By Lois Heron
I stood before my high school classmates to give a speech I had worked long and hard to deliver with proper effect and convincing argument. It was 1975, just two years after the Roe vs. Wade court decision to legalize abortion; I was grieved and indignant about the decision! At that time, I never suspected I would ever find myself in a circumstance where I would face deciding between the life of a baby and abortion or living the trauma caused by abortion, but I did.
In the autumn of 1979, my close friend came to me to seek help in getting an abortion for her pregnancy caused by a date rape. I believed her. She and her parents wanted to protect their reputation, so no thought was given to allowing the baby to live. They sent the money for her to pay for the abortion, but she needed transportation to travel the three hours to cross state lines to an abortion clinic because it was still illegal in our state.
We walked in the clinic’s front door that rainy, cold morning, naively thinking we’d head home early in the day with the “problem” taken care of. However, the long and painful artificial dilation of a woman’s cervix that is required to perform an abortion takes hours. As I sat in the waiting room, a startling realization of what was truly happening began to descend on my spirit like the clouds on that rainy autumn day. The waiting room was full of other women waiting for an abortion; I witnessed the vacant stares of women who were there by choice and many bewildered stares from girls who seemed to be there by a choice that had been made for them. The waiting room became a war room for me that day as my turmoil about my complicity in a grievous sin increased.
The waiting room also seemed to become a confessional booth, a “safe place” for the women to share their stories. What I heard that day from the women around me and the fallout of the sin I participated in would impact me for the rest of my life. A married couple was there because the husband didn’t want another child—abortion as birth control in a marriage blew my mind!
Several young girls were there with their mothers to end an unwanted pregnancy. They were high school and college students who had a different future in mind, but the present they were about to live through scared them to death. In a way, the young women were accurate in their fear. The voluntary ending of life can lead to the death of more than an unborn baby; the spiritual, mental and emotional death of the person and the ones who participated in it unfolds over a lifetime, often into future generations.
“God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them: Be fertile and multiply and fill the earth … for your own lifeblood I will demand an accounting: from every animal I will demand it, and from a human being, each one for the blood of another, I will demand an accounting for human life. Anyone who sheds the blood of a human being, by a human being shall that one’s blood be shed; For in the image of God have human beings been made. Be fertile, then, and multiply; abound on earth and subdue it.”
(Gn 9:1, 5-7)
My friend and I left through the backdoor of the clinic, hidden from sight; I silently ushered her into a woeful and altered future for me. Hiding became my friend’s modus operandi as she joined the millions of men and women who suffer the effects of abortion. My heretofore “friend” will be called Eve as I tell her story. Some of the story’s details have been altered to protect her, but the events are actual.
The truth and the fallout
Eve’s family was upstanding and had an enviable reputation of success, but the children had learned to keep secrets behind the doors of their fine home. Eve’s secret life began early in her teen years as a result of living in a house of non-sexual physical and emotional abuse by her father. True to Eve’s nature, she hid the secret of her abortion by never speaking of it again; for her, another problem of her dysfunctional life was solved, and she became another victim of the silent epidemic that is destroying the moral, family and social fabric of our culture. In ending her baby’s life, she set into motion lifelong mental, emotional and health consequences.
During the last 45 years, I’ve witnessed the effects of what happens when we go against God’s desire for humanity. The lifeblood of Eve’s soul began to hemorrhage when she didn’t tell me the whole truth about the pregnancy.
It wasn’t rape, and she knew I would never have helped her had I known the truth.
Even if the baby had been conceived through rape or incest, after I’ve observed the effects of ending one life and the unraveling of her own life, I know I wouldn’t help anyone to make it possible. A baby always has the right to live.
“Abortion is a grave injustice. It can never be a legitimate expression of autonomy and power. If our autonomy demands the death of another, it is none other than an iron cage.”
(“Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future” by Pope Francis)
Eve has the right to live, but abortion became an “iron cage” that slowly took from her any freedom to live a happy life. What happened? She continued to live a lie; she refused to seek counsel and healing; her uncontrolled anger, guilt and regret led to three broken marriages, broken children and grandchildren, breast cancer, materialism, workaholism and severed family and friend relationships.
Eve’s story is not unusual; it is “normal” for women who have made the same choice. And these precious women who don’t receive God’s healing and restoration through counseling are the walking dead among us.
Many Eves
I soon began to make atonement for my sin. The cause and effect of participation in sin was not always apparent to me, but there have been occasions in my life where the thought has crossed my mind: Am I being made to account for the abortion?
I remained silent for a long time, mainly to protect my friend and her family’s reputation, until women I knew and loved needed me to listen and counsel them in the “iron cage” they lived in. I also volunteered at a recovery and rehabilitation center ministry that was based on the Alcoholics Anonymous format for recovery. Step five, confession as the antidote for shame, was part of the process of being released from the iron cage of addictive behaviors and the effects they had on the individual and others. The fifth step requires a “safe listener,” and every time I walked into the counseling room, I thought of the suffering of my friend.
Without fail, a woman’s abortion(s) was confessed to me as the safe listener, not always voluntarily, but as I discerned the long list of confessions with the women, I would ask them if abortion was in their past. I was taken aback by the number of women who did not recognize that abortion needed to be included in the fifth step of recovery from addiction. Once we opened that door together, incredible pain gushed from their hidden gaping wounds. The women from both ends of the socioeconomic scale were just like me—abortion crosses all barriers.
They are women just like you. The men, children and relatives affected by their decisions are like us, too. We rub shoulders with the effects of abortion every day: we pray the Mass with Eves, we work with Eves, we socialize with Eves, we may be Eve!
The Guttmacher Institute’s Abortion Patient Survey estimates that “one in four (24.7%) U.S. women of reproductive age will have an abortion by age 45 if the 2020 abortion rate remains constant.”
The solution
“Jesus chose not to engage in the culture of violence, even to save his own life.
He rejected violence so completely that he was willing to die for it,
and at the hands of those who perpetuated it.”
(Frances Wattman Rosenau)
The power of prayer is so underestimated that we overlook employing our strongest weapon against the enemy of life. As priests, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, we may pray the authorized prayers of the Church and the Deliverance Prayers for abortion victims. We can also pray forward for the children in our lives—for their purity, future boyfriends and girlfriends and spouses, and their marriages.
Lord God, I plead for the moral purity of my children and grandchildren. (Name them)
“O Blood and Water, which gushed forth from the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a fount of Mercy for us, I [entrust] them to you.”
“Any spirits of death or anything connected with death, anything associated with abortion, miscarriage, contraceptive use, etc., Satan and all his companion spirits, I bind you separately and individually in the Blood of Christ and break all seals,
in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
I send you directly and immediately to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In the Name of Jesus begone. (Thrice) I command that you never return,
In the Name of Jesus you never return. (Thrice)
In the name of Jesus, begone. (Thrice) Amen. (Thrice) Amen.”
You can pray for our fellow voters, that their minds will be opened and their hearts softened so that they will see the profound worth of preborn children. We can reflect on the gifts God has given us and how we can use them to defend the precious children he has created.
“Did you fail to rescue those who were being dragged off to death…because you
said, ‘We didn’t know about it’? Surely, the Searcher of hearts knows and
will repay all according to their deeds.”
(Prv 24:11-12)
It’s been said that goodness and evil are both global and local; turning the tide of the culture of death is our responsibility—locally and globally. We cannot idly stand by and delude ourselves in ignorance and apathy about the far-reaching ramifications of abortion. We must recognize our responsibilities as missionary disciples in our homes and communities.
Firstly, our mission field is our family, so how do we begin? We must practice our faith, model it, and actively instruct our children in the beauty, goodness, and truth of the faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church may seem daunting to read, but there are many accessible resources to help us know what we believe and why we believe it based on the theology of God present in the catechism in “Part Three: Life in Christ,” which can become your template for nurturing moral purity in your home.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church for Kids and Adolescents will assist you as you model a culture of life before the young people in your life. St. John Paul II’s treatise on the Theology of the Body is available in an adapted version for teens for you to use as a resource to guide your own children into the crucial years of making sexual decisions for themselves.
Families can volunteer at any nonprofit pregnancy resource center’s fundraising activity. Another friend of mine chose abortion in her teen years; she now helps women with counseling in pre and post-abortion circumstances and by doing ultrasounds for her city’s pregnancy crisis center.
Your family can adopt a single mom by paying for her healthcare, material resources and parenting classes. Families are stepping up to help disenfranchised women in extreme circumstances by taking a single mother into their home as she carries her baby to term. Your family could start a donation jar for one of the many secure Catholic right-to-live ministries.
You can join the march toward life with your family through peaceful protest and voting; yes, educating your children on all political matters and taking them with you to vote weaves social responsibility into the fabric of their lives. We must do this, especially now as South Dakota votes on Amendment G.
Friends, our nation, our culture, our future and our families rely on our obedience to God’s truth about life. Are you going to make a difference? I pray that you will!
Lois Heron is a parishioner at the Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Sioux Falls. She is a writer and retired educator.
