eattherich
01-08-2008, 11:48 PM
http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2008-01/34598073.jpg
REGRET: “I hadn’t given it a thought,” Mark B. Morrow, shown with son Ross, said of long-ago girlfriends’ abortions. “ Now it all came crashing down on me — look what you’ve done.”
'We had abortions,' say men whose lovers ended pregnancies. It isn't just a women's trauma, they insist. But critics see a political calculation.
By Stephanie Simon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 7, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO -- Jason Baier talks often to the little boy he calls Jamie. He imagines this boy -- his son -- with blond hair and green eyes, chubby cheeks, a sweet smile.
But he'll never know for sure.
His fiancee's sister told him about the abortion after it was over. Baier remembers that he cried. The next weeks and months go black. He knows he drank far too much. He and his fiancee fought until they broke up. "I hated the world," he said.
Baier, 36, still longs for the child who might have been, with an intensity that bewilders him: "How can I miss something I never even held?"
These days, he channels the grief into activism in a burgeoning movement of "post-abortive men." Abortion is usually portrayed as a woman's issue: her body, her choice, her relief or her regret. This new movement -- both political and deeply personal in nature -- contends that the pronoun is all wrong.
"We had abortions," said Mark B. Morrow, a Christian counselor. "I've had abortions."
Morrow spoke to more than 150 antiabortion activists gathered recently in San Francisco for what was billed as the first national conference on men and abortion. Participants -- mostly counselors and clergy -- heard two days of lectures on topics such as "Medicating the Pain of Lost Fatherhood" and "Forgiveness Therapy With Post-Abortion Men."
The most striking session featured the halting testimony of men whose partners aborted. Baier, who now lives in Phoenix, told the crowd he suffered years of depression and addiction. "I couldn't get the thought out of my head about what I had lost."
Since the concept of post-abortion syndrome first emerged in the early 1980s, some women have recounted similar stories -- and learned to leverage them into political power. They speak at legislative hearings and rallies organized by the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. They write affidavits detailing their years of emotional turmoil, which the Justice Foundation, a conservative advocacy group, submits to lawmakers and courts nationwide.
Last spring, the Supreme Court cited these accounts as one reason to ban the late-term procedure that opponents call "partial-birth" abortion. The majority opinion suggested that the ban would protect women from a decision they might later regret.
Women's testimony was also used to justify a sweeping abortion ban passed in 2006 in South Dakota. (Voters overturned the ban before it could take effect.)
"It's a rule of thumb that if you want to get a law passed, you have to tell anecdotes that grab people," said Dr. Nada Stotland, president-elect of the American Psychiatric Assn. Antiabortion activists have done that well, she said. "They've succeeded in convincing a lot of the American public" that abortion leaves women wounded.
Now, those activists see an opportunity to dramatically expand the message.
The Justice Foundation recently began soliciting affidavits from men; one online link promises, "Your story will help legal efforts to end abortion." Silent No More encourages men to testify at rallies.
Therapist Vincent M. Rue, who helped develop the concept of post-abortion trauma, runs an online study that asks men to check off symptoms (such as irritability, insomnia and impotence) that they feel they have suffered as a result of an abortion. When men are widely recognized as victims, Rue said, "that will change society."
Abortion rights supporters watch this latest mobilization warily: If anecdotes from grieving women can move the Supreme Court, what will testimony about men's pain accomplish?
"They can potentially shift the entire debate," said Marjorie Signer of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, an interfaith group that supports abortion rights.
The concept of post-abortion trauma is hotly disputed. Several studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals suggest that women who have had abortions are more prone to depression or drug abuse. But the research does not prove cause and effect, Stotland said.
It may be, she said, that women who have abortions are more emotionally unstable in the first place. Abortion is one of the most common surgeries in the country, with more than 1 million performed a year; while some who chose the procedure surely come to regret it, doctors say they see no epidemic of trauma in either men or women.
But the activists leading the men's movement make clear they're not relying on statistics to make their case. They're counting on the power of men's tears.
"The lived truth of peoples' experience is very hard to dismiss," said Vicki Thorn, who runs post-abortion counseling programs for the Catholic Church. "It's time we . . . affirm the pain that fathers feel."
Morrow, the counselor, described his regret as sneaking up on him in midlife -- more than a decade after he impregnated three girlfriends (one of them twice) in quick succession in the late 1980s. All four pregnancies ended in abortion.
Years later, when his wife told him she was pregnant, "I suddenly realized that I had four dead children," said Morrow, 47, who lives near Erie, Pa. "I hadn't given it a thought. Now it all came crashing down on me -- look what you've done."
A few months ago, Morrow reached out to the ex-girlfriend who aborted twice. They met and prayed together, seeking peace. After they parted, she spilled her anger in a letter: "That long day we sat in that God-forsaken clinic, I hoped every moment that you would stand up and say, 'We can't do this'. . . but you didn't."
Even abortion rights supporters acknowledge that men may benefit from counseling when they and their partners face an unwanted pregnancy. Sociologist Arthur Shostak has interviewed thousands of men waiting in abortion clinics; though they tried to project strength to help their lovers through the ordeal, many told him that they felt powerless, anxious and alone. Some dreamed about the children they would never know.
Shostak encourages clinics to reach out to these men. But he views the activist movement with alarm.
Recruits often cycle through church-based retreats, support groups and Bible studies that aim to heal post-abortion trauma. The men are urged to think of themselves as fathers, to name -- and ask forgiveness from -- the children they might have raised, had their partners not aborted.
At one retreat, the men are told to picture their sons and daughters dancing in a sunny meadow at the feet of Jesus Christ.
"They draw in men who may have a little ambivalence, possibly a little guilt, and they exacerbate those feelings," Shostak said.
Chris Aubert, a Houston lawyer, felt only indifference in 1985 when a girlfriend told him she was pregnant and planned on an abortion. When she asked if he wanted to come to the clinic, he said he couldn't; he played softball on Saturdays. He stuck a check for $200 in her door and never talked to her again.
Aubert, 50, was equally untroubled when another girlfriend had an abortion in 1991. "It was a complete irrelevancy," he said. But years later, Aubert felt a rising sense of unease. He and his wife were cooing at an ultrasound of their first baby when it struck him -- "from the depths of my belly," he said -- that abortion was wrong.
Aubert has since converted to Catholicism. He and his wife have five children, and they sometimes protest in front of abortion clinics. Every now and then, though, Aubert wonders: What if his first girlfriend had not aborted? How would his life look different?
He might have endured a loveless marriage and, perhaps, a sad divorce. He might have been saddled with child support as he tried to build his legal practice. He might never have met his wife. Their children -- Christine, Kyle, Roch, Paul, Vance -- might not exist.
"I wouldn't have the blessings I have now," Aubert said. So in a way, he said, the two abortions may have cleared his path to future happiness.
"That's an intellectual debate I have with myself," he said. "I struggle with it."
In the end, Aubert says his moral objection to abortion always wins. If he could go back in time, he would try to save the babies.
But would his long-ago girlfriends agree? Or might they also consider the abortions a choice that set them on a better path?
Aubert looks startled. "I never really thought about it for the woman," he says slowly.
"On one level, yes, maybe she got an education, married a great guy, has six kids and everything's wonderful now," he said. But he can't believe it could really be that uncomplicated. "It might bother her once every 20 years or once every five years, or every day, but there's a scar."
He has not talked with either of the ex-girlfriends, but he says he can imagine what they feel because he knows how the abortions affected him. He never had the nightmares that other men describe, or the crying jags, the drug abuse, the self-loathing. Yet he knows he has been tarnished.
"I have this stain on my soul," Aubert said, "and it will always be there."
He hopes to organize a father's section at this month's march in Washington protesting the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.
Aubert pictures men by the hundreds praying, chanting -- and waving signs: "I regret my abortion."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... crosspromo (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-menabort7jan07,1,3955517.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&track=crosspromo)
http://www.lifeissues.org/images/MAN_whats_new.png
Kansas City Star Obituaries
June 5, 2002
Zachary Duncan Draper
December 2001 - May 17, 2002
Memorial services were held June 1, 2002, at D.W. Newcomer's Oaklawn Memorial Gardens, Olathe, KS. Zachary Duncan Draper was beautiful as his mother, loved by God and others. My little baby boy didn't make it to his Daddy's arms. I never got to hold and kiss him, tell him stories or read him rhymes. I love you Zachary and look forward to seeing you in heaven. Survivors include his father, Brad Draper of Kansas City, MO and his mother, of Overland Park, KS. (Arrangements: D.W. Newcomer's Sons Johnson County Funeral Chapel.)
Brad Draper was very excited about his girlfriend's pregnancy. He had seen ultra sound images of his son and was looking forward to fatherhood, until the mother aborted the baby without telling him.
Devastated, Brad honored Zachary by placing the above obituary in the paper and holding a memorial service. September 10, 2002, Zachary's due date, was more than he could endure. Brad went to the parking lot of the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic and shot himself in the head. He died later that night at a hospital.
There has been precious little research done to document post-abortion stress in the fathers of aborted babies. The most comprehensive study to date involved 1,000 men who completed questionnaires in 30 different abortion clinics as they waited for their partner's abortion, after which, follow up occurred. The result showed that eight percent or more have been deeply traumatized by the abortion.
That means we may have more than 3.2 million walking wounded, men who are struggling with very serious emotional baggage. Further, this may only be the tip of the iceberg because there are an untold number who are suffering significantly, but to a lesser extent.
God has blessed man with a desire to provide for and protect his family. A crucial part of providing for his family is success in the job environment. Today's society largely judges a man's success or failure based upon his career achievements. A man's self-esteem will often rise or fall on his success in this area. Providing for his family is central to a man's psyche. An equally powerful instinct is a man's desire to protect his family, which should not be underestimated.
When an abortion takes place, these crucial, God-given instincts are often damaged or totally obliterated. This is typically the reason that we see the onset of symptoms of post-abortion stress. They say that the conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good. The conscience, in a significant number of fathers who lose a child to abortion, kicks into overtime and wreaks emotional havoc.
In May 1996, a young man from Minneapolis was dating a woman with an 18-month-old daughter from a previous relationship. She became pregnant and he was elated. Tragically, without his knowledge or consent, she aborted their baby. Furious, he went to her house where an argument ensued and escalated. He pulled out a gun and said that because she killed his baby, he was going to kill hers. He then shot and killed the woman's daughter in front of the mother. Then, in another act of cruelty, he took his own life. He allowed the mother to live to grieve the loss of her two children - one born and one unborn.
Anger is one symptom that I believe is present in every father who experiences abortion. Further, this anger will cause a man to act negatively toward himself or someone around him, possibly an innocent bystander.
Early pioneers of counseling fathers with post-abortion stress have coined the term "hooking". A man may see, hear, smell or otherwise experiences something that triggers a memory of the abortion. This memory is then often translated into anger, which is usually directed at the nearest person, place or thing. This can be experienced subconsciously, leaving both the perpetrator and victim in the dark as to why this negative reaction has occurred.
In addition to anger, a man might experience grief, shame, guilt and remorse. Insomnia may be a constant companion, as well as an overwhelming feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. He may exhibit poor coping skills or an inability to make decisions. His very core, the ability to provide and protect, has been seriously shaken. As a result, he may have little trust or faith in his other abilities.
Most relationships fail after an abortion, and future relationships are often difficult or impossible. Trust dies - soon after the unborn baby - causing many men to be apprehensive about making themselves vulnerable to another pregnancy with no control of the outcome. Some men develop sexual dysfunctions. He may turn to pornography and sexual self-gratification, which provide physical satisfaction, free of the risk of commitment and pregnancy.
Alcohol and drug abuse are common tools to dull the pain. His low self-esteem may result in promiscuity or being a risk-taker - setting himself up for defeat and getting what he feels he deserves when he fails. He may become a workaholic to either avoid people and protect his closely held secret, or to desperately succeed in an important area of his life, countering his failure of protecting his offspring. Other symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares or self-imposed isolation. Thoughts of suicide are not uncommon.
Generally, it is more difficult for a man than a woman to express his emotional feelings. If a man does not talk or grieve after the abortion, it will be more difficult for him to express his feelings later on. Once he builds a thick wall of secrecy and denial around him, it is harder to reach him emotionally.
Society provides little incentive for a man to grieve the loss of a child to abortion. First, mothers of aborted babies are afforded little sympathy from the professional psychological community. How much more will they refuse to acknowledge post-abortion stress in men? Secondly, society often implies that it is less than manly to cry or show emotions. Therefore, it is very difficult for a hurting man to grieve when there is a built-in bias against doing so.
Most often it is best to have a man counsel a post-abortive father. He needs a safe and minimally gender-neutral environment in which to become vulnerable. He needs to know that he will not be judged or condemned and that everything he shares will be held in the strictest of confidence. Allow him to grieve his loss and shame. Let him cry as much as he needs to. The grief is as real as that caused by the death of a two-year-old toddler. This was his child and, in his heart, he instinctively knows it.
Mark Twain said, "Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it." This is truly poignant for post-abortive parents. A crucial aspect of post-abortion counseling is the realization of divine forgiveness. This paves the way for forgiving others and - sometimes the hardest step of all - himself. Several good Bible-based counseling guides are available and should be used.
Not long ago, a man in Southern California seemed to have intentionally barreled his car through the fence surrounding the playground of a daycare center. Among the chaos, he calmly sat behind the wheel of his Buick while children lay trapped underneath, bleeding and dying. Has a past abortion tormented him to the extent of irrationally acting out his anguish? Sadly, abortion most likely will not be considered as a possible mitigating factor. How many acts of violence, great and small, are in reality connected to a past abortion decision?
The grim fact is that fathers of aborted babies are all around us. Many suffer in silence as they struggle to get through each day. They sit uncomfortably in the pews of churches. They are in your church. You and I must reach out to these hurting fathers in love and let them know that, through Christ, there is hope and healing.
http://www.lifeissues.org/men/index.html
Oh those poor ‘post-abortive men’
The LA Times has published a particularly creepy article about men who feel all upset and stuff about the fact their long-ago girlfriends and fiances had an abortion rather than keep their baby.Unfortunately, in our society “men’s tears” - even those only cried years and years after the event - may well be valued more than the actual rights of actual women.
http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2008/01/oh_those_poor_p
REGRET: “I hadn’t given it a thought,” Mark B. Morrow, shown with son Ross, said of long-ago girlfriends’ abortions. “ Now it all came crashing down on me — look what you’ve done.”
'We had abortions,' say men whose lovers ended pregnancies. It isn't just a women's trauma, they insist. But critics see a political calculation.
By Stephanie Simon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 7, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO -- Jason Baier talks often to the little boy he calls Jamie. He imagines this boy -- his son -- with blond hair and green eyes, chubby cheeks, a sweet smile.
But he'll never know for sure.
His fiancee's sister told him about the abortion after it was over. Baier remembers that he cried. The next weeks and months go black. He knows he drank far too much. He and his fiancee fought until they broke up. "I hated the world," he said.
Baier, 36, still longs for the child who might have been, with an intensity that bewilders him: "How can I miss something I never even held?"
These days, he channels the grief into activism in a burgeoning movement of "post-abortive men." Abortion is usually portrayed as a woman's issue: her body, her choice, her relief or her regret. This new movement -- both political and deeply personal in nature -- contends that the pronoun is all wrong.
"We had abortions," said Mark B. Morrow, a Christian counselor. "I've had abortions."
Morrow spoke to more than 150 antiabortion activists gathered recently in San Francisco for what was billed as the first national conference on men and abortion. Participants -- mostly counselors and clergy -- heard two days of lectures on topics such as "Medicating the Pain of Lost Fatherhood" and "Forgiveness Therapy With Post-Abortion Men."
The most striking session featured the halting testimony of men whose partners aborted. Baier, who now lives in Phoenix, told the crowd he suffered years of depression and addiction. "I couldn't get the thought out of my head about what I had lost."
Since the concept of post-abortion syndrome first emerged in the early 1980s, some women have recounted similar stories -- and learned to leverage them into political power. They speak at legislative hearings and rallies organized by the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. They write affidavits detailing their years of emotional turmoil, which the Justice Foundation, a conservative advocacy group, submits to lawmakers and courts nationwide.
Last spring, the Supreme Court cited these accounts as one reason to ban the late-term procedure that opponents call "partial-birth" abortion. The majority opinion suggested that the ban would protect women from a decision they might later regret.
Women's testimony was also used to justify a sweeping abortion ban passed in 2006 in South Dakota. (Voters overturned the ban before it could take effect.)
"It's a rule of thumb that if you want to get a law passed, you have to tell anecdotes that grab people," said Dr. Nada Stotland, president-elect of the American Psychiatric Assn. Antiabortion activists have done that well, she said. "They've succeeded in convincing a lot of the American public" that abortion leaves women wounded.
Now, those activists see an opportunity to dramatically expand the message.
The Justice Foundation recently began soliciting affidavits from men; one online link promises, "Your story will help legal efforts to end abortion." Silent No More encourages men to testify at rallies.
Therapist Vincent M. Rue, who helped develop the concept of post-abortion trauma, runs an online study that asks men to check off symptoms (such as irritability, insomnia and impotence) that they feel they have suffered as a result of an abortion. When men are widely recognized as victims, Rue said, "that will change society."
Abortion rights supporters watch this latest mobilization warily: If anecdotes from grieving women can move the Supreme Court, what will testimony about men's pain accomplish?
"They can potentially shift the entire debate," said Marjorie Signer of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, an interfaith group that supports abortion rights.
The concept of post-abortion trauma is hotly disputed. Several studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals suggest that women who have had abortions are more prone to depression or drug abuse. But the research does not prove cause and effect, Stotland said.
It may be, she said, that women who have abortions are more emotionally unstable in the first place. Abortion is one of the most common surgeries in the country, with more than 1 million performed a year; while some who chose the procedure surely come to regret it, doctors say they see no epidemic of trauma in either men or women.
But the activists leading the men's movement make clear they're not relying on statistics to make their case. They're counting on the power of men's tears.
"The lived truth of peoples' experience is very hard to dismiss," said Vicki Thorn, who runs post-abortion counseling programs for the Catholic Church. "It's time we . . . affirm the pain that fathers feel."
Morrow, the counselor, described his regret as sneaking up on him in midlife -- more than a decade after he impregnated three girlfriends (one of them twice) in quick succession in the late 1980s. All four pregnancies ended in abortion.
Years later, when his wife told him she was pregnant, "I suddenly realized that I had four dead children," said Morrow, 47, who lives near Erie, Pa. "I hadn't given it a thought. Now it all came crashing down on me -- look what you've done."
A few months ago, Morrow reached out to the ex-girlfriend who aborted twice. They met and prayed together, seeking peace. After they parted, she spilled her anger in a letter: "That long day we sat in that God-forsaken clinic, I hoped every moment that you would stand up and say, 'We can't do this'. . . but you didn't."
Even abortion rights supporters acknowledge that men may benefit from counseling when they and their partners face an unwanted pregnancy. Sociologist Arthur Shostak has interviewed thousands of men waiting in abortion clinics; though they tried to project strength to help their lovers through the ordeal, many told him that they felt powerless, anxious and alone. Some dreamed about the children they would never know.
Shostak encourages clinics to reach out to these men. But he views the activist movement with alarm.
Recruits often cycle through church-based retreats, support groups and Bible studies that aim to heal post-abortion trauma. The men are urged to think of themselves as fathers, to name -- and ask forgiveness from -- the children they might have raised, had their partners not aborted.
At one retreat, the men are told to picture their sons and daughters dancing in a sunny meadow at the feet of Jesus Christ.
"They draw in men who may have a little ambivalence, possibly a little guilt, and they exacerbate those feelings," Shostak said.
Chris Aubert, a Houston lawyer, felt only indifference in 1985 when a girlfriend told him she was pregnant and planned on an abortion. When she asked if he wanted to come to the clinic, he said he couldn't; he played softball on Saturdays. He stuck a check for $200 in her door and never talked to her again.
Aubert, 50, was equally untroubled when another girlfriend had an abortion in 1991. "It was a complete irrelevancy," he said. But years later, Aubert felt a rising sense of unease. He and his wife were cooing at an ultrasound of their first baby when it struck him -- "from the depths of my belly," he said -- that abortion was wrong.
Aubert has since converted to Catholicism. He and his wife have five children, and they sometimes protest in front of abortion clinics. Every now and then, though, Aubert wonders: What if his first girlfriend had not aborted? How would his life look different?
He might have endured a loveless marriage and, perhaps, a sad divorce. He might have been saddled with child support as he tried to build his legal practice. He might never have met his wife. Their children -- Christine, Kyle, Roch, Paul, Vance -- might not exist.
"I wouldn't have the blessings I have now," Aubert said. So in a way, he said, the two abortions may have cleared his path to future happiness.
"That's an intellectual debate I have with myself," he said. "I struggle with it."
In the end, Aubert says his moral objection to abortion always wins. If he could go back in time, he would try to save the babies.
But would his long-ago girlfriends agree? Or might they also consider the abortions a choice that set them on a better path?
Aubert looks startled. "I never really thought about it for the woman," he says slowly.
"On one level, yes, maybe she got an education, married a great guy, has six kids and everything's wonderful now," he said. But he can't believe it could really be that uncomplicated. "It might bother her once every 20 years or once every five years, or every day, but there's a scar."
He has not talked with either of the ex-girlfriends, but he says he can imagine what they feel because he knows how the abortions affected him. He never had the nightmares that other men describe, or the crying jags, the drug abuse, the self-loathing. Yet he knows he has been tarnished.
"I have this stain on my soul," Aubert said, "and it will always be there."
He hopes to organize a father's section at this month's march in Washington protesting the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.
Aubert pictures men by the hundreds praying, chanting -- and waving signs: "I regret my abortion."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... crosspromo (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-menabort7jan07,1,3955517.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&track=crosspromo)
http://www.lifeissues.org/images/MAN_whats_new.png
Kansas City Star Obituaries
June 5, 2002
Zachary Duncan Draper
December 2001 - May 17, 2002
Memorial services were held June 1, 2002, at D.W. Newcomer's Oaklawn Memorial Gardens, Olathe, KS. Zachary Duncan Draper was beautiful as his mother, loved by God and others. My little baby boy didn't make it to his Daddy's arms. I never got to hold and kiss him, tell him stories or read him rhymes. I love you Zachary and look forward to seeing you in heaven. Survivors include his father, Brad Draper of Kansas City, MO and his mother, of Overland Park, KS. (Arrangements: D.W. Newcomer's Sons Johnson County Funeral Chapel.)
Brad Draper was very excited about his girlfriend's pregnancy. He had seen ultra sound images of his son and was looking forward to fatherhood, until the mother aborted the baby without telling him.
Devastated, Brad honored Zachary by placing the above obituary in the paper and holding a memorial service. September 10, 2002, Zachary's due date, was more than he could endure. Brad went to the parking lot of the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic and shot himself in the head. He died later that night at a hospital.
There has been precious little research done to document post-abortion stress in the fathers of aborted babies. The most comprehensive study to date involved 1,000 men who completed questionnaires in 30 different abortion clinics as they waited for their partner's abortion, after which, follow up occurred. The result showed that eight percent or more have been deeply traumatized by the abortion.
That means we may have more than 3.2 million walking wounded, men who are struggling with very serious emotional baggage. Further, this may only be the tip of the iceberg because there are an untold number who are suffering significantly, but to a lesser extent.
God has blessed man with a desire to provide for and protect his family. A crucial part of providing for his family is success in the job environment. Today's society largely judges a man's success or failure based upon his career achievements. A man's self-esteem will often rise or fall on his success in this area. Providing for his family is central to a man's psyche. An equally powerful instinct is a man's desire to protect his family, which should not be underestimated.
When an abortion takes place, these crucial, God-given instincts are often damaged or totally obliterated. This is typically the reason that we see the onset of symptoms of post-abortion stress. They say that the conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good. The conscience, in a significant number of fathers who lose a child to abortion, kicks into overtime and wreaks emotional havoc.
In May 1996, a young man from Minneapolis was dating a woman with an 18-month-old daughter from a previous relationship. She became pregnant and he was elated. Tragically, without his knowledge or consent, she aborted their baby. Furious, he went to her house where an argument ensued and escalated. He pulled out a gun and said that because she killed his baby, he was going to kill hers. He then shot and killed the woman's daughter in front of the mother. Then, in another act of cruelty, he took his own life. He allowed the mother to live to grieve the loss of her two children - one born and one unborn.
Anger is one symptom that I believe is present in every father who experiences abortion. Further, this anger will cause a man to act negatively toward himself or someone around him, possibly an innocent bystander.
Early pioneers of counseling fathers with post-abortion stress have coined the term "hooking". A man may see, hear, smell or otherwise experiences something that triggers a memory of the abortion. This memory is then often translated into anger, which is usually directed at the nearest person, place or thing. This can be experienced subconsciously, leaving both the perpetrator and victim in the dark as to why this negative reaction has occurred.
In addition to anger, a man might experience grief, shame, guilt and remorse. Insomnia may be a constant companion, as well as an overwhelming feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. He may exhibit poor coping skills or an inability to make decisions. His very core, the ability to provide and protect, has been seriously shaken. As a result, he may have little trust or faith in his other abilities.
Most relationships fail after an abortion, and future relationships are often difficult or impossible. Trust dies - soon after the unborn baby - causing many men to be apprehensive about making themselves vulnerable to another pregnancy with no control of the outcome. Some men develop sexual dysfunctions. He may turn to pornography and sexual self-gratification, which provide physical satisfaction, free of the risk of commitment and pregnancy.
Alcohol and drug abuse are common tools to dull the pain. His low self-esteem may result in promiscuity or being a risk-taker - setting himself up for defeat and getting what he feels he deserves when he fails. He may become a workaholic to either avoid people and protect his closely held secret, or to desperately succeed in an important area of his life, countering his failure of protecting his offspring. Other symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares or self-imposed isolation. Thoughts of suicide are not uncommon.
Generally, it is more difficult for a man than a woman to express his emotional feelings. If a man does not talk or grieve after the abortion, it will be more difficult for him to express his feelings later on. Once he builds a thick wall of secrecy and denial around him, it is harder to reach him emotionally.
Society provides little incentive for a man to grieve the loss of a child to abortion. First, mothers of aborted babies are afforded little sympathy from the professional psychological community. How much more will they refuse to acknowledge post-abortion stress in men? Secondly, society often implies that it is less than manly to cry or show emotions. Therefore, it is very difficult for a hurting man to grieve when there is a built-in bias against doing so.
Most often it is best to have a man counsel a post-abortive father. He needs a safe and minimally gender-neutral environment in which to become vulnerable. He needs to know that he will not be judged or condemned and that everything he shares will be held in the strictest of confidence. Allow him to grieve his loss and shame. Let him cry as much as he needs to. The grief is as real as that caused by the death of a two-year-old toddler. This was his child and, in his heart, he instinctively knows it.
Mark Twain said, "Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it." This is truly poignant for post-abortive parents. A crucial aspect of post-abortion counseling is the realization of divine forgiveness. This paves the way for forgiving others and - sometimes the hardest step of all - himself. Several good Bible-based counseling guides are available and should be used.
Not long ago, a man in Southern California seemed to have intentionally barreled his car through the fence surrounding the playground of a daycare center. Among the chaos, he calmly sat behind the wheel of his Buick while children lay trapped underneath, bleeding and dying. Has a past abortion tormented him to the extent of irrationally acting out his anguish? Sadly, abortion most likely will not be considered as a possible mitigating factor. How many acts of violence, great and small, are in reality connected to a past abortion decision?
The grim fact is that fathers of aborted babies are all around us. Many suffer in silence as they struggle to get through each day. They sit uncomfortably in the pews of churches. They are in your church. You and I must reach out to these hurting fathers in love and let them know that, through Christ, there is hope and healing.
http://www.lifeissues.org/men/index.html
Oh those poor ‘post-abortive men’
The LA Times has published a particularly creepy article about men who feel all upset and stuff about the fact their long-ago girlfriends and fiances had an abortion rather than keep their baby.Unfortunately, in our society “men’s tears” - even those only cried years and years after the event - may well be valued more than the actual rights of actual women.
http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2008/01/oh_those_poor_p