From
Generation to Generation
When I became involved with the Entering Canaan post
abortion ministry, it was not long before I recognized many similarities
between the way the older women discussed their emotional traumas and my own
mother’s behavior. Over the months, I
began to feel that there was more of a connection than the mere proximity of
age and socio-economic status of these women to my mother.
Since I was a young child,
in fact, for as long as my memory exists, my mother has been horribly plagued
by depression. So much so that there
have been entire portions of my childhood where she was hospitalized or so
heavily medicated and affected that she was completely dysfunctional. She would often spend entire days in bed,
leaving us, as children, to our own devices.
The picture began to replay itself in my mind as I listened to the stories
of older women who suffered the guilt of terminating their pregnancies and a
curiosity grew about my own mother.
I am a forty-one year old
post-abortive man. The termination of my
child’s life took place sixteen years ago.
My mother never knew about the abortion and, like so many post-abortive
parents, I have not shared the secret with many people outside of the safety of
the ministry. One Saturday last year, I
sat with my mother and shared my story of guilt with her. She was so moved that she shared her story
with me.
I am the youngest of three
children. Between my mother’s pregnancy
with my older brother and with me, there was a fourth child. It was the early 1960’s and my mother was a
young mother of two children already with an ambitious husband who was not at
home much to help with the children.
When she suspected that she was pregnant again, she went to her doctor
and expressed an inability to deal with another pregnancy so soon. Her doctor gave her an injection which was
supposed to bring on her menstrual cycle.
When her menstrual cycle did not start, she returned to her doctor. He told her that he wanted to examine her and
as he did so, she said that she felt a sharp pinch and asked him what he was
doing. Without discussing it with her,
he had pulled the developing embryo from her uterine wall, aborting the pregnancy.
Her mental and physical
well-being deteriorated steadily from that point on. Two years later, I was born. Though I never felt any lack of emotional
nurturing from my mother, she was never fully with us. She eventually came under the care of several
psychiatrists and was hospitalized numerous times during my youth. My sister and brother and I spent large
blocks of time being cared for by our grandparents and we did suffer some
neglect, though nothing so serious that it posed any kind of a threat. We missed our mother and the abortion took
her and our sibling from us.
She is not ready to discuss
this episode of her life with anyone.
She told me that she divulged it to one psychiatrist whom she
trusted. Knowing that she was a
Catholic, he recommended that she confess it to a priest. She did and she received absolution, however,
it was not enough for her. She has since
dwelled upon the sin and never healed.
She will not come with me to the Entering Canaan ministry’s day of
prayer and healing. She is not ready.
Abortion hurts women, it
hurts families and it destroys lives. My
undeveloped sibling had his or her short existence destroyed. The tragedy is multiplied manifold by the
destruction of my mother’s health and my family’s loss of having a whole person
to raise us. I have no hatred or
resentment for my mother, as I am sure that she worried would be the case. I cannot judge her, having committed the act
myself, knowingly and with premeditation.
I grieve for her loss, so great and unfathomable. A lifetime swept away with guilt, wasted and
unforgiven. I pray for peace and quiet
to embrace her soul and the soul of my lost sibling and I pray for their joyous
reunion in an eternity of love and forgiveness.
Meanwhile, I wait for her, in His time, to accompany me on my journey of
redemption.
-
James