Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

Thought I would reprint this article by Dave Reardon of the Elliot Institute over the next 3 days "Despair Versus Hope"…one of the best…

DESPAIR VERSUS HOPE

Part One: The Devil's Bargain

by David C. Reardon,
Ph.D.

The idea that "abortion is an act of despair" is one of the key
points I have always tried to stress in my writing and speaking engagements.
Despair is not only the driving force behind most abortion choices, it is also
the greatest obstacle to post-abortion recovery. Until more pro-lifers
understand this, they will be handicapped in their efforts to help women in
crisis.

In describing the despair which leads women to abort, Frederica
Mathewes-Green of Feminists for Life of America, gives us this compelling
word-picture: "No woman wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone
or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw
off its own leg."

This quote is so powerfully accurate that it has even been reprinted by
Planned Parenthood. Why? Because pro-abortionists have long wanted to diffuse
the notion that women abort for selfish or casual reasons. They want the public
to sympathize with the desperation of women seeking abortions because they want
to convert sympathy for women into support for abortion.

Actually, the fact that most women agonize over the decision to abort is one
of the few areas for finding "common ground" in the abortion debate.
Most, if not all, counselors and researchers on both sides of the political
issue would agree that most abortion decisions involve elements of fear and
despair.

But simply because women agonize over their abortion decisions does not make
the decision morally acceptable, not even to the women themselves. In fact,
post-abortion research suggests that the more a woman agonizes over making an
abortion decision, the more she is likely to agonize over the abortion
afterwards. Maternal desires, moral doubts, and feelings of being exploited do
not disappear after an abortion. They continue. They grow. They become sources
of constant reflection, or stifling avoidance. They can even become the source
of crippling self-condemnation.

Escape Through Self-Destruction

Returning to Mathewes-Green's analogy of an animal gnawing its leg off to
escape a trap, we see that abortion is actually an act of self-destruction.
When pro-abortionists view a woman in this desperate situation, their solution
is to offer the woman a clean, legal way of cutting off the offending leg —
after all, they believe there are too many unfit "legs" in the world
already.

But what abortion counselors fail to tell women who are choosing abortion is
that the loss of their "leg" will leave them crippled. Just as many
amputees, they will experience the feeling of a "phantom leg." This
missing part will leave them less whole and less capable. And at times this
missing piece will cause an indescribable ache and a flood of uncontrollable
tears. In escaping the trap, they will have lost a part of themselves.

Contrast this approach to that of crisis pregnancy centers where pro-lifers
are committed to finding a way to open the jaws of the trap to save both the
woman and her "leg." Pro-lifers insist that there is always room for
hope. There is always a way to avoid a destructive amputation — a way which in
the long run will be appreciated by both her and her "leg."

What we see in these two perspectives is the difference between despair and
hope. Despair inevitably leads us to accept abortion. Hope always leads us to
embrace life.

Hope is a virtue. It is centered on God, the source of all hope. Despair is
a sin against hope. It is one of Satan's greatest weapons.

The Weapon Of Despair

By fanning the flames of despair, Satan can lead us into the greatest of
sins, because desperate people do desperate things. At the moment a person
gives in to despair, one has suffered a loss of faith and trust in God. In the
case of abortion, the desperate woman has lost faith in the promise that God
has a plan for her life, much less a plan for her child's life.

Desperate people try to take control. They try to save whatever they can by
doing whatever needs to be done — which may include betraying their own
values. For example, when the Nazis undertook the extermination of millions of
Jews, the sheer magnitude of their task required them to develop ways of
soliciting the cooperation of the victims. There were too few soldiers to
contain millions of rebellious Jews. So it was necessary to manipulate their
victims so that they would choose to cooperate for at least one day at a time.
The Nazis did this by exposing the Jews to limited threats; the victims
were always left with the bit of hope that by submitting to the present indignity,
there was something else which could be saved. According to sociologist Zygmunt
Bauman:

At all stages of the Holocaust, the victims were confronted with a choice
(as least subjectively – even when objectively the choice did not exist any
more, having been preempted by the secret decision of physical destruction).
They could not choose between good and bad situations, but they could at least
choose between greater and lesser evil… In other words they had something
to save. To make their victims' behavior predictable and hence manipulable
and controllable, the Nazis had to induce them to act in the 'rational mode.'
To achieve that effect, they had to make the victims believe that there was
indeed something to save, and that there were clear rules as to how one should
go about saving it.¹

These choices were presented in a way that discouraged reflecting on the
decisions from a moral perspective. Instead, the victims were pressured
to make rational decisions based on the rational need to "save
whatever we can."

Using this demonic strategy, the Nazis encouraged the empowerment of ghetto
Jewish leaders who would see to the needs of the people, coordinate
distribution of medicine and materials, maintain morale, etc. These same
leaders were then manipulated into cooperating with the Nazi extermination
program. They were confronted with the agonizing choice of cooperating with the
Nazis or witnessing the slaughter of their people. At first the cooperation was
in "small" things, maintaining a ghetto police force, providing lists
of names, selection of ghetto residents to be sent to "resettlement"
projects, providing transportation to pick-up points, and the like. In some
cases, when the Nazis wanted to punish the entire community for some
infraction, Jewish leaders were even forced to select and arrest the desired
number of victims who were to be publicly executed by the Nazis. And always–no
matter what the request–the leaders were told that by cooperating they were
saving the lives of the majority who remained. Leaders who didn't cooperate
were eliminated. Leaders who did cooperate saved their own lives, the lives of
their families, and the lives of the dwindling majority of Jews under their
leadership–at least for a time–and were left to agonize over their complicity.

The similarity between Nazi manipulations of the Jews and the abortionists'
manipulation of women faced with crisis pregnancies is striking. Just as the
victim-Jews were forced to choose between losing everything, or just a little,
so abortion counselors encourage the victim-woman to view "this
pregnancy" as a threat to everything she has, her relationships, her
family, her career, her entire future. She is assured that by sacrificing this
one thing (a tiny unborn child), she can save the rest. During this process,
the victim-woman is urged to view the abortion decision not as a moral choice,
but as a rational choice of "saving what you can."

But in fact, just as those who reluctantly cooperated with the Nazis
discovered, the bargain is a false one. The demands on ghetto leaders to
sacrifice more and more victims never stopped. And so it is with the
post-aborted woman. After her child is destroyed, she faces self-condemnation,
lower self-esteem, difficulty with relationships, substance abuse, career
problems, a cycle of repeat abortions, and more. Often she experiences an
intense desire for replacement pregnancies to atone for her lost child, and she
becomes a single parent, the very problem she sought to avoid in the first
place – but now she also has to deal with the emotional scars of an abortion.

The Devil versus Christ

It is significant how differently Christ and the Devil appear before and
after any sin, in this case, abortion. Before the abortion, Christ stands, with
his arms outstretched to block the way, saying, "Do not do this thing. The
sacrifice you make now will be rewarded a hundredfold. I offer you life, so
that you may live life abundantly. Place your hope in me and I will not abandon
you."

The Devil, on the other hand, insists, "You must get rid of it. Look at
all you will lose… You have no choice. You have already gotten yourself into
this problem. Now you must get yourself out. Do this one thing and then you
will be back in the driver's seat of life. Things will be the way they used to
be."

Christ asks us to trust in a plan which we do yet fully understand; Satan
urges us to act now to save what we already have. Christ asks us to make
a moral decision rooted in hope; Satan asks us to make a "rational"
decision based on present needs, desires, and fears.

But after the abortion, how do they appear? Afterwards, Christ continues to
offer hope: "Come to me. I want to share your tears. I want to comfort
you. Know that all is forgiven. See, your child is in my arms waiting for you
to join us when your day is completed."

Satan on the other hand continues to fan the flames of despair. He who
pretended to be on her side now stands as her fiercest accuser. "Look at
what you have done! You have murdered your own child! Can there be anything
worse than that? There's no hope for you now. You are nothing. You're beyond
redemption! You may as well seek what little comfort you can in the embrace of
an affair, in the bottom of a booze bottle, or in the silence of suicide. And
if you get pregnant again, you've already had an abortion once, so you might as
well do it again–it may even help you to get tougher and more immune to this
pain. It makes no difference now. You've proven you can murder. Nothing can be
worse. And, oh, how you must hate those people who led you to this. Your
boyfriend, your parents, your doctor. There is no one you can trust. There is
no one who can love YOU — a murderer. You are alone. Your best hope is
to bury your past. Hide it from others. Hide it from yourself. But remember it
will always be yours alone to bear."

Before the abortion, Christ condemns it and Satan makes excuses for it.
After the abortion, Satan is the one condemning it while Christ wants to
forgive it.²

This is the Devil's bargain. He encourages women to submit to abortion in
order to avoid losing what they already have. But once they have chosen it, he
tries to keep them trapped in despair so as to strip away everything else.
Indeed, Satan pumps as much despair into her life as he can generate. And not into
her life alone, but into the lives of the child's father, grandparents,
siblings, and everyone else he can touch with the poison of abortion. His
purpose is threefold: to generate misery, to encourage more sin, and to create
doubt in the unfathomable mercy of God.

Despair and Forgiveness

For many post-aborted women, the forgiveness of God is a precept which they
can mouth, but it is difficult for them to digest. How can they be
forgiven? The horror of their sin is so great. Many know that they must believe
in God's forgiveness, and they do so in an act of faith. But how can they feel
forgiven, when every instinct in their nature says they cannot be forgiven,
even should not be forgiven?

This is the question I will try to address with a few thoughts in part two
of this series.

Originally published in The PostAbortion Review 3(2) Spring
1995. Copyright 1995 Elliot Institute

NOTES

1. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, New York:
Cornell University Press, 1989) 130.

2. This general description of the stance of Christ and Satan before and
after sin is drawn from the audio-tape "The Devil" by Archbishop
Fulton Sheen and is applied here specifically to the case of abortion.