AFTER ABORTION: Two random thoughts: First, about 80% or so of the post-abortive women I’ve counseled express serious regrets. I do realize there’s self-selection going on here; we’re a pro-life center (although many, many of our clients view abortion as a tragic necessity) and most of our clients were raised Christian.

But I also wonder whether our attempts to understand “post-abortion grief” aren’t stymied by a misunderstanding of a particular kind of Protestantism. Many of my clients have felt regret after abortion that is as deep (as far as I can tell) as any regret they’ve ever felt. They then confess to Christ, ask for forgiveness, and know that Jesus forgives; and they move on, as they move on from other actions that they know are grave sins. Because all this is private and can happen in a moment (praying the Sinner’s Prayer, for example, or responding to an altar call), I think it can look, to people raised outside this particular strain of Protestantism, less weighty and less of a relief of a terrible burden than it really is. These women speak very precisely about how they’ve dealt with their grief and moved on; but the way they deal with grief and regret over abortion is the way they would deal with grief and regret over any terrible sin. They give it to God and move on.

That can be off-putting to people who come to post-abortive women with preconceived notions that they should feel no regret or that they should feel a constant, inconsolable ache. Fortunately, I’d been so thoroughly indoctrinated into abortion-rights propaganda that I was expecting very few of our post-abortive clients to express regret at all, so I was startled enough to pay attention when that turned out not to be true.

NOTE: I edited this post because Avram of Pigs and Fishes pointed out that the thing that prompted these thoughts, a link on After Abortion that is actually making a different point, doesn’t say what I thought it said–should have been much more careful: “Eve —

“Did you follow the link to the StarTribune article? It says ‘Studies show that 10 percent of women who have abortions experience depressive symptoms of a lingering nature. The same symptoms occur in just as many women after childbirth.’ The implications are a bit different with that second sentence attached.

“According to the National Institute of Mental Health, that’s about the same as the percentage of the general adult American population (9.5%) that suffers clinical depression, and lower than the percentage

of women in general (12%) that are affected by a depressive disorder each year.”

I shouldn’t’ve been linking to the Star-Tribune piece anyway, since what I wanted to write about was post-abortion grief and regret (emotional and spiritual categories) rather than depression (medical category). Apologies….