Georgette Forney and Janet Morana, co-founders of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, released the following statement regarding the tragic death of Jennifer McKenna Morbelli, 29, a New York resident who died after a third-trimester abortion at the Germantown, Md., clinic of abortionist LeRoy Carhart on Feb. 7:
“Instead of attending a baby shower, Jennifer’s friends and family will attend her funeral today. 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. 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.”
Some of the women of Silent No More who speak publicly of their abortion regret, and the emotional and physical consequences the procedure causes, had late-term abortions because they were told their babies were seriously ill or would die shortly after birth. Nancy Kreuzer, a Silent No More Regional Coordinator in Illinois, 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, Ms. 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.”
Mrs. Forney, the president of Anglicans for Life, 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,” she said. “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 the 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.”
Mrs. Morana, executive director of Priests for Life, 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.”
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Since the launch of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign in 2003, 5,612 women and men have shared their testimonies publicly at over 1,195 gatherings in 48 states and 10 countries. More than 12,865 people representing 77 countries are registered to be Silent No More. Raising awareness about the hurtful aftermath of abortion and the help that is available to cope with the pain are two of the Campaign’s goals. The Campaign has over 1,718 testimonies posted here, with over 214 that are shared via video!
The Silent No More Awareness Campaign is a joint project of Anglicans for Life and Priests for Life. For more information, please visit our website:
www.SilentNoMoreAwareness.org