Suffering in silence: The siblings of aborted babies

When we consider the effects of abortion, we usually think of those most directly affected: the mother, the father, the aborted child. But abortion’s effects are much more far-reaching and insidious. Siblings of those aborted often suffer very real feelings of loss and grief.

I remember the first time I talked to someone who told me she had an aborted sibling. She was my college roommate, and she was an only child. Sort of. She admitted to me that she was supposed to have a brother three years her senior. Their mother had aborted him at four months’ gestation after repeated demands to do so by her boyfriend.

 My friend tells me that she feels her brother’s absence like a hole in her heart that no man will ever fill. She tells me that she speaks to him sometimes, in her mind and in her dreams. She wonders about the life they would have had growing up together. Would they have fought a lot? Would he have counseled her on boy matters? Would he have scolded her for her overzealous high-school drinking?

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