What Dorothy Day means to those healing from a past abortion
Her conversion and trust in the love and mercy of God points the way to healing and forgiveness for those who are repentant.
As the cause for the canonization of Dorothy Day founder of the Catholic Workers Movement enters into the next phase, it should bring great hope to those who are suffering from a past abortion.
Having procured an illegal abortion herself in 1919 her subsequent sufferings were much like the ones millions of women and men are experiencing today. Her conversion and trust in the love and mercy of God points the way to healing and forgiveness for those who are repentant.
Although Dorothy did not speak of her abortion publicly, she wrote about it in her autobiographical novel, “The Eleventh Virgin. She felt it would seem hypocritical to speak out against abortion, something many women that have experienced abortion still feel today. She also was concerned that some people would use it as a justification for abortion, something she was very much against.
In 1974 despite her silence, she was a signer of a petition against legalized abortion, less than a month after the decision of Roe vs. Wade.
A saint who had an abortion
Dorothy’s abortion story will resound with many. Like countless numbers of young women, she speaks about being afraid to go home and face her mother’s disapproval when she learned of her pregnancy. She delayed, I am sure in the hope of finding a way to keep her baby and was in her fourth month of pregnancy when she told the baby’s father.
In her words, “I got pregnant. He (her boyfriend Lionel) said that if I had the baby, he would leave me. I wanted the baby, but I wanted Lionel more. So I had the abortion and I lost them both.” “I always had a great regret for my abortion” she later says.
After her abortion Dorothy went into a deep depression and tried to commit suicide, she also was afraid she would never be able to have another child.
The rest is here: What Dorothy Day means to those healing from a past abortion (aleteia.org)
