This year the conference will take place in Oak Brook, IL – the suburbs of Chicago. The conference will include the following topics:

• Fatherhood Lost: The Biology of Fatherhood and His Role in an Abortion Decision
• Men and Abortion: A Review of the Research
• Trauma and Abortion: When Men Hollow
• Fatherhood without Paternity? Implications of Reproductive Technology
• Understanding Male Spiritual Growth and the Process of Healing
• Wounded Fathers: Why Do They Come for Help
• Medicating the Pain of Lost Fatherhood: Looking For Their Pain In All The Wrong Places
• Forgiveness Therapy with Post-Abortion Men
• The Masculine Side of Healing

If you are interested in attending this conference please visit the official website of Reclaiming Fatherhood.

photo credit: jonathanrperkins

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.

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.

Again we welcome Vicki and look forward to read her articles and posts. She also is a moderator of one of the forums “Ask Vicki Thorn”, where you can ask her question or maybe even share your own experience.

Over the time of almost 30 years of working and helping people to deal with post abortion trauma, Vicki believes that abortion affects not only women who have abortions, but also their families and even friends.

Please stay tuned to read her articles on our website. Feel free to recommend our website to your friends, we have limited resources in order to market our website as many other Internet “giants” do and mostly rely on “spreading” the word about our site.

In the 1973 the United States Supreme Court struck down every federal, state, and local law regulating or restricting the practice of abortion. This action was based on the premise that the state’s no longer had any need to regulate abortion because the advances of modern medicine had now made abortion “relatively safe.” Therefore, the Justices concluded, it is unconstitutional to prevent physicians from providing abortions as a “health” service to women.³⁴

National abortion policy is built upon this judicial “fact” that abortion is a “safe” procedure. If this “fact” is found to be false, then national policy toward abortion must be re-evaluated. Indeed, if it is found that abortion may actually be dangerous to health of women, there is just cause for governments to regulate or prohibit abortion in order to protect their citizens. This is especially true since over 1.5 million women undergo abortions each year.

Since the Court’s ruling in 1973, there have been many studies into the aftereffects of abortion. Their combined results paint a haunting picture of physical and psychological damage among millions of women who have undergone abortions.

Read the rest of the article at Elliot Institute.

This inability to hear you is not her fault and generally has to do with what is happening to her and her body on a biochemical level. Often facing an abortion, woman finds herself under much pressure and stress. This causes her adrenaline levels to rise and counteracts the effects of oxytocin a hormone that is on the rise during pregnancy and is at it’s peak during the labor and delivery. This hormone is also responsible for putting us in a “caring” state of mind, and if you want to talk “babies” to your friend or a family member, when she is in a “caring” state of mind would be the most appropriate time to do so.

In order to help her, you should be willing to do all that you possibly can to eliminate the stress and an pressures she is under. Being argumentative will only add to pressure and stress. Sometimes we may think that if we present our argument in a loving manner, she some how will be able to hear us. But the truth is that we are taking a big chance perusing this road.

So what can you do? Some times it is not so easy to eliminate stress and pressure from a particular situation, but there are simple ways that may help you to do just that. If you can afford, take your friend on a “girls day out” to a spa saloon. Good message and pampering will help to lover the adrenaline levels and may contribute to putting your friends mind into a “caring” state. Do not force the abortion topic or a “baby talk” on her unnecessarily, if she brings up the topic do not shy from it, but also do not force her into taking about it if she is not willing.

Another step you can consider is to take her out (physically) of the stressful situation. If you can offer her a place to stay where she can find herself in a more relaxing atmosphere, this also may help.

Last but not least, ask her about her diet. When under stress, we completely abandon good diet habits and stick to a junk food. This can contribute to sudden fluctuation of sugar level in our blood, and also takes us on a ride when from be highly energized we suddenly may become tired and depressed. Consider to offer your friend a had when it comes to her diet. She may not be feeling like cooking herself and sometime even reheating an already prepared meal can seam to her like an impossible task. It would be a good idea to provide her with snacks that would be readily available and would not require much time to prepare. Things like cold cuts or already made sandwich could be the best. Make sure that she receives plenty of protein and even some fat with her food. This will help her to level the sugar level in her blood and diminish times when she feels depressed and out of energy.

During stressful times, our body increases the production of adrenaline. Our body produces adrenaline whenever we feel pain, it actually helps us to feel less pain. So can it be that the feeling of “relief” is nothing more than a feeling after riding a fast roller coaster? Indeed roller coaster it is for women who make the decision to abort. Not only they are stressed but often feel considerable amount of pain after the procedure. It would be very interesting to know what are the exact levels of adrenalin in womans body while going through an abortion and shortly after the procedure. I think we are not that much off in assuming that a women who had have abortion do go through a kind of an adrenaline rush and therefore feel this “relief”. Also this is why this feeling of so called relief does not last too long no matter how much a woman tries to hold on to it.

Guilt

While guilt is not something you should live with your entire life, it can be a beneficial force in changing our lives. In any one’s life there were moments when we felt guilty about our actions. Why do we feel guilt then? We generally fee guilty when we are tormented by a memory of certain act that did not corresponded with our moral principles or set of values, we say “I have made a mistake”. Any one can make a mistake and all of us quite often taste the consequences of our mistakes. But if we make a mistake, it does not mean that we have lost our value as human being. A mistake does not affect our dignity, with which we were endowed from conception. Normal feelings of guilt call us to correct the mistake we made, make up for it and reconcile with ourselves and others. When we do this, the feeling of guilt does not persecute us and we cab find peace again.

Shame

Unlike the feeling of guilt that emerges within us and may assume a beneficial role in our life, shame comes from outside. Feeling of shame is provoked by others and it becomes and obstacle in respecting ourselves. There are at least two major causes of shame.

• First, shame emerges when parents, teachers, siblings or friends make us understand that they can only love us if we live up to certain conditions. In this case we feel that love for us (or/and lack of such) depends on our behavior, our looks, our success. This love is conditional, love that we need to work for. So when we do not feel loved, we think that we simple did not deserve to be loved.
• Second, shame can be provoked by rude treatment of any kind: physical, emotional, sexual, and verbal. Those who treat others with rudeness make the victim believe that he or she deserves it.

No matter what it was caused by, shame can hurt us for many years and may become a “nourishment” for the opinions that we have about ourselves. Under the influence of conditional love or rude and abusive treatment, a person, consciously or not, assimilates a certain “disordered pack” of ideas about their own personality.  You may find many women say about themselves: “There is nothing good in me”, “I am stupid”, “It’s my own fault that I became pregnant”, “I need to hide this for the rest of my life”, “I am not worthy (or capable) to be a mother”, “I am not worthy to have normal relations with a man”, “I had one abortion already, why shouldn’t I have one more?”, “I need to punish myself or let other people treat me badly because I don’t deserve anything else.”

While feeling of guilt can be corrected, in some instances rather quickly, by asking forgiveness for our mistakes, feeling of shame can only be healed by love and truth and may require much longer time.

In freeing yourself from the power of shame, a woman needs to remember that who she is, is not defined by actions or opinions of other people. No matter how many mistakes she personally made, she a is a human being that deserves love and respect for her dignity. Since feeling of shame may have it’s roots in very early childhood or due to rude and abusive treatments, this woman may need strong reassurance from friends and family, that no matter how bad her mistakes were she is loved unconditionally.

You can get the CD at Amazon, click on the image below:

Happy Birthday

Eight years after she aborted her baby, Madam Diana Ng went to a temple at Sims Avenue on Monday to offer prayers.

With her in the second floor hall of the Cai Shen (Fortune God) temple were other mostly young Singaporean couples at a ceremony to put their past behind them. More than 1,200 couples had registered.

Read the whole article at The Electric New Paper, Singapor.

This only shows that abortion and it’s aftereffects know no boundaries when it comes to one’s religion and belief, it affects a woman whether she believes in Buddha, Brahman, Allah or Christ.

Loss that you have suffered to abortion is not recognized by many, it is very real loss and it needs to be dealt with. You may even need to tell your story more than just once and it will take much courage on your part. But in telling your story you will have a chance to lift up years of burden, guilt and pain.

You maybe wondering where to being? Some women are able to begin telling their stories from the time they went to the clinic. Some may need to say what had happened before the procedure or after it. The abortion itself may have been so painful that it could have made you numb. Maybe the events preceding the abortion where so stressful that you felt that abortion itself was nothing comparing to those events.

No matter where you begin tell your story as it is. Truth will hurt but it also will liberate you. If you like to share your story on our forum, there maybe some one who knows exactly how your feel and no one will judge you. Down the road your story may even help other women who may try to make sense of all that had happened.

I would like to offer an opportunity to post abortion ministries across the world to be featured on my website. Pleas contact me with information about your particular ministry at feedback@healing-ater-abortion.com. Please provide your contact information, whether or not you offer retreats if you do please e-mail the dates of your upcoming retreats, if you offer support groups the days and times when your support groups meet.

The flashbacks can take you back to also events preceding the abortion as well and sometimes these flash back can be innocently caused by the people you love and love you. Unfortunately they can affect you new relationships and sometimes even prevent you from having real relationships. As long as there is something you hide and your new boyfriend or husband has no idea what is being hidden from them, they may think that they are doing something wrong, but the truth is that they are not. I am not saying that one should go around and tell the entire world that you have had an abortion, not at all. You are entitled to your privacy, and hopefully there is a kind of unconditional trust in your new relationship that no explanation is needed. It is more important for a woman herself to understand why she reacts to certain “triggers”, it will help not get get cut off guard when a flashback comes back again.

My childhood was brutal. I was abandoned by my father when I was two-and-a-half. Then when he reappeared in my life again at the age of eight, it became worse. I survived incest, starvation, and beatings. 
I clung to life. It was my two abortions that nearly destroyed me. 

When I became pregnant for the fifth time in seven years, my doctor asked me if I really thought I should “continue the pregnancy.” Abortion had never occurred to me until he suggested it. 

My husband said, “It’s your decision. Do what you want,” and left for work. Naively, I began looking for women who had had abortions. But I couldn’t find anyone who would admit to having had one. I asked my doctor and he said, “It only takes a few minutes and it’s over.” 

Having already had four babies, I am now appalled at how ignorant I was about fetal development. My doctor said the baby–at six-and-a-half weeks–was “just a blob,” and I believed him. Afterwards, before I even got home, I began to cry. It didn’t help. 

When finally I stopped crying on the outside, I kept crying on the inside. I felt so dirty and alone. Something deep inside of me froze, I think. I dreamed a lot about snow and ice, as well as about babies. I felt cheated, betrayed, and manipulated. 

I went to counseling and the psychologist said, “forgive yourself,” and “let yourself go on.” She didn’t say how. 

Two years later, I had another abortion as an act of self-punishment. I wanted to die, or at least go crazy so I could escape the torment, the nightmares about babies, the self-disgust and the degradation I felt.

Read the entire story at Elliot Institute’s Website

I have created a forum on my website where people can express they feelings, whatever those might be, grief, sadness and even anger. Forum, so far, is the only major addition to my website, so please feel free to check it out.

“How can you deny an abortion to a twelve-year-old girl who is the victim of incest?” complains an indignant supporter of abortion. “And how can you call yourself a loving Christian if you would force a victim of violent rape to give birth to a rapist’s child?” Every pro-lifer has heard these same challenges in one form or another. They are the emotionally charged questions designed to prove either 1) that pro-lifers are insensitive “fetus lovers,” 2) or ethically inconsistent, allowing abortion for some circumstances but not others. Unfortunately, most pro-lifers have difficulty answering these challenges because the issue of sexual assault pregnancies is so widely misunderstood. Typically, both sides of the debate accept the presumption that women with sexual assault pregnancies would want an abortion and that the abortion would in some way help them to recover from the assault. Thus, the pro-lifer is left in the uncomfortable position of arguing that the sanctity of life is more important than the needs of the sexual assault victim with whom everyone should rightly sympathize….

You can read the entire article of David C. Reardon, Ph.D., at Elliot Institute’s website. It is one of the best articles ever written regarding the issue.

During the pregnancy woman’s body is set in motion that will last and continually change over the period of the entire 40 weeks of pregnancy. There is not a single part of the womans body that is not touched by these changes. The changes rage from visible signs to invisible changes in hormones. This process begins at the very moment of conception some effects last beyond pregnancy.

During pregnancy breasts are changing do to hormones (estrogen) that are preparing for the future nourishment of her child. Her hear must work harder, to provide more blood flow to the uterus, generally the amount of blood pumped by a heart of woman that is pregnant increases by 30 to 50%. Like the heart, her kidneys work harder to filter increasing amount of blood. The increased production of progesterone sends a signal to her brain to lower the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood, as a result pregnant woman breathes faster and deeper in order to exhale carbon dioxide. Her digestive system is affected and many women report unusual cravings for different foods and of course “mornig sickness” is caused by changes in digestive system. Virtually every hormone in her body is affected.

An abortion puts a sudden stop to all these changes. No one in their right mind could argue that abortion has no affects on woman’s body. In fact it is like driving a car straight into a solid wall. But even in such accidents there may be a miracle of survival. There is not such miracle for a woman that has gone through an abortion, it does not turn the clock back and make her “un-pregnant”. But what is most upholding is that so called “doctors” can lie time and over again that abortion will not affect you at all.