Former Church of Scientology Member Says It Forced Her to Have an Abortion

By Micaiah Bilger
Life News

Scientologists asked a federal court last month to dismiss a lawsuit by a woman who claims they forced her to abort her unborn baby.

Former member Laura DeCrescenzo’s case has drawn international attention because of her accusations against the Church of Scientology. The Daily Mail reports DeCrescenzo and the religious group have been in an on-going legal battle for years, and the church asked a federal court to dismiss the entire case in December.

DeCrescenzo, now 39, said her parents were members of the group, and, starting at age 12, she left home and became a member of the Church of Scientology International Sea Org. While there, she alleged the church leaders forced her and other young people to work long hours in harsh conditions, and coerced several young women to abort their unborn babies.

DeCrescenzo said she married a fellow Scientologist when she was 16 and became pregnant at 17. Later, she said she was coerced into aborting her unborn baby.

“I was told by the commanding officer of my organization that, she immediately started telling me at this point the baby wasn’t a baby, it was just tissue,” DeCrescenzo said, previously. “I never agreed to have an abortion. Did I concede? Yes, I did. Does it kill me every day? Yes, it does.”

She accused Scientologists of forcing members to work 100 hours per week and issuing “severe punishments” to keep people under their power.

“There are two very different versions of Scientology. There is the Scientology as presented to the outside world and there is a different Scientology in which Plaintiff lived and worked for approximately 13 years,” her lawsuit states.

Here’s more from the report:

She claims that she was ‘blackmailed’ by the CSI and its agents who stored information on her and ‘interrogated [her] on a primitive lie detector known as an e-meter’ to keep her from leaving her staff position.

This practice of ‘security checking’ was followed up, her suit claims, with the threat that she would be ‘declared a suppressive person and an enemy of the church’ should she leave. She was also told she would be forced to ‘disconnect’ – cease all contact – from family and friends should she leave.

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