(Note:
In order to protect the privacy of the woman involved and her
family, only her name has been changed.)
For
'Dorothy', it was the unforgivable sin...
“I fell away from God and walked
with my head down in shame all the time,” she said. “It was like living
in complete darkness.”
The decision to have an abortion
not only affected Dorothy’s life in the moment but also proved to have
profound consequences well into her marriage and ultimately her
experience of motherhood. Post-abortion healing proved to be the turning
point in her relationship with God, her husband, her children and
herself.
A young woman in the mid-1980s,
Dorothy fell into a sexual relationship with a young man who soon proved
he wasn’t ready to be a parent. In those days, Dorothy said, pregnancy
tests were taken at local pharmacies. On that day (well before current
privacy laws) Dorothy was taking a class, so the man took her urine
sample to the pharmacy.
The pharmacist confirmed the
pregnancy and gave the young man the name of an abortionist. The
would-be father presumed she would get rid of the baby and took it upon
himself to arrange the abortion.
“I knew right away it was wrong,”
she recounted. “I wanted the baby and he was angry. We fought like
crazy.”
The first time the couple went to
keep the appointment, Dorothy left. But he kept up the pressure over the
next two weeks. By then she was 11 weeks pregnant and time was running
out before the end of her first trimester.
So the couple once again made the
trip to the clinic. Because of a medical condition, Dorothy learned upon
the couple’s arrival that she would need an additional treatment
requiring an additional $200, paid in advance.
“I secretly thought he wouldn’t
have the money and this would end it,” she recalled.
When the man readily pulled the
additional cash out of his wallet, she felt completely defeated. His
last words to her were “don’t come back down here pregnant.” She said that she felt “beaten
down so much emotionally. I was made to feel like I was ruining his
life.”
But Dorothy now readily admits the
blame fell on her. “I was the one who did it.”
She cites different factors she
used to rationalize her decision. She was unwed and wanted a career. How
would she face her family? How could she raise a child on her own? Plus,
there was the element of time.
“Back then,” she explained, “we
didn’t have the knowledge or technology to take pictures. In that first
trimester before my body began to really change, they kept telling me it
was just a blob of tissue.”
Much later at the Museum of
Science and Industry in Chicago, after she viewed an exhibit that
included a model of an 11-week fetus, the reality of the life hit her
“like a ton of bricks.”
Before the abortion procedure, she
recalled meeting with a counselor who sensed her distress and
discomfort. The counselor’s solution was to give Dorothy an injection,
ironically assuring her that it would not harm the baby if she should
change her mind. In a room with a nurse and young doctor, the abortion
took approximately 10 minutes.
“You never forget the sound of the
suction machine. That ten minutes seemed like 10 hours,” she said.
Taking her to another room, she
recalled looking around, almost as if she was looking for her baby. She
was stricken by the thought that the baby had died without baptism or a
proper burial. What would happen to the remains?
In that room filled with other
young girls, she was given cookies and juice, as if she had just given
blood. The doctor breezed through, asking how everyone was doing, adding
that he would hate to have to do seconds.
“Before I left that day, I asked
him how he slept at night,” Dorothy said.
There was no post-support offered,
no physical follow-up. Patients were instructed to go to their own
physicians.
Dorothy recalled the descent into
darkness.
“Abortion robs the person of the
object of their grief. A part of me definitely died as the anger and
darkness immediately set in. I no longer had a baby and I couldn’t
change it.”
She remained in that darkness for
the next 20 years.
Several times she tried to confess
her sin but was unable. A past experience in the confessional when she
spoke of her loss of virginity had left her terrified, so although she
continued to attend Mass she held herself back from the Eucharist. She
held on to her faith by a string but felt despised and hated.
‘I no longer loved myself,” she
said. “I felt like I was going to hell and this would be my life from
now on.”
Healing was something she never
thought possible, and the pain caused her to turn extremely bitter. She
stayed with the man for the next 2½ years, noting that in a twisted way
he was the only connection she had with her child. When she finally
broke off the relationship, she recalled his shock. “He really believed
we would get married and have children.”
Eventually Dorothy met her
husband-to-be and early in their relationship told him about the
abortion. He demonstrated great compassion and understanding and the
couple soon made plans to marry. Dorothy, however, still kept most of
her emotions bottled up inside. She tried to confide in friends, but in
her mind they were obviously uncomfortable talking about her experience.
“People are happy to tell you what
you need to do but afterward.” she said, adding, “No one wants to
discuss it.”
Even though her fiancé knew the
truth, her feelings of unworthiness weighed heavily on her wedding day.
Placing flowers at the feet of the Blessed Mother, she remembered her
inability to look up into the face of the statue. In the years to come, Dorothy
would learn that there is no moving forward without healing. “I never forgot the date of the
abortion. Sometimes I would ball up in the bathroom and sob for hours,”
she said. “Each anniversary of my due date was difficult and I always
was aware of what the child’s age would be.”
Dorothy loved her husband, but
their first pregnancy became a time of tremendous grief mixed with joy
and bitterness.
“Who was I to be having this
baby?” she wondered. “I’d pray for God to please trust me with another
child.”
After the birth she would sit with
her new child and cry. “I felt so blessed, but then the guilt would wash
over me. I knew it was unfair to take it out on the baby, but I found it
difficult to bond. I didn’t know how to love this child because I didn’t
have the chance to love my first child. So I kept my distance and never
allowed myself to love completely.”
Over the course of two more
children and eight more years, the depression and guilt continued.
“I remembered the abortion every
day of my life and it kept my motherhood from being complete and holy,”
she explained.
Still going through the motions at
Mass, one Easter Dorothy found herself in the narthex with her crying
baby. Walking the floor, she first spotted the brochure for Rachel’s
Vineyard, a weekend retreat for post-abortion healing. She recalled that
moment as “a little rope of grace I could hold on to.”
When the program was finally
announced locally, Dorothy took the first big step by attending an
evening of healing prayer as an introduction to the retreat. Nervous,
she knew she had to go to reclaim her life, not only for herself but her
family as well.
In her words, that night provided
her first opportunity to meet her child with Jesus. Instead of a “blob
of tissue,” she saw her child whole and safe in the arms of Christ. At
last, bringing the baby into her heart, she realized the child had been
safe with Jesus all this time.
She also approached the
confessional that night. Walking up the priest, his first words were
“You are forgiven.” In a release of years of pent up sorrow, anger,
bitterness and self-loathing, she burst into tears.
Four months later, Dorothy made
the full weekend retreat. It was there that she found true forgiveness —
for herself and for the baby’s father. She accepted her share of the
blame and eventually wrote a letter to the man, absolving him of guilt
and lifting the burden of blame, while hoping he was able to make his
own peace with God and their child.
She describes leaving the retreat
feeling brand new. “I literally left with the light of Christ burning in
my heart.” The change was immediately noticeable by her husband.
“I was so touched by the Holy
Spirit that weekend,” she recalled. “I looked at my husband and children
with new eyes and saw I was blessed.”
Dorothy has since become an active
member of the Rachel’s Vineyard team, hoping to bring the same comfort
and healing she has experienced to others. “I am someone who has been
through the darkness and walked back into God’s light,” she said. “I’ve
walked in their shoes. While our stories are different, our common bond
is that we have lost a child. How can I not help?" Her advice to those struggling
with the pain of an abortion?
“You never forget what has
happened. People who are post-abortion are like the Prodigal Son. God is
always reaching out to bring you back, no matter how much time has
passed.” Note:
More information on Project Rachel or Rachel’s Vineyard Retreats is
available at
www.rachelsvineyard.org or by calling locally 219-374-5193.
All inquiries remain strictly confidential.
PRO-LIFE
PROTESTER SHOWS MODEL OF FETUS DURING DEMONSTRATION
A pro-life protester shows a model of a nine-week-old fetus during a
demonstration outside Parliament in Valletta, Malta, Oct. 25, 2006.
Protesters gathered to petition members of Parliament to include the
right to life for the unborn child in Malta's Constit ution.
Abortion is illegal in the staunchly Catholic country, but pro-life
activists want to guard against the possibility of abortion being
legalized. (CNS photo/Darrin Zammit Lupi, Reuters)
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- It took a long time for attorney Chris
Aubert to miss his children -- the ones he lost to abortion.
But once he did -- and it took the better part
of a decade -- he was ready to make his choice for life.
Aubert is scheduled to speak at a "Reclaiming
Fatherhood" conference Nov. 28-29 in San Francisco, funded by
the Knights of Columbus and co-sponsored by the Knights and the
Archdiocese of San Francisco.
It is being organized by the Milwaukee-based
Office of Post-Abortion Reconciliation and Healing, headed by
Vicki Thorn, and according to the office, the event is the first
to focus on the effects of abortion on men.
The conference, according to Thorn, could help
men dealing with the psychological trauma of post-abortion
reality the way Project Rachel -- the post-abortion healing
ministry of the Catholic Church Thorn founded -- has helped
women who have undergone abortions deal with their own
psychological scars.
Aubert, in a telephone interview with Catholic
News Service from The Woodlands, Texas, a Houston suburb, said
that in 1985, when he first impregnated a woman who was " a
friend, but not really a girlfriend, I was not a one-woman man,
let's say, at the time, and I had no qualms about premarital sex
or anything like that."
Nor did he have any qualms about her decision
to have an abortion. "She got the abortion. I did not go. It was
a complete and total nonevent for me," he said. "My thinking was
at the time this was just a collection of nonviable tissue
cells, it's perfectly legal, it's her body -- all the things
today I find as laughably silly. I bought into it." He never saw
the woman again.
Much the same was true in 1991, six years
later, when he got his girlfriend pregnant. "I had just been
civilly divorced outside the church and I was not ready to get
married again. She was a Methodist, I was a 'nothing.'"
Nominally Jewish, Aubert said his bar mitzvah in 1970 was the
last time he had stepped into a synagogue. "She had no quarrel
with the abortion. I said, 'Fine with me,'" he recalled.
There was a difference, though, between the
two abortions.
"This time, however, I did go into the clinic
with her. I went into the waiting room with her," Aubert said.
"Looking back, it was probably something very, very deep within
me that said, 'Something about this isn't right.' I wouldn't
have been able to articulate it if you asked me. ... Something
about the second one seems different."
Thorn told CNS in a Sept. 19 interview that
research indicates men go through their own physical changes as
they go through pregnancy with their mate. One is a lessening of
testosterone. Men also bond more closely with their mate after
childbirth and are willing to make sacrifices to solidify the
family unit: "I'll make that midnight run for diapers, and,
honey, since I'm out, do you want any Starbucks?" Those changes,
Thorn added, are short-circuited in an abortion.
Men may react by withdrawing -- "they don't
talk about their feelings like women," Thorn noted -- but also
by trying to impregnate a woman again, she said.
Aubert and his girlfriend drifted apart, which
he attributes to the abortion. Then he met his current wife,
whom he described as "a cradle Catholic," and got married.
Within two months she was pregnant.
"The abortions started to eat away at me a
little bit" by then, Aubert told CNS. At the doctor's office
upon viewing the ultrasound of the child his wife was carrying,
Aubert said he blurted out, "I want to meet the person that
wants to debate with me whether this is a baby or not."
"This flood of emotion came back. I realized I
killed two of my kids," Aubert said. "I didn't mention this to
my wife, but I was just devastated by it, just devastated. I had
killed two of my kids."
Aubert, who became a Catholic in 1997, said it
still took him a few years to work up the nerve to talk about
the abortions at confession. When he did, he added, "I was a
weeping mess. It was horrible. I ended up telling my wife. She
could not have been any nicer or more understanding."
Aubert said he talks about the prospective
father's role in abortion "on a micro level, every day. On a
macro level, once every few weeks I've done it. It might be
crisis pregnancy centers, youth conferences, men's groups."
He recalls giving two addresses in one day,
first in the afternoon to the crisis pregnancy organization
Birthright at its Texas state meeting, and that evening to a
Catholic group's benefit diner.
- - -
Editor's Note: More information on the "Reclaiming Fatherhood"
conference is available at
www.menandabortion.info.
END
09/21/2007 2:41 PM ET
Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops
Abortion Help and Healing
Diocese of Gary, Indiana
If you are suffering
from failed relationships, addictions, financial difficulties, emotional
or physical problems, depression or a feeling of something being not
right, and if you've had an abortion, these are all REAL and related
symptoms of your trauma.
Getting help by attending a
weekend retreat will allow you to heal and forgive yourself and live the
full life Jesus has indended you to live.
Reach out today and begin living again! "Project Rachel" - for
the Diocese of Gary
Contact viae-mail Carolyn Kenning
or by telephone
219-374-5193 or visit
the main website
www.rachelsvineyard.org for a retreat in your area and for more
information. National
toll-free hotline 1-877 HOPE-4-ME (1-877-467-3463
Diocese holds
study day on
post-abortion healing
By Michael Wojcik
Catholic News Service
MOUNTAIN
LAKES, N.J. (CNS) -- "No sin is beyond God's mercy," Father
Mariusz Koch of Newark, a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal, told
100 church leaders gathered in Mountain Lakes for a study day on
post-abortion healing.
"All of us can be the
first touch of God's mercy. We must be present to (women who
have had abortions) with God's compassion and understanding," he
said.
Father Koch and Theresa
Bonopartis, who are involved in post-abortion healing ministry,
were among presenters at the study day, held at St. Catherine of
Siena Church in Mountain Lakes and sponsored by the Paterson
diocesan Office of Respect Life.
They and others
highlighted some of the devastating effects women can experience
after an abortion, including deep feelings of pain, shame and
trauma that may surface in a variety of behavioral and
psychological problems, including depression, substance abuse
and difficulties with relationships.
One speaker, Mary
Kominsky of Union County, said that in her efforts to cope with
her decision to have an abortion 30 years ago when she was 17 --
"the most traumatic experience of my life" -- she turned to drug
and alcohol abuse and developed an eating disorder as she
battled her depression.
Six years later, when she
got married, she and her husband wanted children but were
unsuccessful because of scarring she had from the abortion, she
said. When she finally got pregnant at the age of 35, she said
she didn't feel "worthy" to have a child. Her daughter was sick
when she was born, and Kominsky considered it God's punishment
for her abortion years earlier.
"I got down on my knees
in the hospital chapel and ... asked God for his forgiveness,"
she said.
She said she finally
began to find healing in 1999 through a retreat sponsored by
Rachel's Vineyard,
an organization that offers weekend retreats specifically geared
to helping people who have been involved in an abortion deal
with its effects on their lives and reach healing and
reconciliation. "I realize now that God didn't leave me (when I
had an abortion). ... I left him," she said.
Father Koch said women
who have had an abortion must accept the truth of their sin, but
they need also to accept the greater truth that God loves them.
Healing and
reconciliation begin "at that moment when they begin to
understand -- from the head down to the heart -- that God loves
them," the priest said.
Marie Ryan, diocesan
consultant for family life, said the purpose of the study day
was to help those who minister "gain an understanding and raise
awareness of who is in need of post-abortion healing and how we
can help them. Women realize that God has forgiven them. Once
they accept God's forgiveness, they can forgive themselves."
Bonopartis, who got
involved in post-abortion healing ministries because of her own
experience of healing after an abortion, had a similar message.
"They need to put their lives in God's hands. There is no easy
fix," she said. "Healing from abortion is God's will. Trust in
God and he will do the rest."
In a workshop
specifically for the clergy, Father Koch said, "As priests, you
symbolize Christ and the church. Attitude is important. It's
about how you look at them (those seeking post-abortion healing)
and how you listen to them."
He said priests and
deacons should preach about abortion but should avoid a harsh or
condemning tone and separate the sinner from the sin. Women
often feel that the church and God will not forgive them because
they hear that the church "condemns" the sin of abortion, he
said.
"Lead them to God's
mercy," he said.
"Those who experience
God's mercy often become wonderful Catholics," he added. "They
experience a deepening spirituality and become zealous
evangelizers of the faith."
Bioethics
and Stemcells
(CNS graphic by Anthony DeFeo)
EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS SEEN IN
HIGH-MAGNIFICATION VIEW
Children's Hospital Boston released this high-magnification view of
human embryonic stem cells when it announced in early June that it is
pursuing research that utilizes discarded donor eggs and embryos from
women undergoing in vitro fertilization. The cells in this photo have
been stained to make their components more visible.
(CNS photo/M. W. Lensch, Children's Hospital Boston)
