[Mr. Pleasant, a journalist and playwright, became a member of the IWP in 1986, but was expelled in 1992 after protesting psychotherapist Fred Newman's use of the group for financial self-aggrandizement and also because of political disagreements. Mr. Pleasant was never a member of the cult's informal inner core and was never a regular patient of its "Social Therapy" (see below). He confirms, however, what other former members have told researchers--that there was heavy ideological and social pressure within the IWP to have abortions (in some cases, multiple abortions) and thus avoid the distractions that raising a child might pose for party members who were expected to concentrate single-mindedly on carrying out Mr. Newman's directives.]
The party-recommended abortionist was an Upper West Side (Manhattan) physician. IWP females were urged--in therapy and elsewhere--to have abortions because children would get in the way of their "revolutionary activity," i.e., fundraising for Newman. This was odd because part of their revolutionary activity was friendosexualism--making babies. There were, for some reason, tons of pregnancies. I chalk it up to IWP cadres not having any health insurance, and thus no ready access to basic birth control. The tons of pregnancies meant tons of abortions, including among Newman's "wives." Why didn't Newman use contraception? That was always a a cipher for me. He certainly had the money to do so. I guess he didn't really care about his women.
Several IWP women gave birth to children before being recruited to the party, but among women already recruited, and during my time with the group, no children were born. Apparently, the only known IWP baby to be approved by Newman was the son of CK and MP--born around 1982 and before my connection to the IWP. CK, an award-winning TV producer, had bucks to essentially buy her birthing rights from Newman. LS's daughter had a child at about the same time (1980-82), but the father was rather thuggish--what Newman would call "un-organized"--so Newman probably did not interfere for fear of the consequences.
Women who were urged to abort were often accompanied by "supportive comrades"--usually social therapists or thoroughly committed social therapy patients. I know of no instances where pregnant IWP women changed their minds at the last minute.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note by Dennis King: The highly secretive IWP is controlled by Mr. Newman, his "wives" and several other followers who have been with him since the 1970s. The IWP runs clinics that practice "Social Therapy"--a mixture of psychotherapy and political indoctrination that sometimes includes sex between therapists and patients. The IWP and Social Therapy are very opposed to the "bourgeois" nuclear family, which Chairman Fred has compared (in terms of its supposed social destructiveness) to apartheid and nuclear weapons. The cult's answer to the bourgeois family is "friendosexuality," a doctine which cult members have attempted to teach to teenagers in the All Stars Project, a Newman-founded youth charity that has received over $20 million in financing from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration. The mayor, who has stated he's not aware of anything wrong with the All Stars Project, has been politically allied with Newman for the past eight years through the New York City Independence Party, an electoral third party controlled by Newman and staffed by present and former Social Therapy patients. The Independence Party provided Bloomberg's margin of victory in his 2001 election and also backed him in 2005. For more on the Newman cult and its complicated network of clinics, charities and political entities, go to the relevant links on my home page (click below) and especially read the description of the cult's views on friendosexuality, the family, childhood education, etc. here. Also visit http://ex-iwp.org (the website of former IWP members).