Abortion Changes You: A Campaign for Healing

(note: I have not read the book this article is promoting, but the website did look good)

ABORTION CHANGES YOU
A Campaign for Healing
By Mark Earley

Note: This commentary was delivered by PFM President Mark Earley.

I have a difficult subject to talk to you about today, but the fact that it is difficult to talk about, and so many people avoid it, makes it all the more important.

You have heard us speak before on this broadcast about the sanctity and dignity of human life. But while it is easy to debate the issues surrounding abortion, it is less frequent that we stop and really think about the women and men who have been touched by it-or even think about how we can offer our compassion and help.

One newly developed outreach is doing just that. The campaign is called Abortion Changes You, and the purpose is to reach out to all those who have been impacted by abortion: from the woman who chose to abort and is still struggling with difficult emotions; to the man who was her partner; to the mom or dad who would have been grandparents, but instead suffer a silent loss; and to the boys or girls who later learn that they will never meet one of their siblings.

Here is the sad fact: One in three women in this country will have chosen to have an abortion by the age of 45. That's right-one in three. Given that, it is likely that you know someone who has been impacted by abortion.

That is why I am grateful that AbortionChangesYou.com and the companion book Changed are now available to begin to offer direct help for these hurting women, men, and children. Both website and book offer help in a way that is non-threatening and non-political, making them accessible to women and men from every walk of life. The book includes testimonies of people who have all been profoundly changed by abortion.

Rarely have I been as moved emotionally as I have been by reading these stories.

There is the teenage girl whose parents insisted she have an abortion; the husband who drove his wife to the abortion clinic against his own better judgment and later watches his marriage unravel. One is about a grandmother who each year, as the date nears of her daughter's abortion, silently mourns the loss of the grandchild she never knew. These stories will change you. They will make you look at this issue differently, just as the experience has changed the people involved.

The founder of the Abortion Changes You movement and author of the book Changed knows full well. Michaelene Fredenburg shares her own experience in the book. She says, "There are still many times that are painful for me. Mother's Day is particularly difficult. The year my child would have graduated from high school was filled with pain. . . . If my child had gone to college, she would have graduated this year. This child would now be a young woman with gifts and abilities, hopes and dreams, her whole life ahead of her. There will always be a hole in my heart," she says, "a hole in the fabric of our family and our community."

Some of you listening may be impacted by these words because abortion has touched your life in a deeply personal way; others of you may be moved to compassion to help others contemplating an abortion or dealing with its aftermath.

Either way, I want to encourage you to visit our website, BreakPoint.org, to find out how you can get a copy of the book Changed or find out more about the Abortion Changes You campaign.

from Breakpoint May 5, 2008

35 Years After Roe v. Wade

January 22, 2008 - the 35th anniversary of Roe v Wade - this commentary was delivered by PFM President Mark Earley.

The Legacy of Abortion
By Mark Earley

A woman-let's call her Caroline-was 92 years old. She was dying, in agony, but Caroline's pain was not physical. It was emotional. Caroline, you see, had been carrying a secret for more than 50 years: As a young woman, she had undergone two abortions, suffered terrible guilt all her life-and now, on her death-bed, afraid that God could not forgive her.

As her palliative-care nurse, Jean Echlin, writes, "At the end of her life she shared with me her agony over her lost babies . . . she felt that she had committed murder."

Caroline is not alone, as Echlin writes in Perspectives 2007, a publication of the De Veber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research. Echlin also tells the story of a woman named Lydia, who was dying of cancer. Even with the use of a pain pump, which gave her steady doses of morphine, Lydia's pain did not abate.

"I asked her if her faith or prayer could be of any comfort," Echlin writes. "Lydia remained silent except for her moaning." But the next day she confided the truth. "I can't pray-God won't listen," Lydia said. "I killed a precious baby when I was 18 . . ." Lydia's abortion had taken place more than 40 years ago-and she was still grieving over it.

Caroline and Lydia are but two examples of what the Institute calls an "unexpected correlation" between abortion and pain-relief care. Dying women experience unresolved guilt and psychological pain related to their abortion-guilt and pain that stand in the way of a peaceful death. Their guilt is so great, Echlin says, that it impedes the effectiveness of their pain medication. Only when the abortion issue is resolved-when someone listens to them and assures them of God's forgiveness-is the pain medication made effective, and the women able to die peacefully.

This is dramatic testimony that abortion is not, as the abortion lobby claims, something women will "get over" in a week or two. It is evidence that we know inherently that we are made in the image of the God who gives life. When we do violence to that image-when we destroy life instead of nurturing it-it has a profound effect on our emotions, our psyche, and our souls.

Today, as we mourn the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and the tens of millions of abortions that have resulted from this dreadful decision, we must recognize that there are likely many women among us who are silently suffering abortion grief decades after their babies' lives were snuffed out. As the De Veber Institute notes, these women need our compassion, and their trauma should be recognized and acknowledged by their care providers.

As we comfort the dying, we must also help the living. We must make sure young women know the truth: that abortion takes a human life; that there are alternatives to abortion; and that there are people who will help them through a difficult, unplanned pregnancy.

And they must be told that the notion that they will simply "get over" an abortion is a bold-faced lie. The truth is that if they walk into that abortion clinic, they may still be feeling the agony over taking their baby's life-even on their deathbed a half century later.


Featured article from Breakpoint, the newsletter of Crosswalk.com, on January 22, 2008. Email entitled "Crosswalk: The Legacy of Abortion - January 22, 2008."