Denver, Colo., Jan 15, 2018 / 02:37 pm (CNA).- After an abortion,men and women can experience deep feelings of sadness and emptiness, suicidal thoughts, dreams of the aborted child, trouble with intimacy and difficulty bonding with future children, according to an expert in the field.
Vicki Thorn, founder of Project Rachel and the National Office for Post Abortion Reconciliation and Healing, told CNA Jan. 11 these experiences are “a big secret” nobody wants to address, which sometimes prevents women and men who have been involved in an abortion from talking about their difficulties.
“There’s a lot involved there,” she said, explaining that many abortion clinics and post-abortion websites will tell women that having an abortion was a good thing, but minimize adverse reactions by saying “we understand you might be feeling bad.”
However, Thorn – a certified trauma counselor and a member of the member of the Pontifical Academy for Life – said that despite apparent reassurances that feelings of sadness and regret are no big deal, the reality is that post-abortion, men and women both are “haunted by this experience.”
According to a recent report from the Guttmacher Institute, some 56 million abortions were performed globally each year between 2010-2014, with 25 percent of all pregnancies during those years ending in abortion.
The highest number of abortions took place in developing nations, as well as many eastern European countries. While the number of annual abortions in developed nations dropped significantly during the years of the study, it rose in underdeveloped nations, mostly due to population growth, according to the study.
But despite the relative silence on the post-abortive experience, some celebrities have spoken out about the profound pain and regret they feel over past abortions, some of which took place years ago.
Among the high-profile personalities who’ve addressed the issue are Eminem, Sinead O’Connor, Nicki Minaj, Kid Rock, and Kenny Rogers.
In his new album “Revival,” released Dec. 15, 2017, Eminem includes a song called “River,” telling the story of a man who had an affair with a woman, and the couple’s choice to end a pregnancy through abortion.
The chorus of the song talks about the pain he feels, and his desire for forgiveness from the “sins” of his past: “I’ve been a liar, been a thief/Been a lover, been a cheat/All my sins need holy water, feel it washing over me/Well, little one/I don’t want to admit to something/If all it’s gonna cause is pain/The truth and my lies now are falling like the rain/So let the river run.”
Later, in the last verse of the song, he speaks to both the woman and the baby, saying: “I made you terminate my baby/This love triangle left us in a wreck, tangled/What else can I say? It was fun for a while/Bet I really woulda loved your smile/ Didn’t really wanna abort, but – it/What’s one more lie, to tell our unborn child?”
Similarly, in her 2012 track “Autobiography,” Nicki Minaj refers to an abortion she had at 16. In the song, she asks her child for forgiveness, saying “I’m trapped in my conscience/I adhered to the nonsense, listened to people who told me I wasn’t ready for you.”
“But how the – would they know what I was ready to do? And of course it wasn’t your fault (no)/It’s like I feel you the air, I hear you saying ‘Mommy don’t cry, can’t you see I’m right here?’ (yes)/ I gotta let you know what you mean to me, when I’m sleeping, I see you in my dreams with me.”
In his song “Abortion,” released in 2000, Kid Rock talks about the grief of a father after an abortion that is so great he contemplates suicide, saying “I’ve never heard you cry I’ve never seen you whine…I must die to get to you…where’s my gun…”
Kenny Rogers released the song “Water and Bridges” in 2006, in which he sings about decisions that are “much too late to change…/How a father could have held his son/If I could undo what’s been done/But I guess everyone is living/With water and bridges.”
Thorn said Sinead O’Connor was the first artist she ever heard sing about abortion in her 1990 track “My Special Child,” which talks about the sadness she experienced after she had an abortion after a relationship broke down.
Each of the sentiments expressed by these artists “are common experiences,” Thorn said, explaining that men and women can have different reactions to abortion based on their biology and experiences of pregnancy.
For women between the ages of 11-19, Thorn noted that their brains haven’t finished developing, and they operate mostly out of the amygdala, which is the fear center of the brain. Many young women who have abortions, then, “make this decision out of fear.”
A woman’s brain can’t fully process trauma until 25, when the corpus callosum, which is “the linker between the right brain and left brain,” becomes fully active, Thorn said, explaining that in the early years of her pro-life work, she couldn’t understand why most of her calls were from women around 25 years old.
“I thought that was the weirdest thing in the world,” she said, noting that it wasn’t until several years later when she learned more about brain research that she understood women were calling “because now they can process it.”
For the woman who’s had an abortion and is struggling with the decision, “we have to remember that she’s a mother who lost her child in a traumatic and unnatural fashion,” Thorn said. “Society says abortion is a simple medical procedure, but we don’t talk about what really happens.”
In terms of biology, Thorn said pregnant women go through something called “microchimerism,” in which cells from the child pass to the mother. And in cases of abortion or miscarriage, women carry more cells from those children than children they give birth to.
“These cells are part of biological knowledge, someone’s missing,” she said, explaining that the feelings could come up at any time, even years later, but at a certain point there is a “trigger-incident’, and I’m suddenly aware that that abortion was an offending event.”
The sense of loss that comes after is enormous, she said. And while globally abortion is discussed as something that “solves a problem” as simple as a fixing a bunion, “it’s much, much deeper, and that knowledge of the cells makes a difference.”
“The sadness, this sense of responsibility, ‘I did this.’ Those are all parts of her experience,” Thorn said, adding that many times a woman will have a second or third abortion because “she’s compelled to get pregnant again. It’s a biological thing. She started the cycle of pregnancy and all the changes that go with it, and didn’t finish it.”
And it’s not just women. Men also have a biological experience, she said, and can tell that a woman is pregnant before she herself knows “because our scent changes…at four weeks we smell different.”
If the woman is with her partner during pregnancy, his body also undergoes “the whole raft of changes, hormonal and other things.” Men, she said, frequently experience “couvade,” also called “sympathy pregnancy,” in which they have some of same symptoms as the expectant mother.
As the end of the pregnancy gets nearer, the man’s hormones “go crazy,” Thorn said. “His testosterone drops, his estrogen goes up, he gets more of a bonding hormone and he gets a nursing hormone for at least six weeks. We don’t talk about that. But those are real, physiological changes.”
She said there are many men who would have tried to stop the abortion of their child if they’d had the chance. “They would have put their life in front of a car, and they grieve deeply, deeply.”
There are the men who wanted the abortion and later regret it, there are men who wanted to keep the baby but were told it wasn’t not their decision, and there are men who were never told about a pregnancy and didn’t find out until years after the abortion and are “blown out of the water,” Thorn said.
“For men, in a sense the grief for men is difficult because they’re told that they should have no feelings about this. It’s her body, it’s her life, it’s none of your business, so he doesn’t have a place to turn,” she added.
In the end, “they turn to drugs, they turn to pornography because they swore they’ll never touch a woman again, depression, all kinds of things.”
She said it’s important for men to have a voice in the discussion because “biologically they are changed by the pregnancy, there’s a physiological thing going on here. He can’t control that, that’s biology. God is turning him into a father.”
Suicide is also frequent and strong temptation for both men and women post-abortion, she said, recalling stories she’s heard of men with seemingly perfect lives who jumped from bridges and no one understood why until a friend or relative revealed that there had been an abortion that the man “had never recovered from.”
Thorn said that just a few years ago in Milwaukee there was a murder-suicide prompted by an abortion in which a man killed his girlfriend and then killed himself after she had an abortion he did not want.
Many men who would have tried to stop the abortion of their child but couldn’t do it at times confess to having “violent thoughts” because “they couldn’t protect” their baby, Thorn said. “It’s this sense of male impotence, not sexual impotence, but that men are protectors, and they really struggle with that.”
Women, especially during the teen years, “are ten times more likely to attempt suicide after an abortion in the months that follow, that first six to eight months,” Thorn said. “That tells you the depth of the woundedness.”
After those first months, “denial kicks in,” she said, noting that while women will say they are doing fine, “they’re emotionally very numb.”
Commitment also becomes an issue for men and women after abortions, she said, explaining that “only about 30 percent of couples survive abortions as a couple.”
If they move on to another relationship, they often won’t tell their partners about feelings of betrayal or regret, “and that’s going to be an intimacy killer in the bedroom, because she doesn’t trust men – the one she was with forced her to have an abortion – and he doesn’t women, it was his fiance that had his child aborted, so this is a huge wound.”
Women suffering from an abortion loss will often go into a “shut-down” phase, she said, noting that it is these women who become staunch defenders of abortion, and are the loudest voices arguing that it’s a woman’s right.
“That’s another way to cope,” she said. Pointing to various stories of people who have left the abortion industry, Thorn noted that “almost all of them had their own abortions first or during that time. It’s a way to cope with what they’ve done; I need it, other women must need it, so I’m going to protect that right.”
“It’s a very incredibly deep sadness and women never forget. They have the biology that makes it impossible to forget, it’s always a part of them,” she said, adding that in her experience, the people who have found help and healed from past abortions “never support abortion again.”
Abortion can also affect parenting and one’s relationship with future children, because women who don’t heal after an abortion “don’t bond very well in a different pregnancy. They’re very over protective, but sometimes they’re emotionally distant from their child.”
Fathers, on the other hand, “are overly committed to the child and become enmeshed, they really sort of take the role of the mother and push the mother away.”
Other family members, such as siblings or cousins, are also affected by abortion, she said, noting that she has met many people who grew up with a strong sensation that they should have had a brother or sister, and only later found out that an abortion had taken place.
In her view, Thorn said there is not enough discussion or awareness about the effects of abortion “because it’s an uncomfortable piece, because there are so many abortions and people do not want to talk about it.”
“But what we’re seeing in these songs is people are finding a way to tell their story to somebody in hopes that somebody’s listening, and that’s part of the healing process, is an opportunity to tell the story,” she said.
The fact that so many songs are being sung about the topic is “an indication that people are looking for a way to speak the truth about what happened,” she said, “and that’s a way to do it if that’s your talent and your gift.”
If you or someone you know is suffering after abortion, confidential non-judgmental help is available:
Call Project Rachel’s national toll-free number: 888-456-HOPE(-4673) or visit HopeAfterAbortion.org.
Spanish-speakers may visit EsperanzaPosaborto.org”
Help is also available for men at http://menandabortion.info/
[…]
Bishop Powers was at best clumsy in beginning a Chrism Mass and the blessing of the Holy Oils with an Ojibwa religious ceremonial dance. Having the ceremony at the start gives the impression of formal equivalence.
In the Southwest our bishops had a long history of incorporating Native American ritual, singing and drumming at intervals, the Franciscans had implemented that well especially among the Pueblo, but also with the Navajo, Kiowa, Apache and others so that the impression was simply one of recognizing the culture of the participants without any sense of ritual and belief equivalence.
Well said. And yet there still can be a misunderstood “equivalence” in the minds of, say, the poorly informed/formed within the fold, and the sometimes invincibly ignorant. Three points:
FIRST, this, in our time when the synthesis of Faith & Reason was occasioned in the West when Jerusalem met Athens (Greek culture). And, now, when the West is being positioned as more-or-less equivalent with the variety of non-Western natural religions and worse. A pope who handles ambiguously exchanges his staff for a Wiccan Stang at the Youth Synod, accepts a Marxist crucifix gifted in Peru, and celebrates (?) Pachamama in the Vatican Garden, and then for the fertility goddess approves a niche in St. Peter’s Basilica. True, she was later given a lay baptism in the Tiber…
SECOND, so, this type of engagement when evangelization attempts to connect with populations and cultures wherever they might be at the moment. Speak their language, but then total capitulation under Fiducia Supplicans, toward the pandemic of carnal paganism from within the post-Christian West itself. So, yes to cultural expressions if handled well as you report, but in all cases what of true and clear inculturation of the Faith? A Faith which is received (!) and not only an expression?
Too many self-destructive expressions now embedded in an aggregated and bottoms-up Synodality…
THIRD, this, too, from Cardinal Sarah:
“Without silence, the Church does not live up to here calling. I fear that the reform of the liturgy, especially in Africa, is often the occasion for noisy, purely human celebrations that are hardly in keeping with the will of the Son of God as expressed during the Last Supper. It is not a matter of rejecting the joy of the faithful, but there is a time for everything. The liturgy is the place, not for human rejoicing, passions, a profusion of discordant words, but for pure adoration” (“The Power [!] of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise,” Ignatius, 2017, p. 221).
When it’s contained within the language [liturgical texts in Swahili, Maasai, Navajo] of the populace, and their musical genre, usually drums, religious songs written for the liturgy, melody identified with their culture it has in my experience in Africa, and in the Southwest had positive outcome. Cardinal Sarah is likely criticizing abuses to what Vatican II approved.
So Vigano thinks that there is a Deep State that has much power under the present regime and that threatens Christianity. Hmmm. We have just learned that FBI whistleblower Steve Friend has said that FBI taught Agents that Pro Lifers are more dangerous than Islamic terrorists: “We were shown a video that was produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center” that “ranked people who oppose abortion, pro-life activists, as a greater threat than Islamists.”
There are a lot of confusing and contradictory claims about this entire disturbing affair. To begin with I have seen much online speculation about who “archbishop Vigano” really is which assumes he posts under a pseudonym. Bishop Powers in his complaints against Vigano not only identifies him by name and title but says that he was the papal nuncio who attended his installation as bishop of Superior, Wisconsin in 2016! Bishop Powers then says that such ceremonies were not only practiced then but in every significant church event since! If AB Vigano is correctly identified, then how indeed has he escaped the treatment that befell AB Strickland and Cardinal Burk? Can anyone make sense of this?
Archbishop Vigano was indeed the papal nuncio to the US in 2016, and he does not use a pseudonym. There’s a wikipedia article on him. 2016 was his last year in the office of papal nuncio, as he retired. It would not be surprising either that he witnessed the ceremony and made no objection, or that it has continued every year since, he did not start objecting to practices and personnel choices until years after he retired, and I believe he apologized near the start of that for having held his peace so long.
He has no office to be removed from, so the treatment accorded Bishop Strickland and Cardinal Burke is not possible. Supposedly he has also been physically avoiding contact with any Vatican emissaries, preventing him from being semi-voluntarily carted off to a mental facility, as has happened with some priests, but I don’t think there’s any evidence that anyone would have tried that on him. But then, the only solid evidence possible would presumably be his presence in a mental facility.
Before Archbishop Vigano would be committed to a mental facility, he’d have to get in line. There’s a long list of bishops, Cardinals and Vatican officials who need to have their heads examined because so many of them are deranged. I can’t imagine that all their lunacy can be attributed to moral derangement alone.
Archbishop Vigano has not “escaped the treatment that befell AB Strickland and Cardinal Burk (sic)” as a brief internet search will reveal.
I, for one, have had my fill of the bastardization of the Catholic liturgy at the hands of prelates who are “off the reservation” (pun intended). By the way, Bishop Gumbleton just died.
May Gumby reset in peace.
Praise God for giving Gumby time to reflect and repent.
Thank God for giving us grace to endure.
I would like to know the words which were chanted. Yet I have a problem with women holding feathers gathering around the altar, doing what looks like some non-Christian ritual in the Sanctuary.
I also have a problem with this:
“Powers wrote that it has “long been a tradition in the Diocese of Superior to honor the heritage of our Native Americans before major diocesan celebrations,”
It is a false order of values which becomes more and more widespread in the Western Church. Christianity is the highest = absolute value; the local cultural traditions are secondary. Christianity is the Truth above all so it should not seek “to honor” local traditions. Instead, the local traditions should seek to give what good they have to the Liturgy but only as long as doing so does not violate the Truth expressed in the Liturgy itself. To be clear, I will give an example: being Russian I do not expect the local Roman Catholic Church to invite me to dance before the Mass playing balalaika for the sake of recognizing my culture; being Russian I offer my skills of an iconographer to the local church and paint and embroider which bear an imprint of the Russian culture.
And so, it is unacceptable to insert some pieces of culture into Mass for the sake of “being nice”. In that particular case (on the video) there should be no women in the Sanctuary doing some kind of a ceremony. But the native music could be easily incorporated into Mass if the congregation has natives. Look for example at this short video of the end of the Easter service in the Eastern Orthodox Church in Africa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VNptIdyVzo
Women there are dancing while singing a hymn, a priest is dancing as well standing in the Sanctuary. The women are not in the sanctuary. I find it great and an excellent conclusion of the Easter Liturgy (I think); if I was there I would join them and dance as well. I am sure no one there thought of “honoring local traditions”, the locals just acted their Christian faith out with the means they used to.
As for the accusations of defamation it is laughable. Since when theological accusations are to be defined as “defamation”? Our Church fathers would be buried under pieces of paper sent from the court.
I will add the following. This shamanic (I think) ceremony, the red dragon in the Vatican for the Chinese New Year, a priest who encourages stupid greetings before Mass, Synod on Synodality, are all the same in essence. They all have the same root: those who push them do not have Christ as the felt center, in the Church and their own world. Instead, they have themselves, “the beloved themselves” at the center and that fact they cover by “for the good of others”. If they push “honoring” local culture at the expense of Christ they are “nice” you see and have the glory which they steal from Christ Who by their actions is denied the glory and also the chance to connect with others (including those who do shamanic ceremonies).
All the above things could be verified and done away over a few minutes. How Christ’ Body and Blood in the Chalice are honored by the shamanic ceremony? What the Author of the Revelation would think about the Red Dragon in the Vatican dancing around the Pope, not so much about the fact but about the zero clue the Pope had about the symbol he was giving to the Church? Where is Jesus Christ in the Synod on Synodality? Would He like to participate in such a thing? What would He say? Would He understand their oblique (to themselves as well) language which is so different from His “yes – yes, no – no”?
The further it goes the less I am able to understand the language those people use. They appear to be in another world. My conversations with them usually goes like this:
– Listen, you cannot have the shamanic dance in the Sanctuary before Mass!
– We are honoring local traditions.
– It is Christ who should be honored by His Church, not the local traditions.
– What?
(silence and bewilderment after the following is usually said)
– You are not nice! You do not think of those people who need to know we honor their traditions!”
– But what about Christ? Should you not think of Him first?
(silence and bewilderment etc.; that can go indefinitely)
Those people defend “other people” only because in “honoring them” they honor themselves. They do not care about bringing “those people” to Christ, they care about bringing them to themselves and being seen as “nice”. Christ to them is someone who spoils their show, the one they must bow to and this is why they push Him away (mostly unconsciously).
We have an old saying, a paradigm of a meaningless conversation: two people saying to each other “There is a red berry tree in my garden” – “I have an uncle in Kiev”; “There is a red berry tree in my garden” – “I have an uncle in Kiev”; “There is a red berry tree in my garden” – “I have an uncle in Kiev” etc., endlessly. (sounds a bit political right now but I am unwilling to change our folklore.) This is what is going on in our Church now. Two camps, one which has Christ as their felt center, another one who have “themselves, the beloved” as their center, with an insatiable desire to be seen as “nice”. The second camp will win on this earth because it is nice to be nice. Those who stick to Christ because they know they will sink without Him looking and will continue looking plain disgusting: “unloving, uncaring, cruel, rigid” and so on.
Thank you Anna. No worries, since nice is not a virtue. Charity seeks the good of the other. God is Good. If we love our neighbor, we share our love of Christ with them, our Good Lord and Savior. Happy Mercy Sunday!
Well, this gives the bishop of Superior the opportunity to aknowledge he was wrong to have this ceremony at Mass, especially Chrism Mass.
I suspect that until now they haven’t touched Archbishop Vigano because he knows too much about too many active and important cardinals, bishops, and priests. It’s all part of the smoke, mirrors, and obfuscation that we’ve had to endure for quite a long time now. That said, I do think that Archbishop Vigano has gone off the rails, though these days staying on the rails is might difficult for any faithful Catholic. Bishop Powers’ protest will likely end there; I’m actually surprised that anyone had the nerve to challenge Vigano at all. In fact, don’t be surprised if Bishop Powers gets himself into some sort of trouble for rattling that cage, and his resignation will be for “health reasons.” Sigh.
So are these ladies with the feathers members of the new CCW? Ridiculous paganism. Bishop should be exorcised.
This is what happens when you fail to do the red and say the black!!!!!!!
Pachamama Powers claims Archbishop Vigano’s comments resulted in a “violation of my right to a good name and reputation.” Nope. He did that all by himself.
Touché
I personally find Native American culture quite interesting, as I do several other cultures. However, I do not believe a church sanctuary prior to Mass is the place for such cultural demonstrations. Its been my understanding that most Indian ceremonies of music and dance like this are calling upon the spirits they believe in to purify, help with sickness, chase away evil, etc. These are not simply musical reviews. A Catholic Church is a place to honor Jesus, period. Its not a Broadway stage. I would have suggested this parish have Mass in the church, followed by a display of Native culture in the church yard outdoors, clearly not part of Mass. This stuff should not be done in the Sanctuary, nor inside the church in any way. Vigano is absolutely correct to be critical of this use of church space , which is an attempt to establish an equivalency between the Native Spirit beliefs and Jesus.This is a slippery slope and should be discouraged. Its entirely possible to respect other cultures while recognizing they are not at all the same as our own.
Well, this has been informative about Archbishop Vigano. It has, however, only reinforced the outrage I first expressed when I added this story to the April 3 news thread. When I finally managed to coax Microsoft’s mentally ill AI into isolating the ceremony on the video it was obvious that it was pagan. There was the shaman with his four female assistants chanting. They wound up the lengthy ceremony by briefly invoking the Earth Mother in English. It for sure wasn’t the Virgin Mary!! Bishop Powers only raised my alert status further when he claimed that this was already a long established practice when he took over in 2016! To put all this in context I need to mention the late Deacon Paul Mullens a full blood native American I am blessed to have had for a friend. He was very active in Indian affairs and devoted to Saint Kateri Tikawitha but never brought native religion into the Catholic Church which he served in many ways. Deacon Paul told me once of something he witnessed on an Indian reservation as a child. He was at Mass with his family when a horrible desecration occurred. Someone from off the reservation took the host out of his mouth, laid it on the altar rail and stabbed it with a knife. The host bled profusely. Someone who has experienced the miraculous can never stop being a believer and could never mix his faith with anything else. People who dedicate their lives to the Church you would think would always be the same way would you not?
JJR, it seems to me that sadly, people are more invested in human secular approval than they are in their status with God. There have been too many high churchmen willing to “go along to get along” where church teaching is concerned to think anything else. We are not generally in the age of martyrs here in the US.Humans are compromised creatures and much too much under the thumb of what I call the “tyranny of “nice”. They will say or do anything to be regarded as “nice” by others. Even if in fact they are anything BUT nice.
Wasn’t sure what to think until I read the comments, especially Anna’s. Thanks, Anna.
Curious to see what, if anything, happens next.
I have lived in the Superior diocese for over 30 years. In that time I have seen many abuses. This would not be the first.
You can’t keep equating culture with Rite. Worse, when you insist and demand that you are right to do so. Neither is culture an adoption of Rite.
In centuries gone by, this was precisely one of the problems faced in correcting the traditional Mass when it had fallen into similar abuse. Common sense.
You must stop distracting from Rite back into culture. Culture can be in the parish get-together or harvest and then more in the local play (LJ, above).
The same type problem develops with “taste” and “presentation” like dances that then have more to do with ubiquitous artistry though made out to be “culture”.
The idea of “inculturation” means witnessing faith to the culture not witnessing the culture in the faith. Adding intrusiveness to the latter is not witness.
Archbishop Vigano more directly condemns the abuse according to the nature of the offense. Bishop Powers has to mature quick and accept it as his correction.
This can not be a defamation since defamation in civil law does not apply here and the matter requires to be addressed and administered from faith and reason.
Apparently the good Archbishop likes to follow the rules, but is he in this case? I wonder. Who is this priest’s superior? What authority do the Archbishop have over him? Is it his place to be making public judgments about this matter? I’m confused. Wouldn’t private, brotherly council be the prescribed (according to scripture) method of dealing with this situation? Just asking.j
“In a duel you don’t count or measure the blows, but strike as you can.”
Pope Saint Pius X
By following the Magisterium ad33-ad1958, Archbishop Vigano is applying to this Modernist Apostate the exactly prescribed treatment.
V is for Vigano