Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

In keeping with the theme of men for the week:

Vincent M. Rue, Ph.D.

We are the
hollow men

We are the
stuffed men . . .

Our dried
voices, when

We whisper
together

Are quiet and
meaningless . . .

Remember us—if
at all—not as lost

Violent souls,
but only

As the hollow
men

The stuffed
men.

T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”
(1925)

Abortion has become a personal
and social eraser of choice for our unwanted, ill-timed, and “defective”
offspring.  With mainstream mental health
professional associations encouraging this procedure by advising that it is
psychologically safe, women and men have embraced abortion as a stress
reliever. Yet the evidence is mounting that abortion carries serious and
significant mental health risks for many women.

What about the impact of
abortion on men? With some 45 million abortions in the

U.S.

since 1973, this is not a
rhetorical question. The sheer numbers represent a potential mental health
shockwave of personal and relational injury.

More than anything else, the
U.S. Supreme Court has shaped the role of men in abortion. The Court has held that
a woman’s right not to procreate trumps a man’s right to procreate, making his
involvement in the abortion decision irrelevant. In Planned Parenthood of Missouri v. Danforth (1976), the Court
dismissed the validity of a husband’s involvement in his wife’s decision. No
state allows a husband to be informed of his wife’s impending abortion.

Emerging Awareness

Growing interest n how abortion
impacts individuals, their relationships and families is evident today. The
first-ever conference on men and abortion took place in 2007, 34 years after
the Supreme Court legalized abortion. Since then, media reports highlighting
various aspects of this subject have appeared in the

Los Angeles

Times, The Nation and other publications.

His Abortion Experience

Men’s responses to abortion are
varied, like men themselves. How abortion impacts men is complicated by the
decision-making that precedes the abortion.

For men who pressure or
encourage the women they care about to have an abortion, troublesome feelings can
emerge later on. In Evangelium Vitae,
Pope John Paul II made it clear that by leaving her alone to face the problems
of pregnancy, he indirectly encourages such a decision on her part to abort (no.
59).

In a national web-based study
of 135 men who have experienced an abortion, 48% of men stated that they
opposed their partner’s abortion and 69% reported moderate to very high stress
following the abortion (Rue, Coyle, & Coleman, 2007). 

What Does The Research Show?

While there is much we don’t
know about men and abortion, there are some 28 studies on men’s reactions to
abortion that are informative. In one study, most men felt overwhelmed, with
many experiencing disturbing thoughts of the abortion (Shostak & McLouth,
1984). Research evidence suggests that men are also less comfortable expressing
vulnerable feelings of grief and loss, instead either saying nothing or
becoming hostile. And of course, because no abortion occurs in a relational vacuum,
the consequences of these two factors have considerable implications for men’s
relationships with women.

In a review of how abortion
impacts relationships, Coleman, Rue & Spence (2007a) reported: (1) men tend
to exert greater control over the expression of painful emotions,
intellectualize grief, and cope alone; (2) men are also inclined to identify
their primary role as a supporter for their partners, even after an abortion,
and even if they opposed the decision; (3) men were more likely to experience feelings
of despair long after the abortion than women; and (4) men are more at risk for
experiencing chronic grief. 

The best evidence indicates
that a minimum of 10-30% of women who undergo an abortion report pronounced
and/or prolonged psychological difficulties attributable to the abortion. These
adverse psychological outcomes include guilt, anxiety, depression, sleep
disturbance, relationship problems, substance abuse, symptoms of post-traumatic
stress, and increased risk of suicide. Male responses to a partner’s abortion
include grief, guilt, depression, anxiety, feelings of repressed emotions,
helplessness/voicelessness/powerlessness, post-traumatic stress, anger and
relationship problems (Coyle, 2007).

Psychological injury in men
following abortion is likely underestimated due to men’s propensity to avoid
self-disclosure. Preliminary findings in a new study found four out of ten men
experienced chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, occurring
on average 15 years after the abortion. Certain factors predict whether men are
more likely to experience abortion as traumatic: where the pregnancy was
desired by them or their partner, where someone else pressured their partner
into abortion, where the abortion occurred against his wishes or he didn’t know
about it until afterwards (Rue, Coyle, & Coleman, 2007).

Research
evidence suggests that men are more likely to feel despair after a pregnancy
loss, including a pervasive sense of hopelessness, one of the signs of chronic
grief (Stinson et al., 1992). It is apparent that men’s lives contain greater
attachments and are more profoundly affected by fatherhood than has usually been
assumed.

Risks to Masculinity & Relationships

Contemporary reliance on
abortion as a “contraceptive back-up” may in fact be promoting male detachment,
desertion and irresponsibility. According to Morabito (1991), abortion can
actually encourage sexual exploitation of women. In this scenario, the male may
view his partner’s pregnancy as a “biological quirk corrected by abortion.”

When a male/female relationship experiences an abortion, it is likely
that the following occur:

            (1)
a reduction in self-disclosures by both partners, which decreases the intimacy
necessary for relationship survival;

                        (2) increased use of
defensive communication behaviors (e.g., interpersonal hostility);

            (3)
the development of partner communication apprehensiveness (fear translated into
avoidance behaviors), the erosion of trust, and the evolution into a closed
system of interaction as opposed to an open and dynamic one;

            (4)
a loss of spiritual connectedness to God and to one’s partner with the advent
of guilt, shame and isolation.

There is a considerable price for
both men and women when men feel they cannot talk about their experience of a
partner's abortion.

One of the sad realities of
abortion is how caring men, who try not to hurt the women they love, in fact
hurt them by saying nothing when abortion is first mentioned in the crisis
decision making process. Wanting to please, these men are rejected because they
were judged deficient in true love for their partners. 

Conclusion

Vincent
Rue, Ph.D. is co-director of the Institute for Pregnancy Loss, Jacksonville,

. He is a practicing
psychotherapist, researcher, lecturer, and author of a book and numerous
articles in professional journals on post-abortion trauma, for which he
provided the first clinical evidence in 1981.