Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

This week, President Obama awarded writer and activist, Gloria Steinem, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian Medal of Honor.  When I saw it, I could not help but note the irony. Steinem, a woman who has contributed to the bondage of millions of women who are suffering as a result of abortion, has been given a medal of freedom!

A pro abortion activist, Steinem says she has worn a bracelet for years for Rosie Jimenez.  Rosie Jimenez was a 27 year old student and single mother who died in 1977 from an illegal abortion. Gloria and others blame her death on the Hyde Amendment which eliminated federal Medicaid funding for abortion.  Rosie, pregnant and unable to pay for an abortion, traveled to Mexico for an illegal abortion and subsequently died from septic shock.

Gloria could easily fill up her arms with the bracelets of the over 400 women who have died from legal abortion since 1973, (and that does not include stats from California, New Hampshire, or abortion deaths attributed to other things). Sadly, those women do not seem to move Steinem, because in reality, she is concerned with keeping abortion legal and not concrned about the the safety of women.

In her self esteem book, “Revolution from Within, Gloria speaks of her breast cancer which she states was “making her a little bit more conscience of time."  Still, she fears the coverage of breast cancer screening outweighs another “huge health issue," because “one in eight women get breast cancer, while one in three women need an abortion in her life.”  You have to wonder what motivates someone to be so enmeshed that care for breast cancer invokes fear of neglect of abortion.

Then you learn Gloria herself had an abortion at 22 years old. While I am sure she would deny any negative impact on her life, you cannot help but wonder how much of a role it has played in the road she has taken. In an interview for her book she said, “being a social activist can be a drug that keeps you from going back and looking at yourself.”  How true!  Countless women spend their lives justifying and rationalizing abortion so that they do not have to go back and look at the reality of what they have done. I hope this medal does not send her even deeper into that denial.  Working in the post abortion ministry, I see the immense damage abortion has done to millions of women and, though she may not realize it, Gloria herself. How ironic that the thing you would give your life for is the very thing that destroys your life.

However, there is hope. In a recent homily, Pope Francis reminded us, “Dear brothers and sisters, let us be enveloped by the mercy of God; let us trust in His patience, which always gives us more time. Let us find courage to return to his house, to dwell in His loving wounds, allowing ourselves to be loved by Him and to encounter his mercy in the sacraments.”  I pray that Gloria once again becomes more conscience so that she may be enveloped by the mercy of the God of all people, allowing herself to be truly loved as the woman she was created to be.

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Are you living in darkness and depression after an abortion?
Unable to get past the pain of your loss?
There is Hope.  There is Healing.  There is a way out of the darkness.
Email us at lumina@postabortionhelp.org.
Call us at 1-877-586-4621 or 1-718-881-8008. 

For more information on post abortion healing, visit the Lumina website.