Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

Ok, I have to admit, there are some things within the pro life movement that really get to me. One is when someone says they are “saving babies”. I have asked myself  a million times why, and spent hours in prayer questioning myself.

As someone who was coerced into an abortion as a teen, that expression really bothers me.  Over time,I have come to  find out it also upsets many other women who are also post abortive, but we do not feel like we have a right to express it. I think what it boils down to, is, what makes anyone think they can “save babies” when many of us feel we could not even save our own? In all our desperation, as their moms, we failed. With all of our natural instincts and desire to love, we gave in. How is it a stranger, thinks they are so powerful they can save our children?

That is not to say, the work of praying in front of clinics or trying to dissuade someone from aborting is not good and necessary. I love 40 Days for Life and the good it does and I certainly thank God, appreciate and am grateful to all the wonderful self sacrificing people that are out there offering help and trying to get women not to abort. In fact, I have often wished they were out there for me, but the truth is, the babies can only be saved by God.

As I have prayed before the Blessed Sacrament I thought of the feeling women often experience before abortion. The desperation, the feeling of being out of control, the fact of what you want ,may not be what happens because you are so afraid. Very often there are feelings of  abandoned by the very people who are suppose to love you, your BF, your husband, your parents… Many of us felt there was no choice as we found ourselves going through the motions of what seemed like it had to be. Like Dave Reardon says in "The Jericho Plan",  women are often socially aborted before they ever set foot into a clinic.

Of course, this does not take away our responsibility in our abortions which are always wrong, but it is also important to know, most of us felt like we could not save our own children.

If a baby is saved, it is by a grace that somehow gets answered in the midst of a terrible situation.That somehow opens a  woman’s heart to the will of God and gives her the strength and courage she needs, in spite of any obstacles or fears she is feeling. Perhaps that grace comes from speaking to someone outside of a clinic, and that is wonderful and good,there is amazing stuff going on out there ,but it is only God that saves babies and, please Lord, saves the souls of those of us who have participated i n the death of our unborn children.

There is only one person who is going to stop and end abortion. There is only one person who is going to heal those of us who had one. He died on a cross. As we gaze at Christ on the cross, may we always remember that .