It was a question we heard from a number of our readers and sources after news broke Friday that the US Supreme Court had (as expected) struck down the landmark 1973 opinion Roe v. Wade.
Abortion is no longer federally protected in the United States, and it’s resulted in the procedure being banned immediately in a number of US states, and days of protest across the country. But the question we were hearing from readers was, how will this affect Scientology and its notorious policy of coercing Sea Org women into unwanted abortions?
We thought we’d put that question to two women who understand this situation as well as anyone. Claire Headley and Sunny Pereira were two of the women featured in Tom Tobin’s 2010 Tampa Bay Times investigation, “No Kids Allowed,” which exposed Scientology’s policy.
Both Claire and Sunny were coerced into two abortions each when they were Sea Org officials, having signed billion-year contracts that expected them to be completely dedicated to the organization to the exclusion of all else, including having children.
Tobin’s deeply researched story explains that in the Sea Org marriages are common, even at an early age, but pregnancies are considered a betrayal of the organization. Women are told that they must follow a key dictum from founder L. Ron Hubbard to do the thing that would be “the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics.” That is, think of the group (the Sea Org) and not themselves. If they insist on having a child, a couple is told they will be shipped to some unproductive church in a distant place. And women are made to feel that they are hurting their male partner’s career. Under this kind of pressure, the women often cave and are then driven to a local clinic.
Tobin also interviewed Gary Morehead — and he has described to us as well — who said that part of his job as head of security at Scientology’s Int Base was to pressure pregnant Sea Org women by assigning them to hard labor until they cracked.
And although Tobin’s article makes it sound like the coerced abortion policy only appeared in 1996, the former Sea Org workers themselves tell us this isn’t the case. Another former Sea Org member, Gary Weber, told us that he was driving a Scientology van that took women to have coerced abortions in the early 1980s. We heard from another woman that she had been pressured to have an abortion in the late 1970s.
“I remember at 10 hearing of a woman who got forced to have an abortion in 1985,” Claire tells us.
As for the present day, one of the most recent defectors from the Sea Org, Bree Mood, who left the organization just four years ago, told Chris Shelton that she had been coerced into having an abortion and that the practice was still in full force.
And just last November, we published photographic evidence that Sea Org women are still being taken by Scientology van to a local clinic in Clearwater for the procedure.
Scientology itself gives no interviews these days, but when Tobin wrote his story then-spokesman Tommy Davis gave the usual denials, but did admit that children are not allowed in the Sea Org.
So, if David Miscavige is still having his Sea Org heavies pressure women into having abortions, how will it be affected by the Supreme Court striking down Roe v Wade?
Not in the slightest, both Claire and Sunny tell us.
“I don’t think it changes anything in the Sea Org,” Sunny says. “Children are considered a distraction from what they’re trying to do in the Sea Org. They will find a way.”
Interviewed separately, Claire used almost the same language.
“It’s not going to result in more births in the Sea Org,” she says. “They’ll find ways around it. If one state won’t do it, they’ll just go to another state.”
Most of Scientology’s Sea Org is concentrated in two places: Los Angeles, California and Clearwater, Florida.
California officials have already indicated that abortion will remain legal in the state and access to it may actually be widened.
Florida is another matter. While abortion remains legal there for now, its conservative governor, Ron DeSantis, has signed a new law that restricts abortion to the first fifteen weeks of pregnancy. The new law immediately faced legal challenges based on Florida’s state constitution which, it turns out, has a pretty unique protection for its citizens.
In 1980, Florida passed a constitutional amendment that protected its citizens “from governmental intrusion into the person’s private life.” This reference to privacy is key, abortion supporters say, and will keep abortion legal in the state, at least for now.
But we asked Claire and Sunny, if DeSantis is successful in restricting abortion in Florida to 15 weeks or even further, what will Scientology do?
“The three people I personally knew who got abortions in the Sea Org were in Los Angeles, New York, and Florida,” Sunny says. “If there’s a problem in Florida, they will send pregnant women to New York or California.”
“They would ship people to wherever they can. That’s why this is just a nightmare from beginning to end,” Claire says, agreeing with Sunny’s statement that the women would be sent to New York or LA.
And as for restrictions on the number of weeks, Claire says, “I knew of a woman who got an abortion when she was six months pregnant.” Under pressure from the church? “Absolutely.”
Five years earlier, that same woman had helped pressure another Sea Org worker to end her pregnancy with an unwanted abortion.
We told Claire that one of the things that puzzled us about the coerced abortions stretching back so far into time, and before David Miscavige took over, was that founder L. Ron Hubbard spoke in critical terms about abortion in his 1950 book Dianetics that started off the Scientology movement.
We told her we found it hard to resolve that under Hubbard then, a policy would develop to pressure women to have abortions.
“That’s resolved by what’s ‘the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics.’ Obviously the greatest good is to stay in the Sea Org, and kids are a distraction,” she says.
Sunny gave us another example of the policy that we hadn’t heard before. She told us about a Sea Org couple who got pregnant, and when they decided to have the baby, were shipped off to a struggling distant “org” (Scientology’s word for churches). But then, the father was allowed to return to the Sea Org ten years later (and remains in good standing today).
Sunny explained, “They are allowed to come back after the child is old enough to agree to join the Sea Org and sign a billion-year contract. And that is at 10 years of age,” she said, and she noted our astonishment. “Oh, you didn’t know that little asterisk?” she asked.
Scientology, it never fails to shock us.
Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:
Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history
Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea
Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time
Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology
Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain
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I can hear it now, 'we don't that anymore'! Nor do they do it any less. Reducing your workforce to 'production units' just makes them slaves. Slaves with no recourse but to knuckle under or leave. I do hope most leave, but one coerced abortion is one too many. I you want to have one, fine by me, but don't let the CO$ take control of your reproduction rights.
Claire, Sunny, Gary Morehead and so many others have continued to tell the truth and keep the modus operandi of the Clampire in the news. I worship them from afar.
So very many things in today's article that shock, even after all this time. Why am I either surprised or horrified that exiled parents are permitted to return once their children are old enough to become little Sea Org slaves?