Comments From Women After Post-Abortion Healing

Post-abortion healing is a complicated issue because of the religious, social and political issue surrounding it. Women from a religious or spiritual background wonder if God will forgive them. Many women wonder if they can forgive themselves. Men are angry and grieving because they are not allowed to have any influence in whether or not their partner can abort their child.

I can't count the number of women I've worked with after they have had an abortion. For a few, our work began soon after the abortion. For others it was 40+ years later. For all of them, we worked on a spiritual level. After the initial processing of feelings, further talking does little good.

Here are a few of the comments I've heard.

From one woman with two living children and who had had two miscarriage and two abortions: "I've never felt more motherly in my life."
Another woman sobbed desperately as she said, "If I had to do it over again, I would. The situation was horrible."
One reflected a few weeks after the healing session, "I feel more connected at church... like God is really there."
"I feel loved."
"I wanted to have him back as soon as I did it (the abortion)."
Several weeks later, "I can't believe how much better I feel. I didn't even know it still bothered me after all these years."
"Do you think she (the baby) really forgives me?"

For most women, there are three people she needs forgiveness from: the baby, God, herself. The spiritual healing I use is a guided imagery in which the parent, usually the mother, receives healing, forgiveness and love from both her Higher Power and from the baby she aborted. Accepting this forgiveness and love, and forgiving herself, is often a process.

Because there are tremendous extremes in the abortion debate, with much feeling on both sides, women are having a difficult time finding a safe place to work through their feelings. If they mention their inner conflict to friends who are pro-choice, they often feel shamed because they can't accept it as "no big deal." With friends, family or religious people, they fear being shamed and vilified for their actions.

Abortion is a private decision which affects all of society. When there is no avenue to work through any feelings of guilt, shame and depression, the results are relationship problems, physical issues from the suppressed feelings and job and family issues due to depression.

Our society as a whole has little compassion for those struggling. There are individuals who are loving and caring. To find them, a woman has to navigate a sea of judgmental vitriol to find them.

As a society, we need to accept that, no matter what our political or spiritual beliefs about abortion, there are women and men who are desperately struggling with the consequences of their actions. They need our care and assistance.

How Do You Heal Spiritually Of An Abortion?

Abortion is one of those controversial subjects that most people have an opinion about. Either they would or they wouldn't.

But it's not until you find yourself in the unfortunate situation where you have to decide, where you have to take your current situation and make a decision.

The numbers are staggering worldwide the amount of women who have had an abortion. And it's such a closed subject that undoubtedly countless women suffer greatly for many years to come.

Abortion is even responsible for higher than average suicide rates in woman 6 months after having one, and women who have had an abortion also suffer greater odds of having breast cancer.

So much unacknowledged, unhealed pain.

Abortion is not one of those subjects you share even in the same way as you would talk about having a miscarriage.

There's a lot of shame with abortion, a lot of guilt.

It's such a layered issue that it's not clear cut in how you go about healing it. Abortion solves one problem but creates many more.

There is a silenced grief with having an abortion, after all a woman chose it, so why feel hurt over something you chose?

One of the many journeys of healing that some women go on is to take a spiritual approach to healing their abortion. This is not a cop-out, a way to avoid feelings; because by now most women have felt about as bad as anyone could feel.

Abortion is not just a physical issue. It's also a soul issue. Some women are lead on a path of discovery that takes them to a deeper soul level of understanding about why the abortion doesn't seem to want to let them go emotionally.

There is a deeper learning and growth that shows them more about themselves and why they had this experience of abortion to learn their life lessons through.

Desire for Children Replacement After Abortion and Possible After Effects

Number of women after having terminated pregnancy through abortion may become overwhelmed with guilt and may become pregnant again desiring to replace the child lost. While some of the women carry the second baby to terms, studies have shown that most of the second abortions take place within a year of the first one. If the pregnancy does take place as a result of desire to replace a child it definitely should be treated as a "crisis" pregnancy, with much needed support and tender loving care, otherwise repeated abortion may take place.

In spite of what is being told about abortion, its aftereffects are profound and our society has not began yet to fully realize the extent of damage abortion can cause.

If an abortion has taken place in a marriage it is very likely to disrupt the dynamics of a healthy and happy family. It is particularly true if subsequent children were born out of desire to replace what was lost to the abortion. But it does not affect only children that are born after an abortion, it affects children that were born before as well. Some children may develop a "survival syndrome", while not being a medical or psychological term, it definitely exists in many children that were affected by abortion. These children will do just anything they can in order to please their parents and people around them. They often may feel that they can not do enough to earn respect and love. But on the other hand if a child is misbehaving and call for some discipline and reprimand, parents may be so overwhelmed with guilt over past abortion that hesitate to reprimand the child when they called to so. This inability to discipline and reprimand the child can be present in parent-child relationship in both with children that were born before abortion as well as with children that were born after.

Children that are born after abortion, and in particular children that were born out of desire to replace a child lost, may go through some very difficult times in their relationships with their parents. One of the most difficult parts that parents need to learn that nothing will ever replace what was lost. This can be done by acknowledging that what was lost was very precious, unique and irreplaceable, and help bring a closure.

Many teenagers have asked "Why don't you accept me for who I am?!" While this kind of question can be result of a rebellion stage of their lives, one can not help but wonder whether the parents see in this child some one else? Not only did they see some one else, but it is very possible they wanted to be that child some one else. In the mind of parents the child, that would have been born if abortion did not take place, is better and the child that they have never meets their expectations.

To brake through this kind of vicious cycle, the couple who may have had an abortion would need some deep soul searching and maybe some professional help as well. The good news that there are many people today who come forth and talk about their personal experience of abortion and its aftereffects on their lives. The support groups are being formed around the world where people help each other on the path of healing after abortion.