The following comes from an April 6 story on FoolishWisdom.com.
Australia recently lost a well-known television personality to suicide. Charlotte Dawson was only 47 years old when she was found dead in her waterside apartment. Being a media personality, the story was given much coverage with an outpouring of grief from people across the entertainment industry. At her memorial service one of her closest friends said farewell to “one of the most beautiful and generous, sharp and witty, sparkling and effervescent, honest and uncompromising people ever put on the planet.”
Unfortunately I learnt more about Charlotte Dawson through death rather than through life. Hers was a life that seemed so full of promise and possibility but in the end it was all too much for one person to bear. Charlotte left her home of New Zealand on the cusp of adulthood and spent ten years modelling in Europe and the USA before relocating to Australia. She worked in the fashion scene and eventually moved over to television making appearances on a range of shows including as a judge on Australia’s Next Top Model. It was the kind of life that fuels the sales of every gossip magazine around the world.
In 2012 Charlotte was admitted to hospital after trying to commit suicide. This incident stemmed from her being the target of a particularly sickening and very public hate campaign waged against her over Twitter. When she did actually succeed in taking her life this year, the mainstream media blamed her death completely on the depression resulting from the social media bullying. However, her battle with depression was nothing new and while the cyber bullying was the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ in 2012, Charlotte herself identified an incident 15 years earlier which she claimed was “my first experience with depression”.
In 1999 as an in-love 33 year old, Charlotte married Australian Olympic swimmer Scott Miller and just months later was excited to learn that she was pregnant. The timing of the due date though was set to clash with the upcoming Sydney Olympics when her husband might be representing his country. Although Charlotte wanted the baby, pressure was put on her to abort the child. She began to feel she was greedy for wanting the baby and that the fair thing to do was to compromise and terminate the pregnancy. Eventually she went to the abortion clinic; initially with her husband but he didn’t feel comfortable there and he left her alone to go through the procedure. Once Charlotte arrived home the gravity of what had happened settled upon her and she realised that “something had changed”. She became in her own words “a depressed mess…single, damaged and miserable”.
The following year Charlotte’s marriage ended. Her husband was found to be cheating on her and mixed up with drugs. He never even made the Olympic team, the focus of which had led him to sacrifice his own child. Charlotte lived the next 15 years in a series of transitory relationships including dating a man 24 years her junior. Her public career moved forward but her inner life was never the same again.
Charlotte Dawson’s life and death may have been news but her story is not uncommon. Her socialite and celebrity friends mourned her in death but how many of them really listened to her story of love and then of loss? How many would dare to be as forthright as Charlotte and speak about the tragedy of her post-abortion depression? In the days following her death, one politician made reference to the sadness of her abortion and subsequent depression but he was criticised as being controversial and disrespectful….
To read the entire posting, click here.
Unspeakably sad story. Too bad that Ms. Dawson’s character could not withstand the onslaught of her simply evil ex-husband regarding the demand that she have an abortion. Descending into meaningless fornications over the years, of course increased Ms. Dawson’s sense of loss and defeat. Pray for Ms. Dawson and for the many, many young women that offer themselves to willing men throughout the world, and suffer the loss of their dignity and self-worth. These women are children of God, after all, not sexual toilets, and should be destined to become wives, mothers, grandmothers, and future saints. Pray for this poor woman, and pray for all like her.
Thank you for that wise, beautiful and charitable post St. Christopher!
Well said, St. Christopher……I too have worked with post abortive women…..their loss and pain is immense……they need HELP and HEALING from The Divine Physician and Father of MERCY……their is HOPE after an abortion. Pray for all the precious souls of the unborn AND their lost parents…….the walking dead.
The *tenderness* of your post bespeaks true masculinity, St. Christopher. And manly love as it is meant to be.
I pray, Our Lord would gift the world with more true men to replace the caricatures of masculinity that we have created in this generations long quest to serve ourselves.
How long oh, Lord. How long!
This is what we tell women who are pro-abortion could very well happen in the future to them, if they choose to kill their baby! May God have mercy on this His daughter.
St. Christopher. Very well said. I couldn’t agree more. A terrible tragedy for all involved. May God have mercy upon them.
Its too bad she had not gone to a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat I have helped at the Retreat and have been truly blessed to see tremendous healing for these woman. If you know of anyone who has had an abortion please let them know about Rachel’s Vineyard you can find information online.
“The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) reported that compared with birth, abortion has a 600% increased risk of suicide and the timing very often corresponds to anniversary grief.” https://www.lifenews.com/2014/03/14/what-they-wont-tell-women-abortion-depression-can-lead-to-suicide/
Oh fine, the Association of Biased Gynecoligists publishes a fake study lacking peer review. Thanks for that!
If you had ever worked (as in Rachel’s Vineyard) with these women you would know the study is correct. I have worked with these women for years and can testify to the devastation that is abortion. There are also studies published by Dr. Burke regarding the sequela of abortion that document these facts. The abortion industry does not want this known.
Many issue plague post-abortive women; alcoholism, drug addictions, depression, suicidal inclinations, inability to form lasting relationships, broken marriages, a feeling of worthlessness and shame and an inability to mother subsequent children, just to name a few. I challenge you to attend one retreat and you will be forever changed in your view regarding abortion and it’s impact.
Abortion takes two victims. Women have been fed the biggest lie ever perpetrated: that it is normal for a mother to kill her baby. It doesn’t take a genius (or even a study) to understand how devastating that is for the soul. These women often spend the rest of their lives dealing with the reality and truth of what was done.
Self-loathing, cutting, promiscuity, failed relationships, eating disorders, personality changes, and quite often the inability to recognize the etiology of it, are all just some of the commonly seen conditions that arise for women following abortions,
Unless you have experience in this field, best you keep your remarks to yourself. sometimes the biggest deniers are the one who have participated in some way (even remotely) in an abortion.
YFC, your propaganda harms women. Please stop.
While it would surely fail YFC’s “peer review” standards, common sense would tell the common folk among us, just how devastating killing one’s own child would be on the psyche of most otherwise decent woman.
For those of you who care about woman and children, the following links might also be of interest: https://www.abortionfacts.com/reardon/abortion-and-suicide.
https://afterabortion.org/2011/abortion-risks-a-list-of-major-psychological-complications-related-to-abortion/ You can also do a web search for “woman commits suicide after abortion”.