Today's anniversary is Shirley Hollis, a 30-year-old mother of two who ignored severe cardiac symptoms after an abortion and ended up dying as a result on February 22, 1991.
It isn't unusual for a woman to die because she failed to seek treatment when she was suffering alarming symptoms after an abortion. It's particularly problematic in women with undiagnosed ectopic pregnancies.
It's also been documented, by the CDC among other researchers, that women are more likely to die violent deaths -- homicide, suicide, or accident -- in the aftermath of an abortion than demographically matched age-mates who had not undergone abortions.
I once listened to a National Abortion Federation meeting in which nurses lamented how difficult it was to get patients to seek care for post-abortion symptoms. At the time I placed the blame entirely on the abortion lobby's success in getting people to internalized the idea that abortion is ludicrously safe -- that no harm can befall the woman as long as she goes to a legally operating abortion facility.
But maybe in some of these cases we're not seeing women who really think their symptoms aren't serious. Maybe in some of these cases the women are actually hoping that the symptoms are very serious indeed. If at some level some of these women are refusing to seek care because they're hoping that they'll die.
Has anybody seen any research on this, or is anybody able to comment on it from personal experience or from witnessing such behaviors in somebody else?
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