Earlier in the week I ran across a copy of Arthur Shostak’s book written in the mid-80’s called Men and Abortion. This book was about the effects of abortion on men, and had a clearly pro-abortion tone, but Shostak had invited me to express my views and beliefs which I did in about seven pages.
Post-Abortive Fathers Are Speaking Out
I was somewhat negative in some of my comments because we had tried in vain years earlier to organize “Fathers Against Abortion” for men who had been involved in the abortion decision, and we had not been able to get anyone to join the group — which ended up with three members. But now we read in a story in the Los Angeles Times by Stephanie Simon that men are coming out in large numbers to declare that they are indeed negatively affected by the abortions they have been involved in.
“Men can potentially shift the entire debate”
Simon writes that while it may take years, sooner or later most men begin to realize that there is someone missing in their lives.
Jason Baier of San Francisco has given the little “ghost” a name, Jamie, and he often talks with him.
Mark Morrow, a counselor, says the pronoun should be changed to “we,” since the woman isn’t the only one who had the abortion, but the man lost a child, too.
At a gathering of pro-life counselors in San Francisco recently, discussion topics included “Medicating the Pain of Lost Fatherhood,” and “Forgiveness Therapy With Post-Abortion Men.”
At the conference men spoke out on years of depression and addiction after helping a partner get an abortion. And just as women began telling their stories some years ago and used their testimonial of years of emotional turmoil following abortion, men are now telling their stories to conservative advocacy groups in the hope of getting the message out that abortion hurts not only the baby, but both parents.
Dr. Nada Stotland of the American Psychiatric Association says it’s a rule of thumb that if you want laws passed, you have to tell the stories that catch people’s attention. Even the Justice Foundation is soliciting affidavits from men, and “Silent No More,” a women’s post-abortion group, is encouraging men to testify to the negative effect of abortions on them. Vincent Rue, who helped develop the concept of post-abortion trauma, says that men’s testimony will help change society’s cavalier attitude toward abortion, and this has the pro-aborts scared.
“Men can potentially shift the entire debate,” according to Marjorie Singer of the pro-abortion Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a square-circle of an organization if we ever saw one.
Some men years later have been so shattered by the memory of an earlier abortion that they are getting together with a long ago abandoned partner to pray jointly for forgiveness. They sometimes find neither really wanted to go through with the abortion, and was wishing the other would have objected to it.
Shostak is still involved in the study of the effects of abortion on men, but he believes the new trend to talk about abortion’s effect on men only encourages their guilt, which may have been lying dormant for years.
Abortion: “A Stain on the Soul”
Some post-abortive men say they try to rationalize so as to reach the conclusion that the abortion was ultimately a good thing, since their lives have turned out well, and that an unwanted child might have led to a worse life. But most eventually conclude that what they did was wrong, and that there will always be a scar, “…a stain on the soul.”
A lawyer from Houston, TX, Chris Aubert, will be in Washington, DC for the March for Life January 22, and says he is organizing a men’s section of the march and hopes to see men joining by the hundreds to announce, “I regret my abortion.”
This would be a powerful testimony to the inherent evil of abortion.
Activism Training Seminar This Saturday in Aurora
Plan to attend our “Action Speaks Louder than Words” seminar at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church, 801 South Eola in Aurora [map] on Saturday, January 19, from 11 AM to 5 PM. For more information, call us at 773-777-2900 or go here.
