Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

As director of Lumina, and co-developer of the “Entering Canaan” post abortion ministry, I often do trainings and presentations for those working in the pro life movement and for clergy on the impact of abortion. One of the resources I use to bring across points is “I’m Not Sorry”, a pro abortion web site with the testimonies of women who have had an abortion and claim they are, well, “not sorry”.

It had been a while since I went to its pages yesterday to search for some testimony showing one of the many ways in which rationalization, denial, justification and a host of other defenses are displayed. I have to admit, I always find reading them very sad and difficult.

Being involved in post abortion ministry for many years, I spend a lot of time trying to get people to understand why a woman aborts.  I also dedicate my life to trying to be a presence of Christ’s mercy in the world so that women, men, and whoever else may be suffering from a past abortion, will come forward for the help they need in order to heal through God’s saving mercy and forgiveness. In all of my years in this work, and the thousands of people I have seen, I maybe have met a handful who freely walked into a clinic wanting to kill their child. That is why reading the testimonies on this site are so troubling, and make me understand more why there is still a judgment in the pro life world for those who participate in abortion. It is hard to read these testimonies and not react. Yet, I am reminded that only God can judge a heart.

I must admit, I want to believe there is always a pressure to abort. I find I do not want to believe that there may be women who walk into a clinic freely, with no remorse, but I also have to remind myself, as my spiritual director has at a times, that evil is truly present in the world and in fact there may be women who cold heartedly choose abortion, still, I think they are few and far between.

It is the words of someone like Stacy, that cause me to cringe, “I’ve had four abortions and I’m not sorry. If I were to become pregnant today, I would have another. I had an abortion at 14, 16, 19 and 22…I’ve never felt guilty, remorseful or sorry.” I don’t know Stacy or why she has come to the point to believe she feels this way. What was her life like? Of course, that does not make the abortion okay, abortion is never okay, but you have to wonder how someone can get to that point.

It has caused me to step back over the past 24 hours and pray about it all. Some things have come up for me in prayer worth pondering.

• That I must continue to offer prayer and sacrifice for the millions out there who have participated in abortion
• That God can bring any one of them to Him, and that it is His desire to do so. It does not matter what happened, how it happened or how they feel because healing is about Him and what He has done not about us and what we have done. His mercy is for everyone.
• That we are all sinners in need of His mercy, whether pro choice, pro life or in between, it is only His grace that saves us.
• That I am so grateful for the GIFT of contrition for my own abortion and I need to never allow myself to think I am different from any of the women who write on that site except for His grace

 A hard lesson, one I pray to never forget. Let me end with the words of Rose, “I have never felt anything but relief when it was over and done and thankful for the lives I did spare from being unwanted.” May Rose and each one of us, come to know that there is no one who is “unwanted”. That He did for each one of us as if we were the only one in the world. That each person has dignity and worth, is loved by God and is a gift to us all, including her aborted children and yes, even Rose.