If you are post-abortive, there is hope for healing. God is bigger than our deepest hurts. His mercy is waiting for you...

In my experience, women AND MEN begin to heal from abortion after they turn to God in repentance. For some it's a long, painful process, but taking that first step can be the hardest.

There are many post-abortive healing ministries.

Here's a few that I know about:


Rachel's Vineyard

http://www.rachelsvineyard.org/

Silent No More

http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/

Feel free to list others here or share your experiences with them.

How is it men need to be healed of abortion? Just curious.

Katy

From this website,

http://www.fatherhoodforever.org/


I found this testimony of a father whose wife insisted on aborting two of the three babies she was carrying in her womb. His story is clearly written out of his need to redeem his sin and keep others from the horror he lives with every day. Given that the abortions took place in the context of IVF makes it seem eerily like a 'medical' issue, but here's what he was left with:


I will never fully recover from what I've seen, and done...

My wife didn't look, but I had to. I had to know what would happen to my children. I had to know how they would die. Each retreated, pushing away, as the needle entered the amniotic sac. They did not inject into the placenta, but directly into each child's torso. Each one crumpled as the needle pierced the body. I saw the heart stop in the first, and mine almost did, too. The other's heart fought, but ten minutes later they looked again, and it too had ceased. The doctors had the gall to call the potassium chloride, the chemical that stopped children's hearts, "medicine." I wanted to ask what they were trying cure -- life? But bitter words would not undo what had happened. I swallowed anything I might have said. I know they felt pain. I know they felt panic. And I know this was murder.

He ends his testimony with this beautiful cry to God:

If, by baring this scar for others to see, I can prevent an abortion, perhaps that will help to balance the scales for when I face G-d's justice and I finally meet those two children -- who I hope will forgive me for my failure.

Read more: whoops. I see the link is no longer available.

I also have at least two good books in my office on post-abortive grief in men. The need for repentance and healing in men who have consented to the killing of their children is staggering.

In the Black community (in the USA), the rate of child-killing is very high: almost as many babies are killed in the womb as are born alive! Can you imagine?!

What do you think this does to the human family?

This is another example of what men go through when they kill their pre-born children.

Fearing that the new life would upset for good the long-awaited renewed intimacy, we "reluctantly" decided to have the abortion. I accompanied my wife to the hospital and waited. ...My wife still maintains she did what she had to do at the time to preserve her mental health and so not have a child who might have been unwanted and grown up feeling those effects.

While she seems matter-of-fact even now, I notice she gets uncomfortable when the facts about abortion come up and she often leaves the situation. She brushed aside any possibility of counseling for herself (for abortion) even though she looks chronically depressed ever since then, complains of always being tired despite many physical evaluations that disclose no objective illness. She often looks sad, restless and unsatisfied. (I know our marital relationship and also a serious injury to one of our children also adds to this).

She gets angry when I admit we did something terribly wrong. She wondered whether, later on, God was punishing us in the injury of our child, for the earlier abortion. ...

My reaction as Father: I think I have been far more in touch with my grief and deep sorrow for the life I helped to end. I think of my child that will never be on earth. I hate the self-deception and the falsehood I bought into. The pseudo - "enlightened" argument I groped for has actually proven to be the DARKEST moment of my life, filling me with unending ache and remorse.

Hardly a day goes by that I don't shudder and almost weep again for the murder I helped to bring about. Quite often I even wake up in the morning thinking painfully of the undeniably selfish act I did over 11 years ago - STILL!

I know I overrode in my core being my conscience (dulled at the time) and my Fatherhood instinct. ... Were it not for my renewed faith in God's love and mercy toward me, my loathing for what I did would likely long ago have caused me to take my life - but that would only compound an already abominable sin.

I would do anything (if God would accept the bargain) to reverse that fateful mistake. In all sincerity, I would ask God to take my life now in order to restore my unborn child's life on earth. Even though assured of God's forgiveness, I am still trying to forgive myself. The pre-existing problem with marital intimacy - far from getting better - has worsened over the years.

The abortion has added a new twist, which is that my wife's body does not seem so inviting and nurturing and I also feel I don't have the "right" to enjoy the pleasure love-making once brought. The estrangement is hard to fix and my wife can't seem to share with me the horror and grief I still feel - She thinks I'm trying to instill guilt in her (but I wonder what she had done with her guilt feelings as a mother.) She refuses to attend even a Project Rachel meeting for women. ...

I sought and received God's forgiveness, after which my faith re-awakened and deepened. Became active in a pro-life movement as volunteer and contributor in trying to save pre-born persons. ...

--from Fatherhood Forever.

Ok.Thanks Shasha. I was thinking more about unwed men/fathers who may not even know about the decision to abort.. or maybe knows but isn't in agreement.

Katy

quote:

Originally posted by Katy:
Ok.Thanks Shasha. I was thinking more about unwed men/fathers who may not even know about the decision to abort.. or maybe knows but isn't in agreement.

Katy

Even in those cases, men are responsible for abortion. And many men do feel the sting of their conscience knowing that they failed to protect the child they fathered, and this goes against a deep moral code. From that same website:


I shall never know in this life whether my child was a boy or a girl. My former girlfriend, the mother of my child, the woman I loved and still love, only told me a number of weeks later that she had been pregnant and that she had had an abortion. She told me as we left a bar. I was on a busy street but I put my head up against a building and began to cry, the first time I had cried in public since I was twelve years old.

What happened next I find almost impossible to account for or explain. We got in my car and looking at her I experienced the most profound sense of tenderness, protectiveness and love that I have ever felt toward her or toward anyone, ever. It was if my mind had two enormous facts to deal with and could only take them one at a time. The first was that this woman whom I loved was pregnant with our child. Despite our unmarried status, I was pleased and happy, and hung there for an instant over the abyss feeling the elation a normal married man must feel at such awesome news. Then I looked down. The child was there and then he was not, was created and killed in the same breath, as was my sense of elation. ...

She knew I was unalterably opposed to abortion and that I would have vigorously pursued marriage if she had presented me with the fact of pregnancy. There would have been enough money but we both would have had to contend with disgrace in the eyes of our families and friends. Her career, in her eyes, would have been demolished. I know I am not innocent of the thoughtless and criminally careless conception of this child. That will always haunt me, as will the profound sense of being powerless to protect it.

For several months after I found out, I had the strong sense that my child existed, was somewhere "out there" and that there was no way to exercise a newly-formed paternal concern. Thoughts came unbidden, like "Is he cold?" The reaction -- nauseating feelings of helplessness and dereliction of duty. Meanwhile, the newspapers and television seemed full to bursting with pictures and stories of babies. Coincident with this was a sense of not having protected my girlfriend. I have read enough on the subject to know that it is a violent procedure. That this woman I loved so much should undergo such a cold, soulless and brutal experience, and then have to hide it from those who love her, sickens and saddens me. And yet a strange, disquieting dichotomy not unlike that which prevailed at the time of my discovery, exists here as well. How could I comfort her when she herself made the decision, without my concurrence or even foreknowledge, to subject her body to one of those hideous machines? Had she been struck by a car or fallen down stairs I would have been the first to help console and heal her. As it was, I did what I could, but not without a sense of being divided. I knew she felt this too and that only made me pity her the more, and further the sense of division.

Why, if this is not in some way felt as a wrongful death, are we so reluctant to let others know of it? ... In old Western movies, a man whose child was murdered might give up everything and undergo years of search and hardship to wreak revenge. What do you do when there are two responsible parties, and one is the mother? She I have forgiven, still love although we are apart, and hope for. Myself I know I will always bear an extra burden of sorrow, which is to a degree deserved insofar as I was careless with the power of life.

But I never asked for the name of the obstetrician, because I was afraid of what I might do. At the very least, I would confront him on his way out of the office and say, "You don't know me but you killed my child." And just look at him.

And four years later, this same man writes:

I can view the situation with more equanimity, but I still have violent emotional reactions. For instance, a television news program recently showed a woman strapped to an operating table awaiting her "procedure." Some ghastly older woman came in and smiled at her a phony "everything will be just fine soon, Deary" smile as the witch must have smiled at Hansel and Gretel.

In the few seconds it took me to leap out of the chair and turn off the TV I thought, "I'd' like to wipe that smile off her face with a baseball bat." One can smile, and smile, and be a villain.

Meanwhile, I contribute to the pro life cause. I wonder whether I should join Operation Rescue but I am afraid I would lose my temper and discredit the movement.

Also, my trust in women and in people in general has been rocked. I have not been able to sustain any kind of relationship with a woman since and doubt that I shall ever be able to trust a woman enough to marry her. I doubt, too, whether my own reaction to marriage and children will be adequate. Don't I already have a first child? There is so much more I could say, the strange reactions one gets to news of friends getting married and having children. The sensation of looking at an infant nephew and wondering, "Would my son have looked like this?"

My girlfriend's abortion turned the world upside down and there has been no justice to turn it right side up.

quote:

Originally posted by Katy:
I was thinking more about unwed men/fathers who may not even know about the decision to abort....

I believe at a deep, spiritual level, we are all interconnected.

So even if a man does not consciously know of an abortion, he is still damaged by it. He will have to face the reality of a dismembered fetus thrown into a garbage dump-- if not in this lifetime, then in the afterlife. I truly believe this. So serious is our responsibility for our children.

That's why when I evaluate men for psychotherapy, I always ask if there is any chance they have fathered an aborted child.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Shasha,

Healing yes... but he wouldn't be morally responsible...?

quote:

Originally posted by Katy:
Healing yes... but he wouldn't be morally responsible...?

I believe so, yes, of course he is. A man is always responsible for the consequences of his sexual behavior. Sex is a moral responsibility.

Not being aware of an aborted child that a man fathers does not make him magically innocent of the child's killing. He is not as directly responsible as the guy who drives his wife to the abortion mill, but still morally responsible .

How do you see it, Katy?

Yes..I can see how he would be responsible for fathering the child of course, but if he
didn't have any knowledge of, or agree on an abortion I don't see how he can be morally responsible for her decision.

Katy

quote:

Originally posted by Katy:
Yes..I can see how he would be responsible for fathering the child of course, but if he
didn't have any knowledge of, or agree on an abortion I don't see how he can be morally responsible for her decision.

Katy

The father is not morally responsible for HER decision--ultimately he cannot control what she does. But they have a shared moral duty to care for their baby.

The father is morally responsible for failing to protect his child from being killed. He is responsible to care for a child produced by his sexual relationship with the mother. She may not tell the father of the pregnancy and abortion, but that is not an excuse for the father's moral failure to protect his child (implicit in sexual union which everybody knows leads to making babies).

Katy, you agree that the father is "responsible for fathering" the child. But "responsible for fathering" means you are now a father--FOR LIFE.

Once you 'father,' your responsibility does not end. As a father, you are morally responsible to protect and care for the fruit of your sexual union.

Not expecting to conceive a child during sex and/or not caring enough to follow through on whether a baby was conceived makes a father no less morally responsible for WHATEVER happens to that child.


Other people? Agree? Disagree?

I understand all that, Shasha.. but I am talking about men who may not even know about the pregnancy, much less an about an abortion..
I really have no personal interest or involvement in any such case...just answering your questions and trying to clarify my thinking on the topic.
Katy

quote:

Originally posted by Katy:
... but I am talking about men who may not even know about the pregnancy, much less an about an abortion...

I know that's what you're talking about.

But I see now (edit) that I wasn't clear enough in the above posts.

A man is morally responsible for the killing of his child through abortion even when he does not know about the pregnancy. Why?

Because I believe it is the father's responsibility to FIND OUT about whether he has conceived a child if he is sexually involved with a woman. Everybody knows sex makes babies. Furthermore, and even before that: a man is morally responsible to CARE ENOUGH to work out a mutual commitment with the woman before he decides to have sex. He is responsible to care for children that may be conceived even BEFORE SEXUAL UNION happens. Wow, there's a novel idea.

However, there may be times when the father of an aborted child is deliberately deceived or avoided by the mother who aborts despite the father's best intentions to care for mother and child, but that's unusual. Even in those cases though, the morally responsible father will acknowledge that he should have taken greater care to work out their mutual commitment to a child before sexual union.

See what I'm sayin?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Shasha,

Yes I see what you're saying... but I think that's stretching it..

Katy

quote:

Originally posted by Katy:
Yes I see what you're saying... but I think that's stretching it..

I'm sure many would agree with you.

The guy in the testimony I posted above would disagree with you. He was not told of his gf's pregnancy or about the abortion of their child, yet he seems to feel morally responsible:

I know I am not innocent of the thoughtless and criminally careless conception of this child. That will always haunt me, as will the profound sense of being powerless to protect it....nauseating feelings of helplessness and dereliction of duty.

So, Katy, I wonder what you would say to your son, hypothetically speaking, who was in this situation. Let's say your adult son tells you that his girlfriend from 5 years ago just told him she had gotten pregnant and aborted their baby.

He comes to you bewildered, maybe in shock, says he feels guilty. And you tell him :

"Don't worry about it, dear. You are not at all morally responsible for the death of that baby. You didn't know! How were you supposed to know she was pregnant if she doesn't tell you? You shouldn't feel guilt about that. It was HER decision to get an abortion."

Really?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Shasha,

Shasha, I understand and agree with you. Still I was initially referring to a father who never knows or finds out about an abortion.

Katy

quote:

Originally posted by Katy:
Shasha, I understand and agree with you. Still I was initially referring to a father who never knows or finds out about an abortion.

Katy

I guess I misunderstand you, Katy.

Do you mean to say that a man is only morally responsible for the killing of his preborn child IF he is aware of the pregnancy and abortion ? And if he "never knows or finds out about an abortion," (and I assume you mean pregnancy too) you feel he is not morally responsible for the slaughtered child?

If so, how does knowledge of that fact change his moral responsibility? The deed is done. He was there to conceive the child. The dismembered child is now in a zip-lock bag in a garbage dump. That reality does not change, with or without the father's knowledge.

Just trying to parse out what you mean. Thanks for being patient with me...

Morally guilty, or morally responsible? Two different things I think.

Shasha, Katy:

I was taught that someone is not considered
having committed a sin until they understand
that their behavior is sinful. If they do the
same behavior again, knowing full well that this
is sinful, then they have sinned.

Mary Sue, yes that is how I am thinking..where I am coming from.
Thanks for chiming in.

Katy

Hi Mary Sue,

Yes, I see how you are picking up on what Katy is saying here. I have to give this some thought because I guess I don't understand the relationship between knowing something is explicitly sinful and a deeper, spiritual reality in which we are all interconnected and which is governed by reaping what you sow.

sin.. a willful act 'knowing' what one is doing is a sinful act, then doing it, or to a lesser extent, harboring it within the heart. this is what i was told by my spiritual director.

lately i have been impressed with a deeper sense of doing or having done right and wrong from a place within the heart.. heartfelt confession.. of not wanting to sin against God or neighbor...such grace. i have spoken to many of my friends who seem to be looking at this within their heart's too..

a whole different story seeing with sadness and deep remorse of heart anything one has done in life that has offended God or another.. far from despondency this is truly freeing when recognized and confessed.


many young women do not really in their heart understand it is wrong to abort a child at the time... often overwhelmed with fears of being pregnant, they are simply focused on getting rid of it'.. not really 'getting' what they are getting rid of is a child... i have known many people who had an abortion and it is years later after they have matured they recognize the severity of their action and have genuine remorse ...and by grace confess years later after they are convicted within their hearts....

of course some never do...some never see the wrong action and some sadly do not care... i think it is truly about state of consciousness
, even though abortion, across the board is sin.

possibly if those who do such crimes ( whatever the sin), are shown at the end of their life and then have remorse and confess ... this of course is not known for sure...

Yes, and then there is objective guilt and subjective guilt ...

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