Abortion: No Panacea

There I was a twelve year old girl in the midst of conversation with four boys two to four years older than myself. How we got on the topic of abortion, I cannot remember. It was not many years after Roe v. Wade had been decided.

For some reason, I was fiercely pro-life. I was arguing vehemently about how wrong abortion was. Yet these boys were just as adamant that abortion was perfectly fine, a woman’s right. For years I wondered why they even cared about abortion, why they cared so much for women’s rights. I knew I cared about women’s rights. I was the one who had taken my poor teacher to task in fifth grade because there were so few mentions of women in our text book, and I just couldn’t believe women were not important.

Years later, I discovered one man’s theory as to why many men are pro-abortion. Long ago, if a young man impregnated a young woman, he usually did the honorable thing and married the gal. True, sometimes the muzzle of a gun pointed at him by an angry father helped convince him. Abortion changed all that. No longer did a young man have to take responsibility for his actions. Marriage and fatherhood did not have to be the outcome of young hormones out of control. Why, he could feel positively noble about himself just by offering to pay for an abortion and driving the girl to and fro! It was an epiphany. I knew that was the answer to my questions about that conversation years before.

Since that time, I have tried to comfort three friends still weeping, still grieving over their abortions ten and fifteen years after the fact. Each had been encouraged to have those abortions by a man who did not want to raise the baby for one reason or another. Another, who truly understands grace more than anyone else I know, no longer wept because she was assured of God’s pardon and a future with that child in heaven, but she is most assuredly now pro-life and encourages pregnant women to choose life.

The one whom I have not seen weep or express regrets about her decision is the friend who chose to keep her baby. She’s never had second thoughts despite the incredible hardships she’s faced and has proved an excellent mother. Go figure.

If you know someone suffering from post-abortion emotional turmoil, Focus on the Family will link Christ-based aid to hurting women and men---yes, men too, as Focus recognizes that some men do regret counseling their girlfriends to abort or grieve that their child was aborted against their wishes.

Also, there is an organization, Feminists for Life, which is both pro-woman and pro-life simultaneously. While I do not know them well enough to give an unqualified endorsement, I was impressed with what I saw. Take some time to read some of the stories of post-abortion sufferers, and if your heart doesn’t break, perhaps you should check to see if you actually have one.

Here, here, here, here, and here.