Editor's Note: The following article originally appeared in the Spring 1998 issue of The Post-Abortion Review.

Stephanie Clark was only looking for a pair of her daughter's pants when she opened the closet door. Imagine her surprise at finding a tiny newborn baby nestled in a blanket. "I screamed in surprise," she later told reporters. "I called 911. They said, 'Whose baby is it?' I said, 'I have no idea.'"

It turned out that the baby was her grandson, Navorn. Her 17-year-old daughter Shanta had concealed her pregnancy and secretly given birth to her baby boy in her home on Sept. 21, 1997. She had hidden the baby in her bedroom closet whenever she left for school. It was 17 days after the birth before the startled grandmother first met her grandson.

After being charged with neglect, Shanta was given custody of Navorn on the condition that she move into a home for young mothers. The 16-year-old father of the child came forward seeking to establish paternity and to strengthen his relationship with Shanta, which he described as previously an "on again, off again" romance.

The media spin on the birth of the "closet baby" Navorn Clark suggested that teenagers can be unaware of their pregnancies for long periods and may engage in denial of reality until it is "too late." Teenage "denial" is often blamed for late-term abortions. The argument goes that teenagers have trouble confronting the reality of their problem and so fail to seek an earlier, "safer" abortion. Because of this "denial" problem, pro-abortionists argue, we must keep late term abortions available for these "messed up" kids.

Personally, I've never bought this argument. Certainly it is not uncommon for teenage mothers to go through short periods of denial about a pregnancy, desperately hoping that "my period is just late." But of the thousands of testimonies I have collected, in every case where a teenager had a late term abortion, not one stated that she didn't realize or couldn't accept that she was pregnant.

Instead,  they all indicated that they deliberately concealed their pregnancies in the hope that by the time their parents discovered the truth, it would be "too late" to have an abortion.

Unfortunately, these young women discovered, it is never "too late" to get an abortion in America. Their abortions were either forced or carried out under duress. From this viewpoint, late-term teenage abortions are not due to teenage denial, but rather to parental abuse.

Pro-Abortion Parents

A few years ago, I was a guest on a call-in radio program. A woman called in to declare her self to be on the side of "choice," despite abortion's risks. I asked: "Well, if you are pro-choice, then certainly you would agree that we should have laws to protect young women from being forced into unwanted abortions." Without hesitation, the caller confirmed my point, saying, "I've told my daughter that if she ever gets pregnant, she will have an abortion. I've done my duty raising her. I'm not going to raise her kids, too."

This woman was pro-choice for everyone except her daughter. For her daughter, there was only one choice: abortion.

Sadly, many young people grow up with the same understanding of what their parents' demands will be if they ever become pregnant. What are they to do?

Some, like Stephanie Clark, will try to conceal the pregnancy all the way through to birth. On a speaking trip I once spent a night with a family who had an adopted daughter. The girl's teenage birthmother had successfully concealed everything from her parents. She hid her pregnancy, arranged for the adoption, selected the adoptive parents, and gave birth at a hospital (returning home the same day)—all without her parents ever catching on to the truth. Indeed, there was still some communication between the biological mother and the adoptive parents and the adoptive parents believed that the biological grandparents still did not know of their granddaughter's birth.

When Options Run Out

Not all teens are as resourceful as this young woman was. Others simply know that they can't or won't abort their children. Some have probably already had an abortion once and were so devastated by it that they will do anything to avoid having another.

So they try to get by, one day at a time, concealing the pregnancy and hoping that somehow it will all work out. Sometimes, it does. They reveal the pregnancy after their boyfriend has promised to support them or at a point when their parents no longer feel comfortable forcing an abortion. In other cases, it doesn't work out. The pregnancy is discovered or revealed, and they are still forced to abort.

In at least a few cases, however, teens are concealing their pregnancies all the way to birth, still hoping to find some last-minute solution. But what happens when the baby is finally born and there is no obvious last-minute solution? Now they still have a secret to hide! They know their parents' wrath will be no less now that the baby is here than when it was in utero. But it is even harder to hide a crying child than it is a bulging belly. What are they to do?

I believe fear of parental rejection or abuse is often the driving force behind babies being abandoned on church steps, in garbage cans, or even on the road side. Is the abandonment of these children simply a loveless act of infanticide? I suspect that in at least some cases, they are abandoned in the hope that someone will find them and care for them, and the mothers are left with a lifetime of grief and guilt. In such cases, these teens may be hiding their pregnancies and abandoning their children because they desperately wanted to protect their children from the people who would have forced them to them abort.

To extend this analysis one step further, what happens when these confused and frightened young women don't have the time or opportunity to abandon their children? Is it not likely that in the panicked minutes after the birth, when the infant is crying and the need to protect her secret overwhelms even her maternal instincts, some of these young mothers may act rashly to stop their child from crying and keep their secret? Are the resulting deaths due to acts of hate, or acts of panic?

This analysis is complicated even further if the mother had a previous traumatic abortion, as those who have suffered trauma often seek to reenact the trauma in an attempt to master it. It might be that the teen who abandons or even kills her infant is psychologically reenacting an unresolved traumatic abortion experience. While this does not excuse a child's death, it points to the far-reaching trauma that can result from coercion and abortion.

Loss of Support

Decades ago, most parents were chiefly concerned about protecting their daughters' reputations. Today, when many schools freely hand out contraceptives, it appears that some parents are chiefly concerned about avoiding responsibility for helping their daughters to care for their "unwanted" grandchildren.

This is why the solution to teenagers abandoning their newborns or committing acts of infanticide cannot be found in efforts to encourage teens to have abortions early. Easy access to abortion is not the solution, it is the problem. In many cases, abortion is what they are trying so hard to avoid! Whenever it is easy for teens to have an abortion, it will also be easy for teens to be forced into unwanted abortions. Fear of the latter may be driving some teens into a corner from which there is no easy escape.

Abortion, infanticide, and child abandonment are often acts of fear and despair. They are symptoms of a society that too often does not embrace young mothers and fathers, but instead frequently subjects them to criticism, abuse, and coercion. The only solution is to offer young women and men unconditional love and life-affirming support. 

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Originally published in The Post-Abortion Review 6(1) Spring 1998. Copyright 1998 Elliot Institute.

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An undercover investigation by the pro-life group Life Dynamics in 2002 found that many abortion businesses were willing to help conceal sexual abuse. A Life Dynamics staff member called abortion businesses around the country, posing as a pregnant 13-year-old girl with a 22-year-old "boyfriend." According to transcripts of the calls published by Life Dynamics, staffers at many abortion clinics told the girl to conceal her age and details of the case or gave her tips about how to circumvent authorities in order to obtain an abortion so her parents would not have to know of the sexual relationship.

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