11. While at the base, I knew of several instances of staff getting pregnant and being coerced to get an abortion. Some instances were relayed to me by the victims themselves and others were relayed to me by another. In two instances, the couples to keep their child despite extensive course of ethics method and thus were banished to a failing Class IV organization. In every instance they had to go through ethics handling designed to prevent them that it would be far more advantageous to Scientology and the Sea Org for each of them to have an abortion. Some of these women went through extensive pressure methods to convince them to have an abortion. The severity of the Ethics handling was directly proportional to the prospective mother's desire and insistence to keep the child. I myself got pregnant in 1993 and gave up my child due to my greatly misguided obligation and dedication to the Sea Org.

13.  I told the Medical Officer (Martine Collins) of my pregnancy. She immediately went into action to arrange for my abortion.  She told me, that I would naturally be expected to pay for it myself, since it was considered Out Ethics to get pregnant.  (Out Ethics in Scientology simply means your reasoning facilities are no longer thinking in a direction designed to promote Scientology and must be corrected).

15. The day after I returned from my abortion, I was weak and sore and had cramps. I proposed a light work load that I felt I could accomplish. My Senior, Megan Rae, refused this and instead gave me a target that literally would have taken about many people to accomplish in one day. I attempted to let her know what an impossible task it was and that her order must have been a joke. I soon learned that she was completely serious. My obvious protest on this was met with the barked threat, "If you use this abortion cycle to dramatize inefficiency and thus not accomplish your production targets, I will have you comm-eved." A commev is short for Committee of Evidence. It is one of the severest Ethics actions you can level at someone.

23.  The following are the brief stories of women I knew who had abortions after undergoing coercive ethics sessions and being threatened with exile to a Class IV organization.  Because this topic wasn't something that we were supposed to talk about, for the sake of Public Relations, within and outside the Base to protect the women involved from retribution and to preserve their privacy, I have not given their names.

42. Approximately 1½ years before I left, a new rule came out stating that if you got pregnant, you had to either get an abortion, which was heavily pushed, or leave. The rule had previously been that if you got pregnant, you had to get an abortion or be sent to a small and failing lower organization where you had to fend for yourself and your baby.  I had to handle any staff that disagreed with this new rule.  I myself disagreed with it because I wanted children and was told I would be able to have them when I was first recruited.  However, I never said anything for fear of getting into trouble. I got to the point of being suicidal because I was so unhappy, but I never said anything because I would have gotten into big trouble and been looked down upon. [...]

«46.  It took a lot less time for me to leave because they didn't want any of the other staff to know I was pregnant, so they were trying to get me out quick.  A staff member from the Religious Technology Center (The Sea Org's highest organization) came up to me one day while I was in the process of routing out and asked me what I was doing.  I told him that I was pregnant and leaving and he said to me "Oh, too late for an abortion?"  I personally knew of three other girls who got pregnant and were convinced to get abortions. One was my sister-in-law who was 16 weeks pregnant when she was convinced to abort her child although she was strongly against it.  My mother told my sister and I that it was good that she got an abortion.

15. In late 1991, my wife Monika became pregnant and although we were elated, she was ordered to abort the child. The reason for the abortion order is that Sea Org members were not allowed to have children. The order devastated both my wife and me. Our dedication as Sea Org members clashed violently with our intentions as parents and we went through a personal nightmare with me opposing it, to no avail. She got the abortion and afterwards she was not the same. She was devastated at the impact of what she did and that was when she told me she wanted to leave.

Because the attitude among some Sea Org leadership appears to be that children hinder adults from performing their vital assignments, researchers should not be surprised to learn of pressures that Sea Org women felt to either abort pregnancies or give-up children for adoption. My 1987 informant told me that when Sea Org operated on ships during the mid 1970s, women knew that they were not allowed to raise children on the vessels. Consequently, they experienced pressure to have abortions.

6. She went on to tell me that the spirit doesn't enter the baby's body until the baby is born. She made the point that all I would be "killing" is a piece of meat essentially. We discussed this for a couple of days and she showed me definitions in the L. Ron Hubbard Technical Dictionary to persuade me to have an ABORTION.

(n) Defendants had engaged in fraud in not telling Plaintiff, at the time of his recruitment, about Hubbard's attitude toward children as being "expensive inconveniences" and that Scientology Sea Org staff members are routinely ordered to have abortions because children interfere with "production" and require "family time"

23.  [...] The women at this compound are not allowed to get pregnant and if they do, they are coerced into getting abortions at the Riverside Planned Parenthood Clinic.  [...]

Kelly spoke of a time when Church staff were forbidden to have children because there was insufficient room in the Flag Land Base nursery. Former Messengers have said that children were completely prohibited at Gilman Hot Springs as well. Abortions were common.

A month later, I discovered that I was pregnant. Yvonne was very displeased. The last thing she wanted for Richard was a child to support.

So I was ordered to have an abortion. I was given the address of the social services office in downtown L.A. and I went there to apply for Medicaid funding for an abortion.