A Post Script

I want to add an important word of appreciation to visitors this past week; to those who prayed and especially to those who also shared. During the week one story came in that was too long for a comment box, so I have included it in the category "God's Love Heals" on the Respect Life website. Every story will be different, but there may well be similar threads. Hopefully this will help encourage understanding. Thank you again for those who engaged, and those who may still do so in the future.

Hope and Trust, Moving Forward Without Fear, Day 7 - last post for this series

It seems that as we come to the concluding post for this series on Post-Abortion Healing, there is room to consider a follow-up series, sometime down the road. The topics covered this past week are big subjects, but in a way, they are also simple - that is to say not necessarily complicated, though not to imply easily practiced.

You will recall that we began with the an invitation to know that a person wounded by abortion is seen with love, not condemnation. You were invited to watch the "Silent No More" clip that showed women needn't remain hidden, suffering alone.

Then we remembered God's mercy for the unborn. With this post in mind I would like to invite you to consider the steps of naming your baby, of perhaps expressing your thoughts to your baby in a letter, poem, drawing - letting go of the pain and replacing it with the hope of a joyful reunion. You might want to visit a Memorial to the Unborn, where you can grieve, pray, continue to heal. There is a list of locations here.

The themes of anger, guilt, shame, and forgiveness all become tied together. In the comments we heard about staying focused on Christ, we heard about staying close to Him in prayer and in the sacraments, especially the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This experience (visiting the blog), being open to exploring post-abortion healing, and hopefully gaining better understanding, is a step. The USCCB Webpage (click here) for resources on the issue of Post-Aboriton has a number of articles of information and encouragement (for a specific example, click here). The National Office for Post Abortion Reconciliation and Healing is also a helpful resource for more information (click here). Another part of the healing is talking with people you trust, especially a pastor, or when necessary a counselor, to sort through honestly (in contrast to excusing away) where you need forgiveness, and where you need to forgive to get past the burden of anger.

One participant mentioned talking with a sister about her hurt, only to have it painfully returned to her. This certainly can happen; our families and communities are made up of people who love imperfectly; try to step back and be patient with them even as you are learning again to be gentle with yourself. Realize there may be times you just need to wait until you have made progress toward healing before talking with people inclined to judge; by then their judgment may sting, but it won't have your own self-condemnation to cling to.

Some people find healing by reaching out to help protect life by serving in ways that uphold the dignity of life. Of course this can be lived out in a wide variety of ways because all stages of life suffer threats and challenges and benefit from your help and compassion. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you where you are needed...and then ask Him to help you say yes.

There may be parents who grieve after a decision for an abortion recommended by a physician after an adverse prenatal diagnosis. You may have submitted to the pressure (from others or from your own heartache) to end the pregnancy, and now suffer uncertainty, second guessing, guilt. Yes, this baby mattered too, right from conception; all life is precious, even when it requires a bittersweet journey. Rather than carry the burden of justifying your decision to deny a natural death, and rather than in anyway diminish the value of the life of your precious child, consider allowing yourself not only to grieve, but to be forgiven as well - it is the way to wholeness. End of life decisions are sometimes regretably needed even in the earliest stages of life. There is help in making moral decisions that respect the dignity of life(basic principles). Perhaps you can remember others who are faced with heartbreaking news in your prayers, that they may receive the grace and information they need to live up to the fullness of their own dignity by honoring the dignity inherent in even the most vulnerable.

We will conclude this final post, in the same way we did the past: with the challenge for all of us to live in a way that shares the love and mercy of Christ. Pope Benedict reminded us that "People who have Hope live differently." Pope John Paul II repeatedly challenged us to "Be not Afraid." I would like to encourage each of us to not be afraid to hope; to hope and trust in the love and mercy of God!

(Please know that while the series of posts have been completed, comments can still be added, though because they aren't as frequently monitored they may be moderated.)

Forgiveness and Reconciliation, Day 6

In the previous post I proposed that even a friend who seemed supportive and offered to be OK with whatever choice a pregnant woman made was in fact compounding the experience of the unreliability of unconditional love. How can that be? How then is a friend suppose to respond and what does this have to do with the anger, guilt, and forgiveness we mean to discuss here?

Before going ahead I want to add one more crucial word, one more intense response, that a participant included in her comment to the post on “Anger.” Together with guilt she added the shame she has to deal with. These two are clearly linked, but nevertheless different. A person can deal with the guilt, can know she is forgiven by God, yet still be crushed by the shame that is her response to the response (perceived or real) of others towards her. Just as a woman’s decision for an abortion rarely is made in a vacuum, so too her healing isn’t able to be complete apart from community. Forgiveness and reconciliation isn’t a step by step linear process but a very multi-dimensional experience with crucial pivotal points that propel a person and community to live a forgiven and forgiving life.

Back to the friend…or parent…or faith community…How are they then to supportively respond if not by telling the woman that whatever choice she makes they will be OK with? They need to absolutely tell the truth that the new life she carries is a gift, no matter the circumstances of its beginning. Ways of assisting and finding help and working through economics, education, career, adoption considerations, etc. all come into play, but first comes the truth that this new life, just like hers, is a gift. As the woman processes this, she also needs to hear that choosing to end this life is a grave sin, a sin that will not only cost the life of the baby, but will hurt her too. Intertwined with this truth, communicated always with compassion and respect, is the commitment to still love her if she falls, humbly remembering that each of us depends on mercy.

She may still choose an abortion, but when she returns and receives your love, grief-stricken though it may be, at least a couple of things happen. One, you are there to help encourage better choices (she really doesn’t want to go through this again – which happens with increasing frequency – and you did speak with a compassionate conviction that will resonate someday as true), and you have modeled for her the forgiveness she needs for herself. This is the pivotal point for this post’s topic.

In the Lord’s Prayer we pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The woman who so desperately needs forgiveness hears that somehow this forgiveness is linked to her forgiving others. How can she begin to forgive those against whom she has so much anger? She needs to see such unconditional love modeled around her to even begin to trust that she might be able to experience it herself. Far more powerful than the kind of support a woman gets from those who will agree with her about something that she knows isn’t a good thing, is the love a woman experiences for the person she is despite the things she has done. But before she will be willing to trust that such love exists and is reliable, she needs to see it in action – even at a distance. She is watching. Only when she feels safe enough to let go of the protective armor of anger by seeing ahead a refuge of hope will she begin to forgive others, and so begin to open the door to trust in God’s forgiveness for her.

This post then about “Forgiveness and Reconciliation” is really a challenge to all of us, whether as those whose lives have been touched because of direct participation in an abortion, or who have been touched by abortion through the grief of loss of life and the impact of the consequent diminishing value of life in our culture. We are all called to form communities of reconciliation, to treat one another with kindness and respect, to be patient with one another, and to model for the world the love of Christ. Truth? Absolutely, but always with love.

For you dear one standing wounded, wondering where this love is. I promise that you have not been abandoned and that forgiveness and healing are available. If you have watched and heard more arguing between Christians than love, please look deeper. Remember that we, like you, are weak; but keep looking and you will find people who care, people who do not condemn, people who understand and want to help. But even more, if you will look to the core of this community that is called to be a community of love and reconciliation, you will find Christ. You will find a crucifix, a scandal to the world, but the answer to the outstretched arms of embrace you long for. Fix your eyes on Christ and you will know that His gazed is fixed not on what you have done, but on you. It is you He sees, you He loves.

Anger, Day 5

Anger may not be the first emotion that comes to mind for someone who imagines a woman causally making the decision to have an abortion. But anger can be an almost consuming emotion for those women who have gone through an abortion at the encouragement of others they trust, or even the insistence of those on whom they depend. Even for the woman who felt she had “choices,” anger can become an issue to grapple with before experiencing healing.

Consider a young woman, maybe still a teenager, who is very conflicted about the pregnancy; ashamed/afraid to tell her parents, concerned about what this will mean to the relationship with the baby's father - who may or may not have been genuinely emotionally involved with the mother, concerned/uncertain/excited about future plans even before the news of the pregnancy. In the middle of all this, there are at least moments when she considers that this is the very beginning of a life that is a part of her, half of the baby's DNA is hers (now she may not be thinking DNA, but she knows in her mother's heart that this baby is no stranger), and she can imagine the child in her arms.

When those around her deny the baby they also deny her. Even when she herself is overwhelmed and not interested in keeping the baby, a part of her sees the response of others to the baby as a judgment of her own value as a person. When friends drift away, when parents consider her unready and/or the baby that is hers to be too much of a burden, when the father wants (at best) only her, but not the life created in the union of two of them together, she is confronting face to face the unreliability of the "love" she thought she could trust. It is not the experience of unconditional love.

This will be true even when she desires the abortion. At some level not only has she said that the value of another's life is dependant on something/someone else, but so have the people all around her who encourage the abortion or are even simply "supportive of whatever she chooses." She has been face to face with the current culture that life is disposable, it doesn't really have its own value, unless it first meets certain conditions. Now, true she may not be thinking these things in this way, but it has become her lived experience. (The ways to cope with this may include alchohol or drugs to numb the memory, hesitancy to trust in new relationships, getting pregnant again quickly, needing to excel in other areas seeking to somehow compensate or prove one's self worth....)

As regards to anger, the range of emotional response can be from very directed anger toward people who pushed her toward an abortion she didn’t want, to a general anger about the circumstances that went wrong that caused her to “need” an abortion, to a vague disappointment in life. It can be directed against God. It can be directed toward herself, and be lived as depression.

The anger can also be immediate, or buried and turn up later when it occurs to her that the things she was told and believed, “it’s just tissue,” “everything will be all right,” “think of the children you will have later…” were not right. She realizes: "It was not just tissue. Everything is not all right when I am driven to be pro choice because I can’t confront the truth about what my abortion might say about me if I admit that I took a life. The children I may or may not have later will never replace their brother or sister who wasn’t born." Now she is angry/depressed about the injustice and betrayal of the people who had walked her comfortably toward the “choice.” She may be angry at the Church for not having spoken more clearly and compassionately. She may be angry at God for not intervening…

But the anger doesn’t offer healing; it doesn’t take away the guilt. It just hurts and creates walls where arms of compassion are needed instead. Because dealing with the feelings of guilt and anger both are linked to forgiveness, “Forgiveness and Reconciliation” will be the subject of the next post.

Aftermath, Day 4

Immediately after an abortion a woman may feel relieved, or she may feel absolute self loathing and despair, or she may not feel at all. She may feel betrayed by the people she trusted who she thought would love the baby as she did, or she may feel trapped by circumstances in her life she thought forced her to make a decision that wasn't her choice. She may feel empowered to know that she can take control of this area of her life (maybe in contrast to the feeling of being used or exploited in other ways, or to compliment a pattern of self-serving control in all areas of her life) and be content that "after all, it is only tissue."

Whatever the range of immediate feelings, whether she carried them with her into the abortion facility, walked out with a different set than she carried in, or afterwards boxed the memory away ready to feel nothing at all, as the months and years pass the experience of the abortion is a part of who she is and her response to the experience will be part of who she becomes. On this page (click here) from the National Office of Post-Abortion Reconciliation and Healing you can read some of the Aftermath of Abortion.

Sometimes a woman who thinks she was OK with the abortion will experience some of these symptoms and not know why; what's more, if the symptoms are in fact her coping/response to the abortion(s) she may have difficulty identifying the link because she steps all around it rather than face what threatens to be greater hurt. But there is hope, there can be healing. In the last post the key to healing was given. Hope in God's mercy isn't only for the unborn. In the next post we will discuss anger, an obstacle and distraction to healing - especially when used as a coping tool.

Trust God's Mercy! Day 3

Sometimes before a woman (or anyone involved in an obtaining an abortion) can begin to approach God seeking mercy, they need first to have hope in God's mercy for the unborn child. Actually, as alluded to in the previous post, the subject of God's mercy is not only an issue for abortion, but can also be a comfort for parents who suffered miscarriage, or the death of any unbaptized infant.

There was a common belief and teaching, though not a dogma, about Limbo, which offered little comfort. After years of study, a report was released that "the Vatican's International Theological Commission said there are good reasons to hope that babies who die without being baptized go to heaven." A Catholic News Service article on the report can be found here.

This hope is important to remove the despair that may accompany fear that a child has been denied heaven because he or she has not been baptized. This hope of heaven for the child is also important to strengthen the mother's openness to the God of mercy for herself, that she too may enjoy salvation and so be reunited with her child.

David Reardon, in "The Jericho Plan: Breaking Down the Walls Which Prevent Post-Abortion Healing," outlines some scriptural reasons for our hope for God's mercy toward these little ones, with passages about God's special love for children (Matthew 18;1-2,10,14; Luke 18:15-16). He also reminds all of us that hope for God's mercy for the babies further compels us to reach out to the mothers who suffer.

Salvation and heaven for the unborn is not a dogmatic certainty. We don't presume upon the mercy of God, but the Church offers strong encouragement to trust in God's desire for their salvation and we trust He provides the way, through his mercy. Pope John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae, 99, adds: "nothing is definitively lost and you (addressing the women and men who have procured abortions) will also be able to ask forgiveness from your child, who is now living in the Lord."

Grief for the loss of an unborn child, Day 2

One of the intense emotional fallouts after an abortion can be profound grief at the loss of the unborn baby, and the life that could have been lived. This is captured in a song by Jaime Thietten, "My Chance." Yesterday I mentioned that I have not experienced the journey of abortion; however, I have experienced some of the pain that a post-abortive woman feels with the grief at the loss of an unborn child. We had a miscarriage with our second pregnancy - in this short video clip there is a phrase that will offer some comfort to anyone who has suffered such loss. Tomorrow I will share a couple of short paragraphs on the hope we can have in God's mercy for these children. Until then I would like simply to invite you to listen to this and encourage you to be comforted. "A Baby's Prayer (Click here)," written by Kathy Troccoli. For the lyrics Click Here. (I wouldn't recommend looking at other "related" YouTube videos - some are not helpful.)

Introduction to Post-Abortion Conversation, Day 1

This introductory post officially begins the "Blog Conversation" on post-abortion wounds and healing. Before starting I looked over the introductory remarks from last year's conversation on Humanae Vitae. I acknowledged in that conversation that I would rely on other participants to discuss the lived experience of faithfulness to that teaching, as it was not my experience. My husband and I are converts and were not exposed to the teaching during the years when it would have been especially relevant. I don't presume to assume what our response would have been at the time; I hope it would be faithfulness, but I know I am different now than I was then. I appreciate the willingness of the different participants to engage that time!

In a similar way, during this conversation we will again rely on other participants to share the lived experience of life after an abortion. I have not personally journeyed that road, though I have walked alongside others (friends, family, and especially through Project Rachel) whose experiences have helped me better understand the journey. Also like the last subject, I am not sure what my response would have been had I needed to confront an unexpected pregnancy years/decades ago. Again, I hope I would have chosen life, but I hesitate to be certain. I know that I am vulnerable to making profoundly wrong decisions, especially when I am poorly informed, emotionally involved, feel pressured to meet other people's expectations, if I am afraid, or feel like I need to take control of an out of control situation.

During this week we will likely see that there are as many varied responses to abortion as there are women who have had them. There are different stages; the immediate relief a woman may feel can mask a deep sense of guilt and grief that later can abruptly emerge upon the birth of another child or some other trigger. The frequent anger and shame coupling the grief and guilt can handicap a woman in other relationships, or can spark destructive behaviors to mask the pain. This discussion may seem to make generalizations; hopefully in the comments - where the conversation is likely to be most fruitful - people will be open to sharing their own journey and help one another.

Last year Pope Benedict proposed that the best response to those wounded by abortion (as well as divorce in the context of the specific remarks) is not condemnation, but "the attitude of merciful love." He added that "the Church has the primary duty to approach them with love and sensitivity, with maternal care and attention, to proclaim the closeness of the merciful God in Jesus Christ" which will "bring help and enable victims to rise up again and resume the course of their lives." He asks wounded women to "not give in to discouragement and to not lose hope...The Father of mercies is ready to give you His forgiveness and His peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation."

Please be aware that this conversation isn't meant to replace other crucial steps in the journey toward healing, especially including the Sacrament of Reconciliation, possibly counseling (especially when necessary to grapple with issues that can arise over years of coping alone with the pain), the support of friends/family, and/or other people who have shared the experience. But this can be one of those steps. Please enter the week prayerfully and with compassion and respect for each person walking on the journey.

You are invited today (and of course the invitation is open throughout the week) to introduce yourself if you like. Perhaps your story can be of help to someone else. Or, perhaps you would like to share something you hope to learn during this week. Perhaps you can share what sparked your interest in visiting the conversation. If you are considering this subject for the first time, perhaps never having listened to anyone who has been there, you might want to begin with the video clip by the "Silent No More" awareness campaign that is posted on the bottom of the Respect Life home page (click here) ...For the ease of conversation while maintaining privacy for such a personal subject, a nick name may be preferred. As noted in "Comments 101" above you are also welcome to contact me off blog if that is helpful.