central challenge is that civilization, in any true sense of the word, is based upon the control and guidance of the great natural instinct of Sex.

The Pivot of Civilization was published in 1922. It contains Margaret Sanger's belief that civilization rises or falls on how it views the 'people problem.' It wasn't simply the fact that there were too many people. The kind of people roaming the planet were also a problem. What kind of people? Sanger says it explicitly: feeble-minded, defective, moronic, epileptic people. What should be done with them? They should be put into camps. They should be sterilized. They should be segregated. Does this sound familiar?It is but one small step to add: "They should be exterminated."10 years later, Sanger introduced her 'Plan for Peace' (included in this book) which made similar calls. So it was that some of the most devilish ideas carried out by the Nazis not more than a decade later were just as popular in America. Indeed, it appears the Nazis may have gotten their ideas from American eugenicists Sanger's book will give you a new perspective on the intellectual climate in the early 1900s and a new understanding of contemporary events and issues.

With an anti-abortion majority on the Supreme Court, and several states with only one abortion clinic, many reproductive rights activists are on the defensive, hoping to hold on to abortion in a few places and cases. This spirited book shows how we can start winning again. Jenny Brown uncovers a century of legal abortion in the U.S.-until 1873-the century of illegal abortion that followed, and how the women's liberation movement of the 1960s really won abortion rights. Drawing inspiration and lessons from that radical movement, the successful fight to make the morning-after pill available over the counter, and the recent mass movement to repeal Ireland's abortion ban, Without Apology is an indispensable guide for organizers today. Brown argues that we need to stop emphasizing rare, tragic cases and deferring to experts and pollsters, and get back to the basic ideas that won us abortion in the first place: Women telling the full truth of their own experience, arguing to change minds, and making abortion and birth control a keystone demand in the movement for women's freedom.

Abortion is the bellwether in America's Culture Wars. Whether you take the pro-life side or the "pro-choice" position, you must read "Stopping Abortions at Death's Door." It is a well written, well thought out plan and a user's manual for setting up a Save-the-Baby defense on the perimeter of every abortionist's site in America. Currently abortion "clinics" are destroying approximately 3,500 unborn babies every day in America and there is no national pro-life defense program to offset that evil. The pro-life movement needs a national effort to directly defend pre-born babies. Current pro-life outfits provide indirect efforts like educational or political support to fight against abortion.

According to author Roderick P. Murphy, what is needed is a lawful plan to save some of those innocent boys and girls killed every day. "Stopping Abortions at Death's Door" would bring pregnancy centers and frontline street counselors right next door to every American abortion facility in a non-violent manner. This already happens in some places in the U.S.A. but needs to be expanded to every abortion site, coast to coast. The author provides details as to how pro-lifers can positively and non-violently slow the wholesale slaughter of American babies. In Murphy's scenario, the sidewalk counselor would attempt to persuade the abortion-intent woman on her way to abort to instead come to a pregnancy resource center next door. Once there, the client would receive free; an abortion consultation, a pregnancy test, an ultrasound scan, counseling and free practical and often expensive help. These services according to the book, could cause the pregnant client to realize that she has real alternatives to abortion and that she would change her mind toward life for her little girl or boy.

The author is critical of many current pro-life pregnancy resource centers and their associations for being too timid, too churchy and too often ineffective in the war to save babies. This 260 page book details how to setup a non-profit corporation, how to recruit volunteers, how to raise money, how to counsel young mothers, how to find the right office very near an abortionist and how to operate an aggressive volunteer organization that will save babies lives, help mothers and battle with the 800 abortion "clinics" in America. Murphy has spent over 30 years in all phases of the pro-life movement, the last 28 years running a pregnancy center in Worcester, Massachusetts.

"Stopping Abortions at Death's Door" will provide pro-lifers a potential plan that could effectively save babies. The book will give pro-abortion people heartburn and an early warning of the fight that is coming their way. To facilitate these many new pro-life centers the author lists every abortion site by city and state with names and addresses. The book will cause consternation on one side and exaltation on the other.