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In a special report entitled "No Kids Allowed" at TampaBay.com, the website of the St. Petersburg Times, women come forward and tell unsettling stories of their lives working for the Church of Scientology's religious order, the Sea Organization. The women began working for the church in their teens during the 1990s in exchange for food, clothing, shelter and medical care. They devoted themselves to performing whatever tasks deemed necessary to furthering church goals, and anything that interfered with that work was considered a distraction that must be eliminated, including children. Some of these women were coerced to have abortions, they tell the Times.
These former church staff members claim leaders intimidated pregnant women into ending their pregnancies, threatening the young women with "strenuous physical work" and subjecting them to multiple interrogations and isolation. Church defectors say some pregnant women were forced to dig ditches.
On the report's video, three women speak. However, according to the St. Petersburg Times, its investigation found the women's "experiences were not unique.
More than a dozen women said the culture in the Sea Org pushed them or women they knew to have abortions, in many cases, abortions they did not want."
Those who refused to abort their pregnancies were shunned.
Church leaders deny these allegations, per the article. The paper says Sea Organization members are not required to be celibate as are some members of special orders in other religions. Tommy Davis, a spokesman for the church said, "There is no church policy to convince anyone to have an abortion ... " However, he also said "the rigors of Sea Org life are not conducive to having children," according to the video.
Jamie Kapalko, writing at Salon.com's Broadsheet, says:
Scientology has no official position on abortion, but if these alarming allegations are true, they place the organization firmly in the anti-choice camp.
At Feministing, the blogger writes about the women on the video and says:
Laura Dieckman, Claire Headley, and Sunny Pereira all came from Scientology families and entered the Sea Org at 12, 16, and 15 respectively. ... Dieckman, Headley, and Pereira all outline pressure put on them to have abortions. And of course the pressure of losing one's community cannot be overstated -- as oppressive as such an environment must be, to lose one's whole world is a terrifying thing and a powerful tool for coercion.
An advertisement for the book, Scientology: Abuse at the Top by Amy Scobee, runs beside the newspaper's report. Scobee is a church defector who once managed the organization's international offices in California and also built its Celebrity Centers network. In 2009 the paper interviewed her as well, and she said the church's leader, David Miscavige, at times physically attacked staff members. Scobee's ordeal, the current story of forced abortions,and other exposé articles about the church are part of a series at the paper called The Truth Rundown that details allegations against the church as more defectors come forward.
Addressing the current accusations, the church spokesman quoted in "No Kids Allowed" says that no one has forced anyone to have an abortion in Sea Org.
"Davis said the women speaking out to the Times made personal choices 'they now clearly regret.'"
The newspaper makes available Davis's six-page response on behalf of the church as a PDF. In addition, the newspaper features a letter from a Scientology member who says the paper misrepresents the church.
However, an article at the Village Voice indicates the church's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986 and was also a science siction novelist, wrote books for church members with sexist messages. Indeed, some passages of Hubbard's 1965 book Scientology: A New Slant on Life, under the chapter "A Woman's Creativity," read like notes for Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale.
In Hubbard's vision of an ideal society, women serve only one purpose:
"A society
