Introduction
In 1922, writer and drama critic Dorothy Parker found herself with a “problem pregnancy.” Young, pretty, and scathingly brilliant, she was also stuck in a bad marriage. But her morphine-addicted, abusive husband wasn’t the father. Another married man was. And he didn’t want anything to do with his baby.
So Parker made a fateful decision. She had a legal abortion in New York City. Her lover pitched in $30 for the operation. She would later say bitterly, “It was like Judas making a refund.”
Almost immediately Parker began to struggle with her choice. A recurrent dream haunted her; she saw her baby with its tiny hands. She tried to cope in a variety of ways: humor, alcohol, sleeping around. When she drank too much, she would talk about the abortion. But in the man’s world of New York publishing in the 1920s, nobody wanted to listen. Feeling hopeless, she tried to kill herself. From that point on, much of her writing obsessed over death and suicide.
Women feel compelled to choose abortion for a wide range of reasons, and they react to that choice in multiple ways. But the tragedy of abortion is compounded when these women are left alone, their voices ignored.
What are we to do for the post-abortive woman? Must she struggle alone? In this booklet, we’ll hear from two women who made the choice to have an abortion and came to regret it. Yet eventually they found love, acceptance, and grace. We invite you to explore their hopeful journey with us.
1. The Trauma of Abortion
Neither of them spoke on the way to the clinic. As Bill drove, Laurie replayed in her mind his words from the previous week. “Laurie, I’ll do whatever you want to do,” he had said. “If you want to get married, I’ll marry you. If you want to have an abortion, that’s okay too.” Despite his words, she sensed his fear and his growing distance. And she felt abandoned. She knew she was on her own.
Bill’s first marriage had begun with a pregnancy, when he was just 17. It ended less than four years later, giving him joint custody of two children. Laurie felt it would be unfair to put Bill through the ordeal of having to face his family with the news that he’d messed up again. She also dreaded the thought of disappointing her parents. What she wanted most was to marry Bill. But not like this.
So, she shouldered the responsibility for the decision to “terminate the pregnancy.” That’s how the counselor at the clinic phrased it. She reassured Laurie, “It isn’t a life yet. The procedure is simple and no more painful than your annual checkup at your gynecologist.”
As she sat in the waiting room, her ambivalence grew. Even though she was given Valium to calm her nerves, something felt wrong. When they called her name, she wanted Bill to grab her and say, “Wait a minute, we’ll work this out.” But that didn’t happen. In the operating room, the doctor was professional and aloof. The procedure was more painful than she expected. But what surprised her the most were the emotions that welled up within her.
After a short time in the recovery room, she was released—through the back door of the clinic. As soon as she saw Bill, she burst into tears. Her first words were, “Do you still love me?” He reassured her that he did. After all, she’d had the abortion for him. But deep inside she felt, “I must be unlovable now after what I’ve done.”
The ride back to their apartment was quiet. Something had changed between them, and they both knew it. Finally Bill broke the silence: “It’s done. We don’t need to talk about this anymore. Let’s put it behind us.” Laurie felt a tightening in her stomach. I’m not sure I can do that, she thought. Yet because of what she sensed in Bill, Laurie took a vow that day to suppress her feelings.
Bill’s “other” children greeted them as they returned home, clamoring for Laurie’s attention. She adored them, but now even those feelings had changed. She quietly excused herself to the bathroom, slumped to the floor, and sobbed. She felt empty, alone, and angry—angry at Bill for keeping his first two children and not wanting hers. Angry at feeling trapped. The abortion was already beginning to unearth so many overwhelming feelings that all she could do was shut them down.1
For many couples like Laurie and Bill, discovering they are pregnant is not a joyous occasion. Sometimes the prospect of having a child collides with a couple’s plans for the future. Unemployment, financial stress, relational instability, and being unmarried are all factors that push a woman to sort through her options. Many choose to abort.
In the United States alone, nearly a million women each year choose to have an abortion.2 And each year, an estimated fifty-six million abortions occur worldwide.3 But like Laurie, many of these women have little idea what awaits them during and after the procedure. What they choose is to stop being pregnant. But what they get are the lifelong effects of ending a human life. Those effects are physical, emotional, relational—and spiritual.
Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in the United States, over 57 million pregnancies have ended in abortion.4 Many struggle in silence for years with the pain of what they did. Their painful secret cries out for our compassion. These women need a safe place to talk and feel, a place to grieve and heal.
Although the path of healing is also the way of sorrow, it can lead to freedom and joy. Jesus offered hope to his followers—no matter what they had done—when he taught, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (matthew 5:4).
Since the early 1980s, an increasing number of women have sought treatment for emotional struggles resulting from a past abortion.5 Dr. David C. Reardon, a leading post-abortion researcher, writes: “Abortion is not some magical surgery which turns back time to make a woman ‘unpregnant.’ Instead, it is a real-life event which is always very stressful and often traumatic.”6
Post-abortion trauma (PAT) is a woman’s struggle to work through her thoughts and feelings about her pregnancy and abortion, and her striving to come to peace with herself and others (including God) over her choices and losses.7 A common feeling heard in the interviews of women before, during, and after an abortion is the sense of a life being taken.
No matter how equipped a woman is to deal with the trauma of an abortion, everyone is impacted by it. In Laurie’s words, “Something was different. They brought me in the front door and they took me out the back. I was never the same.”
After searching in vain to find a way to deal with her abortion, Laurie shut down her emotions as a way of coping with it. This deadening of a woman’s soul is the second casualty of abortion.
While each woman’s response to her abortion is unique, there are many common emotions and experiences. These include anger, anxiety, betrayal, eating disorders, and flashbacks. A post-abortive woman may suffer from broken or abusive relationships, bitterness, distrust, or depression. She may have nightmares or sleep disorders, or endure feelings of guilt, grief, and helplessness. Sexual dysfunction sometimes follows an abortion. Or a woman may resort to substance abuse to cope with feelings of resentment and remorse.
Suicidal thoughts or tendencies, or other self-destructive behaviors may come to the forefront. Shame and lowered self-esteem may occur in a post-abortive woman. She may lapse into bouts of uncontrollable crying, or experience a fear of future pregnancies. Some women develop problems bonding with other children. Others experience an intense desire to replace the baby. Still others will avoid babies, small children, or anything to do with pregnancy or abortion.9
If a woman has had an abortion and identifies with several of these reactions, she may be struggling with post-abortion trauma. She should consider seeking help from a trauma therapist to work through her struggles. Several agencies specializing in PAT are listed at the end of this booklet.
Researchers have established a strong link between post-abortion trauma (also known as post-abortion stress or post-abortion syndrome) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).10 PTSD is a diagnosis that identified veterans who were unable to deal effectively with normal life after having experienced the trauma of war.
The arguments for and against an official post-abortion syndrome diagnosis will no doubt continue. But those who honestly examine the data admit that abortion deeply affects those who choose it. Dr. Julius Fogel, a psychiatrist and obstetrician who has performed 20,000 abortions, expressed deep concern over the effects of abortion on the mother. He stated:
“Abortion is an impassioned subject. . . . Every woman—whatever her age, background, or sexuality—has a trauma at destroying a pregnancy. A level of humanness is touched. This is a part of her own life. She destroys a pregnancy, she is destroying herself. There is no way it can be innocuous. One is dealing with the life force. It is totally beside the point whether or not you think a life is there. You cannot deny that something is being created and that this creation is physically happening. . . . Often the trauma may sink into the unconscious and never surface in the woman’s lifetime. But it is not as harmless and casual an event as many in the pro-abortion crowd insist. A psychological price is paid. It may be alienation; it may be a pushing away from human warmth, perhaps a hardening of the maternal instinct. Something happens on the deeper levels of a woman’s consciousness when she destroys a pregnancy.”11
Laurie’s anger began hours after her abortion and became the undercurrent of her personality. Anger helped her mask the traumatic effects of the abortion. She became highly critical of everything Bill did. She did all she could to sabotage their relationship in order to prove that she wasn’t worthy of being loved. As her coping strategy crumbled and she began to feel her trauma again, the truth about what she’d done nudged its way to the surface.
Reviewing post-abortion history and research, we have discovered an all-too-familiar pattern of emotional bleeding within women who have had abortions. Most women who abort feel deeply ambivalent about abortion. Many women feel so desperate in their circumstances that they choose a “solution” that collides head-on with their conscience and maternal instincts.
Immediately after an abortion, denial helps to dull what has happened. Statements like “It isn’t a baby, it’s just a blob of tissue,” “If it’s legal, it must be okay,” or “I didn’t kill anything, I just terminated a pregnancy” are attempts to minimize the effect of abortion. But as denial melts away and the truth emerges, a woman begins to feel the awful pain she has tried to bury.
For most women, denial usually ceases to be effective five to ten years after the abortion. Eventually, some event—the birth of another child, the last child leaving home, a divorce— triggers an emotional tremor, and the neatly constructed house of denial collapses. Studies demonstrate that “dissatisfaction and regrets over abortion grow with time.”15
Until a woman is willing to face the truth of how an abortion has impacted her and accept responsibility for her own choices, she can remain imprisoned behind her denial, unable to freely enjoy life and relationships. She may work hard to remain cut off from her pain—from workaholism to alcoholism, from sexual promiscuity to sexual avoidance, from quickly getting pregnant again to avoiding anything associated with pregnancy. But ultimately nothing works. Instead of enjoying life, she endures it. But what she cannot deny forever is her feminine heart that longs to nurture life. And that is precisely where the healing can start. In her private moments, when she reflects on her life, her suppressed feelings begin to come back. In those moments the freedom of truth calls to her from the solitary confinement of her own making. If she accepts the offer, the process of healing can begin.
2. Healing the Trauma
To begin healing from PAT, a woman needs a safe place to talk. Silence can be deafening to one who is struggling alone with the pain of abortion. No one listened to her objections before her abortion. No one has listened to her struggles since. She desperately needs someone to listen to her now—someone who understands what she’s going through and who won’t condemn her or minimize what has happened.
Healing is always a process involving others, pain and time. There are no “quick fixes” for the wounds of the soul. But God has given a promise to all who join the journey: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (psalm 147:3). This journey often involves:
Letting go of denial. Denial is the wall of forgetfulness we erect to protect ourselves from the pain. The only way to tear down the wall is to remember. Jesus taught that freedom comes through knowing the truth (john 8:32). As she reconnects with her feelings about the abortion, it’s helpful for a woman to face the truth about who she is, what she has done, and what was done to her.
Who she is. God created her in his image (genesis 1:27). He designed her body and soul to bear and nurture life (genesis 1:28; 3:20). God used the illustration of a nursing mother’s care and compassion to express his love for his people. Through the prophet Isaiah he asked: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” (isaiah 49:15).
A woman living in denial has forgotten that she was made to live in such a way that the image of a nurturing and compassionate God could be seen in her.
What she has done. A woman needs to face her denial by admitting that her decision to abort brought an end to the life forming within her. Reading Psalm 139:13–16 will help her to see God’s involvement in the development of a child: You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
In 1971, the pro-abortion editors of California Medicine identified the need to use “semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life.”17 This message of denial has been fed to women for years. And yet, no matter how anyone tries to package it or rephrase it, everyone really knows deep down that abortion is the taking of a human life.
What was done to her. Many women who’ve had abortions were themselves victims of misinformation. A survey indicated that 93 percent of women who have had abortions insisted that they had little or none of the necessary information to make the decision to abort.18
This was Tracy’s experience. Becoming pregnant was “pretty frightening,” she recalls. Attending art school at time, she feared what she would lose if she had the baby. So she went to a “women’s health center.” The counselor seemed so compassionate. But instead of receiving information to make a completely informed decision, she got a high-pressure sales job.
Tracy said, “I remember not being really sure how I felt about it all.” The counselor called that night and said, “Hey, look, I’m really worried that you can’t wait any longer. We are making room for you tomorrow morning.” When she and her boyfriend got there the next day, her boyfriend was not allowed in. An hour later, she knew she had just had an abortion. And she vaguely sensed it was wrong.
The advent of ultrasound has exploded the myth that “the fetus isn’t a baby, but only two teaspoons full of tissue.” Even at the earliest stages of fetal development, a mother can now see and recognize that it is indeed a baby. Letting go of denial may also free a woman to admit she has been wronged by the irresponsibility of the man who got her pregnant and by those family members who discouraged her from carrying the child to term.
Releasing the anger. As a woman faces the truth about her own choices and as she faces what others have done to her, anger usually rises up within her over her feelings of betrayal. Her anger may be directed at any or all of the following:
Anger at her family for pressuring her into an abortion or for refusing to support her in carrying her baby to term. Many teenage girls feel betrayed by parents who demanded they get an abortion to avoid shaming the family. Included in this group is the father of the baby who may have pressured her into the abortion by threatening to leave if she didn’t “take care of it.” Ironically, less than half of those relationships survive three months after the abortion.
Anger at the doctor for performing the abortion without answering all her questions and warning her of all the risks. As she discovers more about fetal development, her anger may increase because of the web of deception that prevented her from reconsidering her decision.
Anger at herself for betraying herself and her child by allowing the abortion in spite of the ambivalence she may have felt.
Anger at God for allowing her to get pregnant and then not providing better circumstances or more supportive relationships that would have made it easier for her to have the baby.
In working through anger, it is helpful for a woman to distinguish between healthy anger that longs for fairness and unhealthy anger that seeks to cut people off or take revenge. Unhealthy anger seeks to control pain by directing one’s energies toward distancing ourselves or getting back at those who’ve hurt us. That was true for Laurie. Along with maintaining her denial, her anger gave her some semblance of control. It became her weapon of choice to keep Bill at a safe distance. If he got too close to her and she felt threatened, she’d lash out at him and make him pay. She felt that since he didn’t protect her or their baby, she couldn’t ever count on him to protect her again.
None of us can afford to nurse our anger against those who have let us down. There are many good reasons to feel angry, but it’s important to not hold on to it when we feel the anger leaving us. Otherwise, it will degenerate into a bitterness that alienates us from God and others and robs us of joyful living.
As a woman begins to realize what her abortion did to her, her baby, and to those around her, she will need to face the anger she feels toward those involved in her abortion. As long as any of us deny our anger at others, we will never fully face the pain of our losses. Healthy anger helps us move on to the next part of healing—grieving our losses.
Grieving the Losses. Facing the extent of the loss over an abortion is one of the most important steps in the healing process. But it can also be the most difficult. Having lived for so long in denial of her feelings, a woman who begins to face her losses can feel overwhelmed by the sorrow. She may find herself tempted to return to denial because the pain seems unbearable. This is when she needs the loving support of a group that is willing to weep with her as she faces her loss.
Working through grief is complicated in our society because we are impatient with someone who can’t move on quickly following a loss. This is especially true when it comes to facing a loss that occurred many years ago. But if a woman is to reconcile with her past, she needs to remember and weep for those losses that have left deep wounds in her heart.
Grief is unique for each woman. For some, significant losses caused by an abortion will include the loss of the child, the loss of the relationship with the baby’s father, the loss of the woman’s own innocence, the loss of the experience of motherhood, and the loss of a sense of control. Ambivalent feelings toward each of these losses will make grieving a difficult task. Some women mourn the loss of never being able to hold their unborn child in their arms, to rock him, to sing to her, to touch him, or to see her face. Others have the added loss of not being able to have another child of their own because of the physical damage done during or after the abortion.
Many women who’ve had abortions identify with the grief of the women of Israel whose innocent sons were slaughtered by the wicked King Herod in an attempt to kill the baby Jesus. Matthew quoted the prophecy of Jeremiah 31:15 when he wrote, “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more” (matthew 2:18).
The feeling of the baby who is “no more” is a common theme. Part of the grieving process involves honoring the memory of the person lost and saying goodbye. Some find it helpful to give their baby a name to clarify in their minds that this was a child. This makes the grieving process more personal for them.
Others decide to honor the child and say goodbye by having a memorial ceremony with a few close friends, family members, or a counselor. They feel that a more public ceremony honors the child that was never given a chance to live.
Some write a letter, a poem, or a song for their unborn child. Some plant a tree in a local park or give a gift to a crisis pregnancy center as a living memorial to remind them of the life that was lost. One mother of three got a tattoo of a pair of leaves to honor the memory of her two unborn babies.
There is no standard way to grieve or say goodbye. What is important is that a woman chooses some way that allows her to remember and grieve her losses, because it is in the process of mourning that God will comfort her.
Receiving Forgiveness. Many women who have had abortions are so weighed down by the guilt and shame over what they’ve done in taking the life of their child that they cannot even imagine what it would be like to feel free or forgiven. One woman admits, “I never look myself in the eye in a mirror. I’m afraid of the ugliness I’ll see.”
At some level, we can all identify with the woman who opened up to Jesus about where she experienced her greatest brokenness. In her case, it was a string of failed marriages and living with a man who wasn’t her husband (john 4:16–17).
She didn’t have to go there with Jesus. There were multiple ways to dodge the touchy topics of men and marriage. But this woman, riddled with guilt and shame, chose to be painfully transparent. “I have no husband,” she answered Jesus. And twice Jesus affirms her vulnerability. “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true” (john 4:17–18).
Jesus applauds her willingness to answer honestly, giving him access to the place where her guilt and shame was most profound. Her decision to confess the shame she carried deep inside was a chosen act of vulnerability that allowed her to experience the kind of love and grace that comes from being fully known and accepted.
Hiding our guilt and shame always makes it worse. Many women have found a crisis pregnancy center to be a place where they can finally stop hiding and let themselves be fully seen without a hint of judgment or rejection. After the abortion, Tracy visited such a place—with fear and trepidation. She feared being discovered and condemned. But as Tracy recalls, “What I encountered that day was the love of Christ demonstrated through a lovely woman who reached out to me and who I will forever consider a friend. Not only was she extremely helpful and knowledgeable, but she patiently answered all of my questions, which in turn led her to ask me why I was looking for such specific information. I told her. Her response was filled with compassion, truth and love. While I don’t necessarily remember her words that day, I will always remember the grace that flowed through her and touched my life in a very profound way. I recognized that grace. It was my Father.”
Love and grace can heal our deepest shame when we let God and others into it. Tracy would discover it’s a process. That process continued years later as she was returning home with her three boys from a pro-life rally. Her sons, ages 11, 9, and 7, all knew about her abortion. But at the rally they learned about the reality of abortion in ways they hadn’t fully considered before. On the drive home, her youngest son asked, “Is that what you really did, Mom?” She answered quietly, “Yes, it was.”
Her second son said, “Wow, Mom, what if that had been one of us?”
It was then that her eldest son rocked her world. “But it was,” he said.
A conversation that could have destroyed Tracy suddenly overflowed with love and grace. “It was painful, yes,” she says. “But that moment became so precious to me. My innocent children made the fully reality of abortion known to me. But it was okay. I knew it was completely covered with God’s grace.”
Sometimes we can’t shake off the weight of what we’ve done. This is especially true in the initial stages of working through forgiveness. But our forgiveness has nothing to do with what we’ve done. It has everything to do with what Christ has done for us (titus 3:5). It is “by his wounds we are healed” (isaiah 53:5–6). The Bible reminds us that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (romans 8:1). Jesus paid it all. The debt has been canceled for all who have accepted Jesus’s offer of forgiveness.
Because the memories of abortion don’t disappear after being forgiven, the evil one likes to dredge up those memories and wave them in front of us, causing us to doubt God’s heart toward us. That’s been Satan’s strategy from the start. But we have an Intercessor who is on our side. As the apostle Paul put it, “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us” (romans 8:33–34). Paul reassured us that no sin can outdistance God’s grace, because “where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (romans 5:20). So we can enter God’s presence with the confidence that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 john 1:9).
Not long after that powerful conversation with her sons, Tracy made this entry in her journal: “The horrible revelation of the truth at that moment pierced straight through the mother’s heart within me. An arrow full of the poison of guilt and condemnation. The full force of the ramifications of the decision I had made years earlier hit me. My great shame and failure was laid bare before my innocent children. I saw the pain their eyes and felt it in the weight of the silence between us. But grace. The awesome power of the gift of God’s grace. Out of my spirit came the reminder that I had been washed clean by the blood of Jesus. Not merely forgiven, but I had been made to be the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.”
When a woman accepts and experiences God’s forgiveness, she will no longer see abortion as the defining event in her life. Instead, the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ will become the events by which everything else measured. It is in the cross and the empty tomb that we all find the hope, confidence, and strength to reinvest in loving others.
3. Living Passionately
Two passages of Scripture have especially touched the hearts of women who are learning to enjoy the freedom of forgiveness in Christ. Although they are addressed to the nation of Israel, they both reflect the passionate heart of God for his people:
The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing (zephaniah 3:17).
I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt (hosea 2:14–15).
There are two powerful images in these texts. The first is that of God as a passionate lover who delights in singing to his people. The second image shows that singing is a passionate response of God’s people to his wooing, reflecting their freedom to enjoy Him and others.
When was the last time someone was so excited about you that he sang to you? Have you ever dreamed that God wants to do that for you no matter what you’ve done? Singing reflects praise, joy, and worship. You know you are making good progress toward healing when your desire to sing returns. Singing reflects a gratefulness over seeing your abortion redeemed and a desire to give back something in return.
Laurie and Tracy, the women mentioned throughout this booklet, have effectively worked through the healing process. They no longer define themselves by their abortions. Instead, their abortions are remembered along with the other lifeshaping events that God used to draw their hearts back to himself. The work of Christ on the cross and his forgiveness for all their sins has now become the most important event to them. Their abortions no longer dominate them and silence their singing. Instead, the cross and the resurrection become their reasons to sing again. The irony of redemption is that God honors a woman’s abortion not because it was good but because he wastes nothing. It became her “desert wandering” where he drew her back into a relationship with himself by speaking tenderly to her. He honors the past because his intent is to restore what was marred.
The restoration from an abortion takes two forms. First, God begins to restore a woman’s inner beauty. She becomes a woman of strength who is free to laugh again because her confidence is in God. She’s free to enjoy healthy relationships with others.
Second, out of gratefulness for God’s forgiveness, she is motivated to nurture life again. She reaches out and encourages others in their healing journey. Like the woman who bathed Jesus’s feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, and anointed them with costly perfume (luke 7:36–47), she knows what it means to be forgiven of the enormous burden of her sins. That’s why she delights in giving something back to help others.
If you’ve had an abortion, you have something unique to offer women who are struggling with a decision about their own pregnancy. Like Laurie and Tracy, you have a story to tell. Your story of crisis and tragedy will powerfully touch more lives than any television ad. Please consider nurturing life again by sharing your story. You cannot bring back your baby, but God may use your story to encourage someone else to choose life for her baby.
