WORLD NEWS & PROPHECY
Abortion’s Other Victims The sin of abortion often leads to years of terrible regret, guilt and shame. Yet through God there is forgiveness, love and hope. A woman shares her personal experience of this trauma and lays out a pathway forward. by Lorraine Barnett
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I had shared. She said that it felt as if I had been appealing directly to her. She asked to meet me and go through our abortion-recovery study. Amy’s story was different from mine, but our years of shame and silence are all too familiar. Usually by the time women seek help, they have spent months or years wallowing in shame, regret, denial, anger, guilt and self-loathing. They only came to our center when the pain was acute, when they could no longer live with the horrible secret they carried. I have come to believe that no woman can escape the Living with a painful secret pain of an abortion. Someday, all who’ve undergone it I told the congregation that morning that when I became must come face to face with the reality of the abortion. Whether they were aware or not, God’s most sacred law pregnant at the age of 16, my family made an adoption was violated. “Against You, You only, have I sinned, and plan for the baby. Once the adoption was complete, it was done this evil in Your sight” (Psalm 51:4). never spoken of again, and the turmoil I had inside was Both women and men have shared with me how never addressed. I acted out in all kinds of self-destructive they spent years trying to justify the abortion, punishways and found myself pregnant again at age 18. ing themselves and others, being emotionally unstable, There was no way on earth I would confess this to my parents, my siblings or anyone else. I did have the fleeting drinking to excess or doing drugs, having nightmares, hope that the father of the baby would want me and want ruining one relationship after another, emotionally this baby, but that was a fruitless dream. The father of my smothering the children they did have or rejecting them, refusing to forgive others and, perhaps most astonishing baby drove me to the abortion mill, and I sacrificed my of all, having multiple abortions. The world told them child on the altar of self-preservation. that abortion was legal, quick, safe and the only way to I also shared with the congregation that morning that get on with the life they deserved. They believed the lies I had spent 30 years suffering in silence over that aborand became part of the millions who suffer after abortion. tion, bathed in shame and self-hatred. I told them how I credited to God the aching in my heart that finally led me Debilitating stress to the pro-life pregnancy center where I now worked. In What they experience is a stress reaction to lifethat center, I was finally able to admit to another human being what I had done. The floodgates were opened, and changing trauma and loss. It has been described as PostAbortion Stress or Post-Abortion Syndrome (PAS). The the healing process began. At last I was able to pray specifically to God about my sin, repent of that sin and seek onset of PAS can occur at any time from immediately after the abortion to years later. It involves the inability His forgiveness. In speaking that Mother’s Day morning, I urged anyone to express feelings about the pregnancy and subsequent abortion. They are unable to resolve the losses due to the who needed help and healing from their own abortion experience to call me. As was often the case, no one asked abortion and come to any kind of inner peace. PAS does not discriminate; it affects both women and for help—that is, until one year later. That’s when I received men and can develop in those who consciously made a letter from Amy, who had been in the congregation that the choice or those who were forced or coerced into the morning. abortion. In her note she told me how stunned she was at what hile working in a pro-life pregnancy center, I was often asked to speak to church groups and share the mission of our center and make an appeal for volunteers. One Mother’s Day I was asked to speak to such a group. I always took these opportunities to share my own story because I wanted to put a face on the other victims of abortion. Not only do we need to focus on the babies we hope to save but also on those women who are among the many millions who have had an abortion.
10 Beyond Today
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