(The Lion) When a crying 21-year-old woman, accompanied by an evidently older man, checked into an abortion clinic, no staff asked her any questions or offered any counseling. They led her to the operating room, drugged her and aborted her baby. She never met the doctor.
Tanya Humphreys, a key witness in a federal lawsuit against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and the state’s Planned Parenthood, said she never would have had an abortion if her family and boyfriend had not vehemently pressured her to end her pregnancy.
“I did not want to be alive. I couldn’t believe what I had done to my child, even though it was not a choice that I had made,” she said. “I had been coerced and forced into it by people that I trusted, by people that supposedly love me. …
“I never wanted it. It was because of what they said. It was because of what they made me do. It was never anything I wanted.”
[Click here to subscribe to Pregnancy Help News!]
Humphreys shares her story in the second video of an ongoing series, Stop Coerced Abortions, which reveals the manipulation and abuse of women in the abortion industry, specifically through the testimonies of women called as witnesses in the Minnesota lawsuit.
Humphreys described how her boyfriend forced her into the car the morning of her abortion and drove her to the clinic.
“When we entered the clinic, he stood right behind me at the desk and made me sign everything. They explained nothing to me,” she said. “I had no counseling whatsoever. They never asked me if that’s what I truly wanted, and he paid the money.”
After her abortion, Humphreys said she wrestled with debilitating grief and depression for more than 20 years – a common timeframe for more than 40% of women who suffer pregnancy loss through an abortion or miscarriage, The Lion previously reported.
“I felt abandoned and abused and coerced, and it was the worst feeling in my whole life,” Humphreys said. “I hated myself to the point that I didn’t want to live. I had suicidal thoughts. I didn’t think I was worth anything.”
Finding hope, worth
Eventually, Humphreys sought help and found restoration through Dakota Hope Clinic, where she now serves as a post-abortive peer counselor. Humphreys said roughly 80% to 85% of the women she counsels have been coerced into an abortion.
“Many women who have had abortions feel worthless, like they have no meaning in life, and they want to end their life because of what they have done,” she said.
Dakota Hope, another plaintiff in the federal lawsuit, aids women at any stage of pregnancy, abuse recovery or post-abortion grief, and provides free counseling to both men and women who have experienced the loss of a pregnancy.
“We seek to protect the most precious rights of pregnant mothers,” Dakota Hope Executive Director Nadia Smetana said in a statement provided to The Lion. “Tanya Humphreys is one of our courageous workers who helps provide post-abortive care and healing when a mother suffers the loss of her child as a result of an abortion business killing her child against the mother’s true wishes.”
The case, which seeks to defend women from abortion coercion, is currently in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Jacinta Lagasse, executive director of Women’s Life Care Center – another plaintiff in the lawsuit – explained that currently no laws protect women from such coercion, and the abortion industry only further enables the abuse.
“There is no court or any government authority standing between a man forcing a pregnant mother to submit to an unwanted abortion and the abortion business who profits from helping him kill her child,” Lagasse said.
Harold Cassidy, the lead attorney in the case, said Minnesota’s constitution forbids legal protections for pregnant mothers who lose their children to the crime of coerced abortions.
“One of the greatest constitutional rights a woman has in all of life is her right to keep and maintain her parental relationship with her child,” Cassidy said in a statement provided to The Lion. “Minnesota authorizes, empowers, and licenses abortion doctors and nurses to terminate a pregnant mother’s cherished relationship with her child even when such termination is involuntary and totally uninformed.”
Tweet This: One of the greatest constitutional rights a woman has in all of life is her right to keep & maintain her parental relationship w/her child
Humphreys said she wished someone could’ve supported her and encouraged her to keep the baby she so desperately wanted.
Tweet This: A coerced abortion victim said she wished someone could’ve supported her and encouraged her to keep the baby she so desperately wanted.
“I didn’t have anybody that wanted to help me, or that would tell me that it was going to be okay and that I could raise a baby,” she said. “If I would have had Dakota Hope, I would have had my baby. I know that for a fact.”
Editor's note: This article was published by The Lion and is reprinted with permission.
