Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

BRONX,NY (Catholic Online) – This spring, my son Joshua whom I aborted, would have been 44 years old. Hard to believe. I was 17 at the time of my abortion and at the end of my 4th month of pregnancy. Coerced and abandoned by my family, I gave in to the pressure to abort because I felt I had no other choice. It was pre Roe vs. Wade, but abortion was legal in the state of New York, in fact, my abortion occurred at a local hospital, the same place where I would later give birth to my two living sons on the same maternity ward where I participated in the death of my first son, Joshua.

As Mother's Day approaches, I know there are countess women out there whose abortion connectors are going off like fireworks. It seems on Mother's Day there is no place to hide from the pain of having participated in an abortion whether you were coerced or it was what you perceive as freely chosen. The accusatory voices inside and outside of your head scream at you a little louder as the world celebrates the gift of being a mother, a gift you refused to accept.

I can particularly remember two occasions of Mother's Day; one before my return to the church, the other after. The first one found me after my marriage, wandering aimlessly around the streets of my town, pushing my two sons in a carriage. I was crying and filled with excruciating pain, but unable to make the connection to my abortion in any profound way.  Sure I knew I had a son missing, but it was not so clear to me that on this day of celebration, that was the cause for all my grief. I was after all, still walking around in the most welcomed state of denial, and society did its best to be sure I stayed there, denying any such thing as post abortion trauma, something still going on to this day in spite of countless women who have come forth to prove otherwise.

the rest is here: http://catholic.org/news/national/story.php?id=55257