Tuesday, 11 March 2014

CHARLOTTE DAWSON WASN'T 'PRO-CHOICE', SHE WAS 'NO CHOICE' (Letter to the Dom Post, March 12)

Charlotte Dawson’s dead, but she won’t lie down. The media feeding frenzy continues, but what can we learn from it?

 

We’ve learned about her depression and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): her ‘battle with booze’, the ‘death threats and toxic Twitter brawls’, her suicide attempt, her feelings of betrayal. What the media still fail to mention is Charlotte’s own statement, in an interview in 2011, that her depression began with an abortion.

 

Like upwards of 80% of women who undergo abortion, Charlotte was not ‘pro-choice’ but ‘no-choice’: she felt coerced by her husband and his Olympian ambitions. Post-abortive women are 41 per cent more likely to suffer clinical depression and 65 per cent exhibit symptoms of PTSD. Addiction to alcohol is twice as likely to develop in women who’ve had an abortion. And Charlotte might well have been among the 33 per cent of post-abortive women who obsess about getting pregnant again - and who if they have other babies are much more likely to abuse or neglect them.

 

So, was her tragic death caused as the media would have us believe, by cyber-bullying? I don’t think so.

 

Julia du Fresne

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