There are silent women in our churches who stay hidden for fear of being found out – the 30% who have had abortions. I am one of them and so feel I can safely speak for us (can I really?!)

We cannot speak because of the stigma attached to the dastardly deed.  We are afraid that if we talk about it, our pain will be reduced to a political agenda or side.  Our voice gets lost in the din of other people’s needs, sins, whatever.  I so appreciated when Dave Brooks and Mark Shields were being interviewed by Judi Woodruff on PBS the week that NY voted to allow for abortions up until birth.  David Brooks was sobered and grieved.  Mark Shields called it for it was – infanticide.  When he then said that most in the US are anti-abortion but pro-choice, what I heard was “we don’t want to criminalize the women who have had abortions”.  No one else needs to criminalize us, we do it to ourselves.

It takes years to come to terms with it.  And while it’s easy for others to say: “I struggle with gossip or lust” and still others “I am gay”, no woman who has had an abortion will freely say “I killed my child”, but that’s how we view ourselves.  For us to say “I have had an abortion” is the same as calling ourselves child murderers.  You cannot imagine what seeing posters of aborted children do to us, or hearing reports of baby parts being sold.  Please, there is no judgment in my ‘voice’ of those who want to expose the horrors of the abortion industry – I applaud them.  And while one can walk the path of forgiveness and restitution with the hope for reconciliation with others, that path is truncated for us; how do we ask our aborted child to forgive us, how does one make restitution or reconciliation to a child one has killed.   Some of us have become avid and active pro-lifers, others have gone into ministry to help other women who have had abortions, still others refuse to deal with it.  However, a whole lot of us feel like we’ve been rendered ineffective: we don’t deserve to be mothers, we certainly are unqualified to be in ministry, and in general we are less than second class citizens because we have done the ‘unnatural thing’ Romans 1 talks about – killed our own child.

So, most of us are silent and remain hidden.  Our abject fear prevents us from opening-up about this because if we do so, we become vulnerable to others’ judgment and rejection.  There is so much shame and guilt attached to this, shame to the very core of who we are – our identity.  And for those of us who have walked the difficult path to forgiveness of our guilt – yes, I believe God has forgiven me, but it took years before I could forgive myself and still periodically struggle with it – shame takes years, in my case 30 years.  We are vulnerable to Satan’s continual accusation, and even when we find ourselves immersed in God’s love, the pain simply never goes away.  We/I run again and again to Him because I have nowhere else to turn.  My hope is that my pain helps me to stay sensitive to the pain of others – please this does not make me a saint, I know I’m not.

I don’t know why I need to tell this now.  I myself have come a long way since 1976, when at age 19, I aborted my child.  Part of the healing process was to ask God his gender and to give him a name – David, which means ‘beloved’.  I would say it took 20 years to get to the place of forgiveness but far longer to deal with the shame.  To talk about this is simply the most difficult thing for me to do, the pain is almost unbearable.  I rarely talk about it, because it feels like minimizing the enormity of it.  I am rabidly pro-life in all of its forms – pro environment, pro-humanity, because God is all about life.  I do think that this is a very basic identity issue.  I’m not into starting a movement, nor am I into making this a spectacle.  And I have absolutely no idea what God wants to do with this. Maybe it’s just a way to overcome my own fear of exposure.

Some have become safe people for fragile hearts and their words heal.  Each expression of health are words of life.    Women who have confided in me have begged me never to divulge their names or their identity.  I have spoken openly about this with high school students, to a generation who does not attach the stigma my generation does.  I so desperately want them to understand the enormity of such a decision and its consequences.  Also, as painful and risky as this is, I have spoken openly about it in other settings – in an evening of grief for the unborn in our church, in women’s groups.  My concern is that I don’t want this to be about me…. That’s why I have a hard to talking about it, however, it would give voice to the ‘voiceless ones’ who are in our gatherings.    All I can do is tell my story, but I really want to relay who God is and His love through Jesus Christ.   My abortion does not define my identity – does this make sense – because I am loved by God and am a God lover.

Wouldn’t it be good if those of us who have suffered at the hands of Satan could become “the company of women who publish the good news– that the Lord is a God who prepares goodness for the poor” (Ps 68:10, 11).    To stand in the reality of who God says we are, fully armed in His panoply, on the ground of His love, against the accusations and condemnations of the one who attempts to separate us from God’s love.   A company of women warriors who want to see others freed from the shame and guilt of their abortions and who want them to find unspeakable joy because they have experienced such deep pain.  May we be God’s loving embrace to others.