Posted by Helen on: 01.23.2008 /
Yesterday was the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. NPR’s Talk of the Nation was about this question: “Abortion has been legal for 35 years, yet it still seems hard for women to talk about their abortions. Why?”
From NPR’s site you can listen to the recorded program or read comments posted by women who have had abortions.
Yesterday on the program they were taking calls and had two guests with them who interacted with the callers. I don’t know the usual format of this program - I’ve never listened before but the topic caught my attention. I really wanted to hear what people other than conservative Christians would say about why it’s hard to talk about having had an abortion.
The guests were Teri Reisser, a marriage and family therapist and Aspen Baker, executive director of Exhale, an after-abortion counseling hotline. Aspen and a few other women started Exhale because of their own experience that there was a lack of non-judgmental post-abortion counseling available. They were not offered counseling after their own abortions, but now clinics are referring women who have abortions to their hotline - I think that’s awesome. I love this principle of theirs: counselors respect each caller’s belief system (social, cultural, political and religious)
Some callers never felt it was wrong to have an abortion. All callers would have liked to feel more free to talk about it afterwards. Whatever you believe about abortion it’s a significant decision and therefore one you have feelings about, both before and after. Some callers were sad that in the end they never had children later in life, although at the time of the abortion they assumed they would be pregnant (or a father - some men called) - again.
Some women were calling about abortion decades ago. One of them was still dealing with strong emotion over it - she said she felt she never deserved children after she had killed her baby and so she never had any. It was pointed out a couple of times that people expect you to grieve a loss they know about and are there for you but abortion is often not known about.
Someone said it’s hard to talk about having had an abortion because the hearers tend to feel so strongly about it, whatever their beliefs about it, that they jump in with their opinions and then the woman’s story is lost. She just needs people to listen. To affirm she made the best choice she could with the information she had, however she’s feeling about it now.
What I loved about this program was, I’m familiar with the conservative Christian beliefs about abortion. They think people either need counseling to deal with the guilt of the sin they committed or they are (currently) in denial. I appreciated that this program explored why it’s reasonable for women to want to talk about having had an abortion, without saying it’s because they sinned and so, of course they feel bad and need to talk about it. I was very happy to hear that non-judgmental post-abortion counseling services like Exhale exist.
Comment by: Peter Walker
1It’s hard to talk about any subject matter where groups of people are poised to ATTACK - where, in fact, folks often find their personal identities in their position within the “battle.” Whatever battle that is - gays, abortion, evolution, inerrancy, Star Trek vs. Star Wars, etc…
OTM and CatE in particular are so valuable because they bring people together in a respectful, tolerant environment. I was raised to believe that “tolerance” was a bad word. We live in a society that sings “tolerance” but effectively lives in absolute intolerance and dehumanizing unneighborliness.
I blame the iPod and Second Life for disconnecting us from other humans, but technology is probably too easy a target ;)
Helen, I listened to this NPR segment and had the same response. It’s refreshing, regardless of one’s position, to hear respectful, caring people talk about difficult issues like… well, like grown ups.
Comment by: benjamin ady
2“Star Trek vs. Star Wars”? Good god. some people have too much time on their hands =p
Helen, Peter, you are so right on. Thank you for posting this. Our whole culture *is* poised to attack on certain issues, and it leaves us … communityless in our most vulnerable moments. This is part of the reason I’m *so* glad not to still be in the Christian community I grew up in. One wouldn’t have *dared* talk about certain things there, and since that was pretty much my whole community, there were things I just never talked about. I am so happy to have so much more listenish friends now. I’m a much happier person because of it.
Comment by: Helen
3Thanks for your comment, Peter. I’m glad you found it refreshing.
Benjamin isn’t it great to have listenish friends?
Comment by: Amy Black
4When I was involved in Christian culture, I was uneasy about how harsh we were about abortion. It was treated like the unpardonable sin and what if women who had an abortion felt totally condemned by the church? I didn’t think we were considering their feelings at all.
Comment by: Jim Henderson
5Hear Listen Connect
Amy - I agree- Christian culture has become identified with judgement much more than mercy - pretty weird - makes you think Satan might be into religion
Comment by: kathyescobar
6forgive the length! i am passionate about this issue (post-abortion women who don’t feel safe to talk about it) so i will chime in. i am very open about my story & share publicly about it all the time so it’s no big deal for me to put it in a comment here. i had an abortion when i was 17 years old. i was far from being a conservative evangelical at that time. my mom was a single mom and felt overwhelmed with the thought that i’d end up in the same spot as her (she had my brother at 17). she encouraged me to get an abortion. the shame for most anyone i know is basically unbearable (i am not saying there aren’t people who don’t seem to be affected by an abortion but i personally haven’t met one of these women yet).
there’s just something about the whole thing that is overwhelmingly difficult and the culture around us says “move on, no big deal” (the media, etc.) OR “you are a murderer, a baby killer” (conservative christians). i honestly had no support to talk about it & my mom honestly made clear that we should never talk about it again, “it’s in the past, move forward.” i was good at being the “good girl” and the joke was i was the homecoming queen 3 months later, looking like i was on top of the world. but inside i was a wreck, a true mess, and would have so benefitted from someone to just say it out loud to, some of the feelings i was feeling.
my lack of safe places to process had nothing to do with christianity, i just didn’t know where to go or what to do. but not long after that i ended up at a conservative christian college and on the road to being the best darn evangelical you ever did see. trust me, i learned quick that in that world abortion is a no-no and becausei hadn’t said it out loud before, i certainly wasn’t going to say it now.
it took me 10 years after my abortion to even say out loud that i had had one & even then i couldn’t say the word itself. it was in a very safe group of women at a church and honestly, that group saved my life–and my faith. (ps: the group ended up getting kicked out of the church a few years after i moved because they weren’t using the Bible enough, no kidding, best spiritual transformation i had ever experienced but the powers that be got scared, too many christian women getting free!)
what i think is important for every christian to know is that in pretty much every small group you are in, there’s a woman in there who’s had an abortion and little to no consideration is usually given to those women when the “political and moral” positions start flying across the room. i can’t tell you the number of times the issue used to come up and no one ONCE considered there might be someone who had experienced one and was hiding in shame. AND at that point in my journey i didn’t have the margin to stand up and let them know how awful it felt to have them talk about the issue like it wasn’t attached to a real live person. i am thankful for healing, safe places to share. it never ceases to amaze me how many women are still afraid to be honest but i know why–they don’t feel safe in the one place that’s supposed to be the “safest place on earth”–the church.
Comment by: Helen
7Hi Kathy, thanks for sharing your story. I’m sorry you had to deal with all that shame. I’m glad you’ve reached a place of healing and no longer feel afraid to talk about it.
They made this same point on the program. They were saying, wouldn’t it be neat if for one day, every woman who had had an abortion wore a T-shirt saying that, not as a shameful scarlet letter sort of thing but for solidarity, like, hey there are lots of us out here.
Exactly. And on the program they were saying, even when someone does know because you are trying to share your story, they tend to get distracted into their own opinions about abortion instead of listening.
I think you’d find the program encouraging, if you have time to listen. Because it was totally supportive of women sharing their stories - there was no judgment in it. And it was awesome to hear about the non-judgmental post-abortion counseling hotline.
I definitely have had the experience of church/Christians not being safe.
This makes me realize one of the things that most impressed me about the program, actually. They didn’t lash out at pro-life Christians and say “It’s all YOUR fault that this is hard to talk about” - they made no attempt to blame any one group. The reality seems to be that it’s hard to talk about outside church as well as inside. That even people who are pro-abortion tend to have such strong opinions that they get into those rather than simply listening to a friend who has had an abortion and would like to share her story.
And they mentioned men (and at least one caller was a man) saying it’s hard for men who are the other responsible party in the pregnancy to know what to do - they often want to respect the woman’s right to choose. Because of that they sometimes are afraid it would seem to go against her right to choose, to step up and say “I’ll help you keep this baby” when that’s what the woman would really like. And men may need to talk about it afterwards also. Some call the post-abortion counseling hotline. Other family members sometimes call for advice on how they can best be supportive of the woman who had an abortion.
Comment by: Julie Clawson
8I hate how the political aspects of this issue often keep women from getting help. Most women have an emotional reaction to abortions and counseling would be a huge benefit for them. What gets to me are the media groups (mostly women’s magazines) that promote the idea that women shouldn’t need counseling after an abortion because to admit they do would be to take the pro-life side or something. The rhetoric of a woman’s right to abortion unfortunately denies many of them the right to be emotionally healthy afterwards. I wish the dichtomized language would give way to attitudes that actually care about the women and not just ideas.
Comment by: Eliza
9Kathy, thanks for sharing your experiences with us.
Having it known that one had an abortion is stigmatizing. Even among people who don’t literally believe in “sin”, there seems to be the implication that the woman was doing something she shouldn’t have been doing, or was careless & didn’t use contraception, etc.
Comment by: Helen
10Julie, thanks for your comment.
So do I. I’ve heard enough about ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’. I’d like to hear about people being ‘pro-women’.
I was pleased to hear the director of Exhale say that clinics are beginning to refer women to their post-abortion counseling hotline. Hopefully this will help women feel less invalidated by the rhetoric.
Comment by: Helen
11Eliza, that’s a good point. One of the callers said something to that effect - she was upset with herself for getting pregnant. That is just one feeling a woman who has an abortion might need to deal with, which has nothing to do with the morality of abortion.
Comment by: Laura Anne
12That’s such good news. Though I have to say that the main counselling service for post-abortion clients in UK is Christian. I would say that they aren’t any way judgemental, but the only group that are prepared to accept that abortion isn’t an easy decision and there can be feelings of guilt, shame, denial, anger, loss, grief…for women and the fathers (often forgotten about those men)
Recently I’ve been talking about the abortion issue, I’m hoping that it will open up discussion and encourage those who are perhaps struggling in silence to speak out and get help that they may benefit from.
What makes me mad is the number of women I see weekly who were never offered any counselling or chance to talk about all the options…and then it’s years later when they discover a ton of information they never knew which would have likely resulted in them making a different choice.
Kathy, thanks for sharing your story. I’m sorry you had a bad experience of church in relation to abortion. I too, had an abortion aged 17. I wasn’t in any way a Christian at the time, and I thought it was the only viable option for me and my partner at the time. But the sense of grief and loss was so intense afterwards. It angered me how many of my pro-abortion friends told me to ‘get over it’ ‘I’d done the right thing’ ‘it was nothing but a blob of cells’… For me, it was the church who were the first people not to judge me, and stood by me while I grieved the loss of the potential child I could have had. It was my cell group that sat and prayed with me and did not judge me as I screamed and cursed at God when a few years later I was told I may not be able to have children.
It is one thing to have an opinion, morals, ethics etc.
But it is surely wrong to judge someone and to treat someone inhumanely when they need you the most.
Comment by: Helen
13Laura Anne, thanks for sharing your story. I’m sorry your friends didn’t help you deal with the grief and loss. I’m glad you found were able to find people through church who were supportive.
Hopefully people in the UK will also recognize the need for non-judgmental post-abortion counseling for people of all beliefs and start providing it.
Comment by: Laura Anne
14so far, CareConfidential http://www.careconfidential.com (if you want to find out more) are probably the ones leading the way in non-judgemental post-abortion counselling for people of all beliefs. Because from the observations of many, the health care sector sure don’t!