Just want to share this testimony from abortionfacts.com
WHEN THE DOLL BREAKS
Theresa Karminski Burke
I remember meeting Marita my freshman year in college. She was
cute, like a cheerleader, and had the same dynamic, enthusiastic
"rah rah" personality. Marita had boundless energy. She was fun to
be around and had a self-assured style. At the same time, she was
still very much a little girl. She missed her parents, made
frequent phone calls to her siblings, and had a roomful of
cherished childhood dolls carefully displayed on her bed pillows
and bookshelves.
The first night we met, Marita told me she would remember my name
because Theresa was the name of her favorite doll, now a priceless
antique. It had been passed down from her great-great-grandmother
and was given to Marita when she was a little girl. Marita handed
me the doll, a porcelain collector's dream, gussied up in an ivory
silk dress and intricate lace pantaloons. Marita and I became
friends instantly and used to share library activities like
"scoping" for cute guys behind bookshelves.
One night at a drunken fraternity party, Marita found herself
having sex with her boyfriend. The details were quite foggy. She
didn't remember taking her clothes off, but woke up naked next to
the young sophomore. When Marita discovered she was pregnant, she
had an abortion immediately and never told a soul, except her
boyfriend and her roommate.
When Marita told me about her abortion years later, she explained
that her roommate Ruth had taken her to the clinic. Ruth had an
abortion as a senior in high school and told Marita it was no big
deal. Abortion was common on campus. Lots of girls had them.
After the abortion, Marita's personality changed. She became
irritable and began drinking all the time. She skipped classes on a
regular basis, preferring to sleep in and snooze off each hung-over
depression. Her attitude was cynical and negative, and she wasn't
much fun to be around. At that time, I didn't understand what
Marita was going through. But there were signs.
One night we gathered at Marita's dorm for a party. We were
drinking beers when Marita's boyfriend jumped up and shouted, "It's
time for Baby Soccer!" There was a grand applause, reminiscent of
the inauguration of gladiator games. Marita brought out several
doll heads which had been decapitated from their torsos, rolling
them along with her hockey stick for the grand entrance. Everyone
started kicking the baby heads around the room in a frenzy of glee
and hysterics. They all cheered while gulping drinks and devouring
chips.
As the pastime continued, the aggression toward the baby heads
became more severe. One girl picked up a doll head and started
gouging out its eyes with a dart. Everyone cackled with delight.
Ruth began ripping out shreds of another doll's hair while burning
its plastic cheeks with her cigarette. This sparked her boyfriend's
imagination. He grabbed another doll from the shelf and put the hot
ember of his cigarette between the doll's legs, then ripped them
off, leaving only a melted and scarred-looking vagina hole. Ruth
threw her doll head on the floor, stamping hard on its skull. They
continued to kick the baby heads around the room in a hostile
display of rage fused with amusement.
I learned that this had become a favorite game in the dorm. My
reaction to this symbolic abuse was a sickening feeling in my
stomach. I witnessed this traumatic play, unaware at the time of
the psychic release of collective tension this game was providing.
Desensitized to the authenticity of the game, I laughed along with
the others, silently recalling all the "baby in a blender" jokes
which proliferated among my friends.
As I picked up one of the doll heads, I was overcome with a vague
familiarity. My heart skipped a beat when I identified the doll as
"Theresa," the porcelain antique which had once been Marita's
prized possession. Her face was cracked, smashed, and splintered, a
jigsaw of fractured pieces-nearly unrecognizable. Where the head
had been torn from the body there were razor-sharp claws of
fragmented china.
Suddenly I felt a genuine, aching grief. I feared that at any
minute I might burst into tears. What had happened to this doll
"Theresa," passed down through generations of female history within
Marita's family? How did this happen? What had happened to my
friend?
The trauma was still very much a mystery to me-but I knew that
something inside Marita had also been crushed. The desecration was
reflected quite ostensibly in the face of her broken doll. I waited
nearly a decade to discover the answer to my questions. Learning
that Marita had suffered an abortion made everything crystal
clear.
*****
Those who study childhood trauma have documented many examples
where children work through a traumatic event by recreating aspects
of their trauma through playful games, stories and art. Child
therapists will often observe children playing with puppets and
doll houses to get a sense of what is going on in their minds and
families. It can be easier to express an emotional conflict by
acting it out through a puppet figure--rather than putting oneself
through subjective introspection.
As with my classmates and the game of "Baby Soccer," adults too can
engage in symbolic reenactment of a trauma under the disguise of
games, art, music, humor, and other amusements. This type of play
provided an outlet for grief by replacing it with socially
acceptable acts of "baby hatred."
Marita's battered doll reflected the abuse of a little
girl-ravaged, disfigured, assaulted and burned. "Baby Soccer" was a
sadistic "acting out" of unconscious repressed abortion trauma. A
baby haunting her unconscious had become the target to be
annihilated. Her battered doll's head was a symbol of this
conflict.
It is no surprise that this traumatic play so quickly became an
amusement for all to enjoy. Like Marita, many of the young women
and men drawn into this game had also lost children to abortion.
Many others had lost sisters or brothers to abortion. "Baby Soccer"
provided a symbolic means to mock, belittle, and display mastery
over the babies who were never allowed to be born but who still
haunted their memories.
As the group's enthusiasm for this game demonstrated, the acting
out of post-abortion trauma can be contagious. This is especially
the case when so many have had a direct experience with abortion.
Worse, this attempt to belittle and master babies through play
reinforced and internalized attitudes and behaviors of aggression
and hostility against babies.
If the college authorities had seen students beating up and
defacing an effigy of a black person, or a symbol of Jewish
heritage, would they not have felt compelled to intervene against
this frightful and shocking symbolism? But what is said about the
intolerance and contempt displayed for babies? It is unlikely that
there will ever be a word uttered.
Collective guilt and trauma have the capacity to disguise massive
injustice. The offensiveness of "Baby Soccer" was made socially
acceptable because it concealed this display of aggression behind
the mask of a "humorously irreverent" diversion, so everyone
laughed.
We have all learned to snicker at sick jokes and engage in
scapegoating because these things give us momentary relief from the
tension of unsettled issues. In this case, we were laughing with
the nervous giggle of an entire culture that has been traumatized
by the abortion of tens of millions of babies. The sheer magnitude
of it all is too much to grasp. So it must be trivialized, reduced
to laughter and scorn, or else we will all be crushed by the horror
of it all.
That is why the belittling of children is all around us. Themes of
abortion-related guilt, rage and anger are pervasive in modern
music, art and films. "Evil child" movies, like Alien and The Omen,
reflect the demonization of children. The "evil baby" is our worst
nightmare--something society must destroy before it destroys
us.
This is just one of many ways that our culture has been ravaged by
the haunting memory of aborted children. Far too many women and men
have tried to contain and control this horror through aggression
and the rejection of nurturing instincts. They have allowed
life-giving, tender, and loving ways to be replaced with mockery,
violence, and destruction.
These are the truths recorded for all to see in the broken face of
Marita's cherished doll. It was a shattered face. It was the mirror
image of Marita's own fractured self.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Theresa Karminski Burke, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist, author of
Rachel's Vineyard, and director of The Center For Post Abortion
Healing, P.O. Box 195, Bridgeport, PA 19405, (610) 626-4006. This
article is an excerpt from her forthcoming book, Forbidden Grief.
Copyright 1997 Theresa Karminski Burke.
Originally printed in The Post-Abortion Review, 6(1), Winter 1988.
Copyright 1988, Elliot Institute.
