From: The Pro-Life Infonet
Reply-To: Steven Ertelt
Subject: Battling the Spiritual Grief: Helping Women After Abortion
Source: Buffalo News; May 29, 2001

Battling the Spiritual Grief: Helping Women After Abortion

Buffalo, NY -- Debbie Bastian was a 20-year-old college student when she decided to "end an unintended pregnancy" with an abortion. That was 18 years ago. The hastily made decision tormented her for a long time, extending into the early years of her marriage.

"For two years, I'd have nightmares twice a week that a bloody, naked baby was knocking on the window crying, 'Mommy, Mommy,' " she recalls, describing her first years as a wife.

It was not until seven years after the abortion that Bastian, who lives on Grand Island, finally found peace through faith-based post-abortion counseling.

Vicki Thorn, an authority on what happens to women after they have an abortion, says the emotional and spiritual trauma that Bastian experienced is typical of what countless women, and some men, go through after an abortion.

Many experience depression, guilt, shame and isolation, Thorn says. They find it difficult to concentrate, they have nightmares, they think they hear a baby crying, they consider suicide, or they abuse alcohol and drugs.

Some who support abortion agree with Thorn that women who have abortions may be subject to varying degrees of emotional consequences for varying periods of time. "I think women deal with the consequences of that decision the rest of their lives. I think it affects everything they do," said the Rev. Charles D. Bang, senior pastor of Buffalo's Holy Trinity Lutheran Church.

Bang's denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, supports abortion, but only as "a last resort" and never as a means of birth control.

For women who feel traumatized by an abortion, Thorn offers understanding, forgiveness and spiritual peace through a ministry called Project Rachel.

"We have a whole generation of people who have been touched by abortion," said Thorn, who recently led a seminar on reconciliation for Catholic women at Christ the King Seminary in East Aurora.

The mother of six children, Thorn founded Project Rachel, a ministry to women and men touched by abortion, in 1984 while serving as director of the Respect Life Office in the Diocese of Milwaukee. It since has spread to 145 dioceses.

Liz Danner, a South Buffalo Catholic, is thankful that Project Rachel operates in the Buffalo Diocese.

For years after her abortion, she says, she said she would "go to pieces" when she saw a woman with a baby, and added that overwhelming feelings of shame and guilt prevented her from attending baby showers. Every year on July 13, the anniversary of her abortion, she was "a total wreck." Going to Mass, a lifelong practice, was out of the question, she said.

Danner says it took her six years of counseling with a Project Rachel priest for her to admit to herself and to him that the abortion, which seemed so right at the time, was a mistake.

It should not be surprising, said Thorn, that the number of women who suffer post-abortion trauma is huge, because nearly 40 million abortions have been performed in the United States since 1973, when the Supreme Court legalized unlimited abortion.

Thorn describes a first pregnancy as a "passage event that changes a woman's identity to mother for the rest of her life" regardless of whether or not she gives birth. That's why, she believes, her office gets calls "from women in their 90s who are still grieving for babies they aborted 50 years ago."

Bastian, a Grand Island resident who is now happily married with three children, says Thorn is telling it like it is.

A former professional Christian singer who has written a song about her experience with abortion, Bastian, who is not Catholic, said that during one period of her life she was convinced that God was going to punish her unmercifully, perhaps by preventing her from conceiving other children. She believed she had committed an unforgivable act because the baby she aborted was conceived on Good Friday, the day Jesus died on the cross to pay the price of mankind's sins.

Bastian said she finally was able to deal with the abortion after participating in a Christian counseling program offered by Sonrays Ministries, a nondenominational organization. It offered an eight-week, faith-based program led by a woman who had had an abortion.

"She took us through a grieving process," she said. "The idea is to get to a point of forgiveness. You have to accept the fact that it did happen, let the Lord come in and realize it is time to move on."

Years later, when her son was born at sunrise on Easter morning, Bastian saw the birth as reaffirmation that God had forgiven her.

Monsignor J. Patrick Keleher, a Project Rachel priest, said all of the women who contact him are desperate for forgiveness. "They need to be made whole again - to feel human again. It is hard for them to look at a baby or think about having a baby," he said.

Keleher, a campus minister at the University at Buffalo North Campus, said he talks to the women about failure and forgiveness. "We all fail (sin), but with abortion it seems so world-shaking. It shakes many people to the core," he said.

Keleher has found that many women feel pressured by society to have an abortion because "you are not married, you are underage, you need to finish school."

None of those things applied to Danner. She was 36 years old, had been married for 16 years and had two other children.

Nevertheless, she said she felt pressured because she and her husband had just bought a house. She added that her husband was "not too thrilled" about the pregnancy, and that other family members questioned why she would want another baby.

"I was steered to have an abortion. I decided on my own, with my husband's support, that this was the right thing to do," she said.

The Rev. William J. Quinlivan, another Project Rachel priest, offers a different perspective. "It is God's grace that gave you the courage to pick up the phone and make an appointment," he tells women who call him.

"I talk to them about the mercy of Jesus," he said.

Some of the women who seek his help thought they had dealt with the consequences of an abortion but found that "the issue continues to surface until they bring it to God," said Quinlivan, a parochial vicar at St. Gregory the Great Parish in Amherst.

"The seriousness of the sin is a concern. There is a perception that some sins are unforgivable. I remind them that Jesus came to die and save us from the most serious sin," he said.

Thorn, the Project Rachel founder, says women who are struggling after an abortion need to resolve three questions: Can my child forgive me? Can God forgive me? Can I forgive myself?

Quinlivan said he tries to address those concerns by asking women to imagine that their child is at peace with God in heaven.

"I say, don't fear for the child but try to heal the relationship with the child and ask the child to pray for your healing, because the child loves you from heaven despite the decision you made," the priest said.

Though abortion is a procedure that directly affects women, Thorn said she believes that even more men may be affected emotionally and spiritually.

Depending on the degree of his involvement in the abortion, the father may experience rage, grief and sadness, impotence, alcohol and drug abuse, risk-taking behavior and other unhealthy emotions and behavior.

"There is not a week that goes by that we don't hear from a man," said Thorn.

Thorn, who now heads the National Office of Post-Abortion Reconciliation and Healing, a nondenominational ministry, said that 18,000 women who, like Danner, believe their abortions were a mistake, have called her office in the past five years. The toll-free number is (800) 5WE-CARE.

A national listing of post-abortion programs can be found in the Help After Abortion section of http://www.pregnancycenters.org. The web site also has post-abortion counselors who are available to answers questions, to listen or to help in any way.

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