Posted on 07/02/2007 11:04:02 AM PDT by Sopater
Proponents of grief theory add fuel to debate
It was August 1955, in a small town outside Sydney, Australia. A 16-year-old girl walked into a house, 10 weeks pregnant with a grown man's baby. The man -- a family friend -- had given the teenager an envelope stuffed with money and put her on a train to go have an abortion.
Nearly 45 years later, Julie Kelly confronted her deeply buried feelings about that abortion while passing through Seattle. A pamphlet for retreats with a group called Project Rachel promised healing. Two years later, in 2000, Kelly flew to Seattle from her home in Australia to attend one of those weekend retreats, sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church. There, she and other women shared stories of their abortions.
In a recent e-mail from Australia, Kelly said Project Rachel validated the grief, shame and regret she had been masking from herself and her family for more than four decades.
Katherine Murphy had an abortion at 19. Unlike Kelly, the now 24-year-old Olympia resident said she didn't have ambivalent feelings, nor did she become depressed. She had supportive friends and knew that her mother had three abortions and wouldn't judge her for it. At seven weeks pregnant, she went to a clinic with three girlfriends and her boyfriend.
She said she is not surprised some women feel guilt and shame about having abortions.
A lot of the shame is imposed from the outside, she believes. And because abortion is such an emotional and polarizing topic, it can be difficult for some people to be supportive, even among friends.
What helped her was knowing that women she trusted and respected also had chosen to have abortions. They talked about their experiences and supported one another.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattlepi.nwsource.com ...
"Moreover, you took your sons and daughters whom you had borne to Me and sacrificed them to idols to be devoured. Were your harlotries so small a matter? You slaughtered My children and offered them up to idols by causing them to pass through the fire. Besides all your abominations and harlotries you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare and squirming in your blood. Then it came about after all your wickedness ('Woe, woe to you!' declares the Lord GOD), that you built yourself a shrine and made yourself a high place in every square. You built yourself a high place at the top of every street and made your beauty abominable, and you spread your legs to every passer-by to multiply your harlotry."The "shrine" is anything we put above God. Typically, it is ourselves and our pleasures. To sacrifice our children for the opportunity to enjoy a few moments of erotic bliss, is an abomination to the LORD.-Ezekiel 16:20-25
If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.God help us.-1 John 1:8-10
Kelly's nickname should be 'Lucky'.
Evergreen State is the Antioch College of the Pacific Northwest.
I know someone that cries every ‘birthday’ for the child that never was.
That is natural for sinful humankind. Whenever we knowingly sin we do feel shame. That is the Law working in our hearts whether we admit it or not.
Yes, it is very, very real. It’s been 30 years since my mother made me have one. I was 14 years old at the time.
God has forgiven me of my sin, but not a day goes by that I don’t think about the child that I murdered. It’s very difficult to forgive one’s self.
I remember there was a book that came out in the late 80’s or early 90’s about 30 famous women who had had abortions and were saying how they made the right decisions. I don’t remember all the names, but a few were Rita Moreno, Polly Bergen, Ann Archer, and Margot Kidder. A few years after the book came out, Margot Kidder was found wandering in some field somewhere completely disheveled and confused. She apparently had some sort of a breakdown. I can’t say it had anything to do with her abortion, but it wouldn’t suprise me if it did. Also, Susan Smith, who killed her 2 beautiful little boys, had had at least one abortion a few years earlier. I think there is a relation to these women’s actions years later, and the fact that they had abortions. I could go on and on with examples.
Three!?
As horrible as one abortion is, how can you completely fail to get it after the first one? Do you not comprehend just how you get pregnant in the first place, lady?
Ask a medical question, quote scripture in response. You gotta love this Taliban view of the world, huh?
She went to get this "simple, outpatient" procedure with a support structure of FOUR people? Why would she need the support of four people for something that rarely has complications (for the mother, at least)? Could it be because it is actually emotionally traumatic? Does she bring four people to her dentist appointments, too? What about when she gets a pap smear?
No - she ended a life and she knew it. She wanted her terrible decision to be validated by a coterie of fawning friends so she wouldn't realize the utter horror of it.
It's intellectually dishonest to say that she didn't have ambivalent feelings.
Ms King refused, and this may have been the incident that ended with her telling someone,"I think it's time you knew I'm a registered republican".
The 61-year-old woman who had an abortion 45 years ago says she has regrets.
The 24-year-old woman who an an abortion 5 years ago says she has no regets.
Let's come back later when she grasps the enormity of what she did. And what her own mother did.
Exactly. Katherine, I feel for you when it all crashes down.
I’m a guy, but I still have guilt feelings (and grieve) for the (I believe) son that I never had. In 1986 I helped my girlfriend get an abortion so that she would not lose her orders and ruin her Navy career.
He would have been 21 this year and I would have been able to treat him to his first beer.
This flies in the face of the “zipless f###” utopian ideal that underpins feminism.
God Bless and Keep you. Someone that I love so very dearly had one several years ago. She, too, has asked and recieved forgiveness from our Lord but she grieves and chastises herself regularly.
I hope that as you grieve you realize that you were a child yourself, without the means or ability to understand the significance of what you were doing.
An idiotic title imho.
Are we going to describe murderers on death-throw as having "post-murder syndrome"? And then develop programs help them overcome their feelings of remorse?
Sheesh!
“Let’s come back later when she grasps the enormity of what she did. And what her own mother did.”
It’ll be right around the time she experiences the miracle of actually giving birth.
Then again, for about 30% of the population, there will never be a revelation of any kind about anything conservative. They are hard-wired liberals. The kind with the disease.
Yes, things will be so much better with the Talibatheists in charge. /sarc off.
Post a philosophical response on a philosophical subject, get a strawman response.
Does living is a world with no absolutes make it easier for you?
Let me add another scripture to the list for you:
For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. - 2 Corinthians 2:15-16
Christianity = Taliban .... great comeback Hitman, your intellectual acumen is really impressive.
How will God judge not her friends. And she does not sound as if she needs to repent of anything.
Dr. Craig Kinsley, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said talking about a post-abortion syndrome is "putting a name on something that doesn't exist"... Once an abortion happens, the (hormonal changes in the brain) come crashing to a halt and some women will be depressed, he said, but an actual condition that needs fixing doesn't occur. Having religious groups masked as therapy sessions foster the guilt and having women atone for their decision isn't going to help them, he said.
The professor couldn't find a part of the brain that has a unique response to abortion, so the grief, anxiety, and depression that some women suffer don't need fixing, and the healing that some women experience through repentance and faith-based support isn't real.
Mrs VS
If God has forgiven you, then there’s nothing left to forgive. Though great your sin, greater by far is His forgiveness. By far. That’s pretty great. :-)
I’m sorry. But always remember, God forgives. Everything!
I’m very sorry about your lost one. I can imagine that you have suffered. But remember that God’s forgiveness is an objective fact, regardless of your emotions. Not that I’m trying to slight your emotions! God HAS forgiven you because He died that you might be forgiven—and He would have gone to the cross had you been the only sinner in the world. Let me assure you (ahhhm) that you are NOT! That baby is with God now, safe from the world.
One day we'll hold our children.
Exactly right. And not all that unusual. Some people bring a "team" to the clinic to back them up.
It’s pretty simple, really. People with a conscience will feel guilt, and selfish people with no conscience won’t. That sums up the two women in the article in a nutshell.
Come again.
I honestly cannot fathom what emotions I would be dealing with if I found out my mother had three abortions. I WOULD have to ask her, "Uh, mom, don't you know what causes pregnancy?"
LOL You've learned well from your liberal friends.
Or when she decides to stop stuffing her emotional issues under the rug like the 61 year old did for so long.
Yes, there is post-abortion syndrome. From what I’ve seen, it looks a lot like post-traumatic stress syndrome. A friend of mind was forced by her parents to have an abortion when she was in high school. The poor girl suffered terrors and nightmares afterwards. Later, she then started to dress like an old woman, even though she was only 17, and dated boys a lot younger than herself. It seemed that the abortion forced on her and her baby really did a number on her mental health.
None of them care, nor do they think about it much, if at all.
You’re letting your sociopathic personality defect slip out and reveal to us who you are.
it appears to me that the ones suffering the syndrome are the ones who have a somewhat formed conscience and wound up wrestling with it.
Those who didn’t suffer are the ones who were “supported” by others without a conscience - and they validated the woman’s own lack of conscience.
And that is the stinker about folks who don’t have a conscience...they don’t suffer guilt and shame, and they therefore conclude they’ve made correct moral decisions.
The classical Calvinists would have an answer for this ~ namely, that having an abortion, or performing an abortion is simply an outward sign in the here and now that God has not selected you for salvation.
“I WOULD have to ask her, “Uh, mom, don’t you know what causes pregnancy?””
I’d also ask her...”what stopped you from snuffing me out too ma?”
The point of this article is not only do they not have a conscience, they are trying to claim that since they don’t have a conscience that bothers them after an abortion, those who claim that they do are not being “truthful”. They claim that their problem is from social pressures and lack of support, not from the knowledge of the magnitude of the consequences for what they have done.
“They claim that their problem is from social pressures and lack of support, not from the knowledge of the magnitude of the consequences for what they have done.”
very true...and how do you combat that claim?
It is a group of people who are not “suffering” who do not wish to believe there is a group who do suffer.
Since you cannot make these people understand or feel the suffering of others, it seems like an argument that no one can win.
Who said I live in a world with no absolutes?
Or maybe she was always a bit loopy.
Loopy knows loopy, eh.
Maybe.
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