May 22, 2009 
If you have have a Twitter accout, now you can find us there as well- feel free to follow us. We will be using twitter to post updates about our website, share information about topics related to healing after abortion, share prayer requests and connect with our readers and supporters. If you follow us on Twitter, we will most likely follow you back.
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July 30, 2008 
photo credit: iowa_spirit_walkerThe wound that abortion leaves behind is so deep and so painful that the only way to healing can be found through forgiveness. Many men and women in the process of confronting the aftermath of abortion rediscover God again. Quiet often they are surprised what they find, some even say that it can be likened to discovering God for the very first time.
Often our image and understanding of God is affected by own experiences. Our understanding of the meaning of the word “Father” is affected because our own father was abusive or we grew up without knowing our own fathers. As sad as it may sound there are indeed many people who can not put words “loving” and “father” in one sentence.
When we talk about his justice and forgiveness we often see him as tyrant or unmerciful CEO- not without fault of our preachers, pastors and priests. He is going to punish us real bad if we don’t say 100s of Lord’s Prayers.
Finally when we talk about relationship with him, often it is a “one way street” type of relationship. We ask favors and fail to listen to what He has to say. This type of relationship of course is doomed and will leave us disappointed, as any relationship that is not build on love.
God’s love for us was manifested in a most convincing way when his only Son died for our sins on the Cross. Our response to his great forgiveness must begin with love.
Take Peter for example. According with the Gospel of St. John (John 21:15-17), the first time Peter spoke to Jesus it was answering Jesus’ questions if Peter loved him. Was Peter’s heart and conscious burdened with the knowledge that just few days ago he made a “u-turn” away from Christ, by saying “I don not know the man” (Matthew 26:72)? Didn’t he needed to hear from Jesus that he was forgiven for betraying him? Why on earth would Jesus be asking Peter if Peter loved him?!!
Peter did not need to hear he was forgiven. He already knew that! He witnessed Jesus performing miracles and heal the sick on countless of occasions. Peter hear him say “your sins are for given” to many of the healed.
What probably Peter needed, as we do as well, is to open our spiritual eyes- something that can not be done without love. To receive and fully appreciate God’s love, we need to love Him too.
Many men and women are convinced that abortion was that “u-turn” away from God. Our journey back to him should begin with love. At the end of this journey we will discover that although we may have made a u-turn away from God, God did not leave us nor did He ever stopped loving us (John 3:16 ).
Posted in Forgiveness After Abortion, Men, Women 1 Comment »
July 29, 2008 
The first ever conference to address the aftermath of abortion in men took place in November last year in San Francisco, CA. The conference welcomed participants from around the world and featured presentation and session by the experts in the field of counseling as well testimonies of men who shared how abortion impacted their lives.
This year the conference will take place in Oak Brook, IL – the suburbs of Chicago. The conference will include the following topics:
If you are interested in attending this conference please visit the official website of Reclaiming Fatherhood.
Posted in Abortion, After abortion, Conferences and Retreats, Men No Comments »
July 29, 2008 
photo credit: jonathanrperkinsMany man and women asked themselves this question countless times. You may have been told countless times that forgiveness is possible. You know that on intellectual level, yet in the depths of your heart you have doubts – “Will I ever find forgiveness?”, you wonder…
This forgiveness that you are searching for, is a complicated and some times lengthy process. During this process you will need to find forgiveness from God, forgiveness from your child and of course you will have to forgive yourself. This journey is not easy and certainly is unique for every one. While many may have walked a similar journey, no one really was “wearing your shoes”. For some pieces of the puzzle fall into places rather quickly. For others it takes long time and good amount of internal struggle.
In the upcoming weeks we will publish several articles that will delve into this process forgiveness. We don’t pretend to offer an “bulletproof” answer that would suit every single person. However we hope that our readers will help us along the way by sharing their experience and testifying that you are not alone on this path.
In our first series we will be focusing on God’s forgiveness as we will walk you through some examples from the Holy Scriptures. If you are already a regular visitor to our website, we invite you to participate in the comments- good can use you and what you have experienced to help and heal other people. If this is your first time to our website, make sure to subscribe so you will not miss our future posts.
Posted in Abortion, After abortion, Forgiveness After Abortion, Men, Women 44 Comments »
July 29, 2008 This website was idle since last November, but we are ready to resume regular updates. We also are implementing some changes and updates to our website. But before we would like to apologize to everyone who stopped by and commented on many articles. We also would like to stress that nothing on this website should be treated as medical advise or a substitute of medical advise. While we write about certain procedures and how it may affect men and women, we would like to remind everyone that administration of this website holds pro-life beliefs and our only goal is to help, in as little way as we can, those who are suffering from the aftermath of abortion. Nor advise on how to obtain an abortion will be given on this website or expected.
In particular we would like to apologize to those who tried to contact Vicki Thorn through this website. While we are in regular contact, this website was unattended since last November. If you would like to reach Vicki, please call National Office of Post Abortion Healing and Reconciliation at 1-800-5WE-CARE .
Changes on Our Website
As we plan to grow the community of readers here at Healing After Abortion, we have implemented several changes to the way comments are handled, moderated and displayed. One thing you will notice right away that comments will no longer be held in moderation and will appear on our website immediately after you click “Ad Comment” button. We will however moderate the comments to prevent spam.
Again, we apologize for such a long period of silence. We hope this new phase in the life of our website will benefit many.
Posted in Abortion, After abortion, Men, Women No Comments »
November 25, 2007 Posted in Abortion, Abortion facts, After abortion, Women 4 Comments »
January 27, 2007 By Vicki Thorn
One step in healing after an abortion is to recognize the sex of your child and to choose a name. Women wonder how they might know this or they are surprised that they always had sense of the sex of their child.
Women would know the sex of their child because they carry cells for their children the rest of their lives. We women seem to be able to recognize the male cells from the female cells.
When I ask women if they know the sex of their child, they reply one of three ways.
Of course, I have always known it was a boy.
How could I know that, but if she had been born she would be 18 now.
I have no idea!
I find with the last response that if I tell the woman about the cells that they carry, they often admit that they do have a sense of the sex of that child. They just didn’t know how they would know that.
If the woman still doesn’t know, I recommend that if she is a praying woman, she ask God. God has spoken to His people in dreams throughout the ages. There are many stories of dreams in the Bible. If Joseph hadn’t been paying attention to his dreams, salvation history might not have gone well. All of his instructions about taking Mary as his wife and fleeing into Egypt came in a dream.
Women will often have dreams of the child or in some cases children. Sometimes she had more than one abortion that she had not recalled or she also had miscarriages. In the dream, it is all apparent to her.
This article is an intellectual property of Vicki Thorn. Republishing of this article is not permitted without her expressed premission.
Posted in Vicki Thorn, Women 2 Comments »
January 15, 2007 
By Vicki Thorn
The lie that has been perpetrated in our society from the legalization of abortion on is that abortion is a woman’s issue. It is her choice. It is between her and her doctor. Men have been cut out of the decision process or told they have to be compliant.
If there are over 43 million abortions in this country since abortion was legalized, there are 43 million men who are impacted by an abortion loss. These men usually suffer in silence or sometimes act out in rage, in what may become a murder/suicide.
Why would a pregnancy make a difference to a man? Because the man is tied to his partner by means of certain scent hormones called pheremones. These are scent molecules of affiliation. They are not the same as the scent of food or perfume. They are perceived by different cells in the nose and the brain, but this information that they transmit impacts our lives in many ways. They are why women who spend much time together cycle together. Mothers know the smell of their baby right after birth and fathers know it within a few days. It is why we automatically smell the top of the head of a newborn baby we are holding.
It seems that men recognize by scent when women are fertile and when they are pregnant. Some men report knowing that their partner was pregnant before she did. I know in our family, my nephew knew my niece was pregnant before she did.
In other cultures it is recognized that 60 to 90% of men will have some symptoms of pregnancy with their wife. I learned about this in an anthropology course at the University of Minnesota many years ago. No one in our culture seems to have heard of this, If the poor man is one of the 20% who are really sick and he goes to the doctor, no doctor ever asks if his partner is pregnant. He just assumes he has a virus and that it will go away. It does, right before birth.
But there is even more to the story. In the 6 weeks before birth, the man undergoes hormonal changes. His testosterone drops, making him less aggressive and sexually interested. His naturally occurring estrogen climbs, making him more gentle. His stress hormone, cortisol, rises and he is in an alert stage, needing to protect mother and child. He gets more of the hormone vasopressin, which is a bonding hormone, effectively Mother Nature’s way of saying “sit, stay!” And about the time the baby arrives he gets prolactin, which is the nursing hormone in women. Why would he get that? Well, prolactin makes us nice. We smile more and we are very helpful. Isn’t that just what a new mother with a newborn needs? “Of course, I’ll go get diapers, even if it is midnight!”
It doesn’t even end there. Research on certain monkeys who are good parents finds that the male brain changes. He gets more brain cell growth in the front of his brain, the rational, logical thinking part. Researchers say the cells last until the offspring becomes independent, but don’t define at what age independence happens: 2, 12, 22 or 35. At that time, the cells begin to die off.
And, when the hormones return to normal, the testosterone never returns to the pre-fatherhood level or the bachelor level. The man is forever changed by the pregnancy.
When men grieve following an abortion, they articulate grieving for lost fatherhood. He was denied the opportunity to complete the biological changes that were begun with the pregnancy.
A good book for a man dealing with an abortion loss is “Men and Abortion: A Path to Healing” by C. T. Coyle. This is for any man, regardless of how he was involved in the abortion. It uses a forgiveness model of healing. It can be purchased from LifeCycleBooks
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This article is an intellectual property of Vicki Thorn. Republishing of this article is not permitted without her expressed premission.
Picture by Wazari
Posted in Abortion, Men 2 Comments »
January 14, 2007 By Vicki Thorn
When I first began doing post-abortion healing ministry some 22 years ago, I often got challenged as to why a mother would need to grieve an abortion. Wasn’t it true that the abortion erased the pregnancy? This business that she would remember and grieve was dismissed.
Over time more facts and understanding about the nature of pregnancy have surfaced and perhaps now we can understand why a mother never forgets.
In the year 2000 there were a series of conferences in Rome to celebrate the New Millennia. Several had to do with science and biology. I received an email from one of the congresses that stopped me cold.
Women carry cells from every child they ever conceive, it stated. That seemed like science fiction to me so I began to contact the researchers involved and to read the research documents. Suddenly I understood why women who have abortions and who miscarry never forget the lost children.
The phenomena is called “human microchimerism”. Early in the pregnancy an exchange of cells begins between mother and child. We are not positive what the means of cellular exchange is, but we know it happens. At the time that the child leaves the mother’s body, whether as the result of an abortion, a miscarriage, a cesearean section or a vaginal delivery, even more cells are sent to the mother. It also seems that if the pregnancy ends early, an even greater number is transferred.
These cells seem to be some type of stem cell and are stored in the medulla of the mother’s brain: where instinct lies, but also throughout her body. They have been found even 37 years later so they appear to be replacing themselves. The current research on the cells is focusing on the fact that in many cases they seem to be reparative cells of some kind. In an early case, a woman with thyroid disease had her thyroid removed. The doctors discovered that the thyroid seemed to be repairing itself and they found that the repaired part were cells of her son.
Recently I gave a presentation in Pittsburgh where a physician during the question and answer period spoke about research he has been involved in for cancer treatment where they are using the cells of their sons to attack the cancer cells.
Might these cells be the missing link in mother’s intuition? If we carry cells the rest of our lives, we are truly linked to our children in a biological way! Mothers have told about knowing a child is in trouble or ill. When my third child was born, I knew there was something wrong with her. It turned out that she had been born with a congenital kidney malformation that required surgery. I’m a believer in mother’s intuition.
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This article is an intellectual property of Vicki Thorn. Republishing of this article is not permitted without her expressed premission.
Picture by surfkid74
Posted in Abortion, Women 2 Comments »
December 23, 2006 In
those
days a decree
went out from Ceasar
Augustus that all the world
should be enrolled. This was the
first enrollemen, when Quirinius was
governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled,
each to his own city. Adn Jpseph also went up from
Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of
David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the lineage of
David, to be enrolled with Mary his bethrothed, who was with child. And
while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered. And she gave
birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in
a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
Lk 2:
1-7
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