“The clinic was a very cold place. We spoke to a
counselor who asked us if we felt that we knew what
we were doing. They told me it would be better if I
left and came back to pick her up later. So I went
out to get some air. I found out later that she’d
had second thoughts and come out looking for me. But
I wasn’t there. So she went ahead with the abortion.
That was the hardest thing because I wasn’t there
when she needed me.”
Ryan Hunter was 24 when his girlfriend, Kathy, told
him she was pregnant. At the time they were both
students at a technical college and had been dating
a few months. Although Hunter felt secure in the
relationship, he didn’t feel ready to be a parent,
and he worried that if Kathy’s parents found out
about the pregnancy they might force her to stop
seeing him.
“We chose the easy way out, but it didn’t seem easy
at the time,” says Hunter. “We had many deep
discussions. There were a lot of tears. Both of us
were fully involved in the decision, and neither one
of us pushed the other.”
The Hunters hoped the abortion would bring an end to
the crisis caused by the pregnancy. But instead of a
sense of peace, they found it had brought a
different kind of pain into their lives. Ryan was
haunted by the fact that he had not been in the
waiting room when Kathy had come out looking for
him. Kathy remained emotionally fragile,
occasionally tearing up when she saw pictures of
babies and children. Although they remained
together, they had a hard time communicating their
feelings to each other.
“We never talked about it,” recalls Hunter. “We
would drive along the highway and I’d see one of
those big pro-life billboards and try to distract
her so she wouldn’t see it. I was trying to protect
her. I didn’t realize at that point that I’d been
affected, too.”
Ryan and Kathy married two years later, but the
abortion continued to cast a shadow over their
relationship, particularly around the issue of
children. “We never talked about having kids. I
think we both felt that we had sinned seriously and
didn’t deserve to be forgiven. There was always this
idea in the back of my head that God would punish us
by not allowing us to have children.”
Delayed reaction
It is estimated that almost 40 percent of women
between the ages of 18 and 45 have had at least one
abortion. Rarely, though, does one hear the obvious
corollary that a similar proportion of men have
fathered a child who has been lost to abortion. Some
of these men encouraged or pressured their partners
to abort. Others strongly opposed the abortion. Many
submerged their own feelings and took refuge in the
idea that their role was to support their partners’
decision.
There is increasing recognition that abortion can
have an emotional impact on women that is serious
and in some cases long-lasting. While there
continues to be debate about the prevalence and
intensity of psychological symptoms, a growing
number of therapists recognize that abortion—like
other forms of pregnancy loss—can have long-term
emotional consequences.
What is less well known is that men, too, can suffer
emotionally and spiritually as a result of abortion.
“So often the man’s reactions are delayed,” says
Randall Wyatt, a psychotherapist and director of the
Crosswinds Counseling Center in Dublin, California.
“He may think he is supposed to be supportive of the
woman and may not offer his own opinions. So his
feelings—whether they are relief, grief, anger,
resentment, or shame—don’t get processed, and that
can come out later.”
Wyatt’s practice involves work with couples and
post-traumatic stress counseling, and he has
encountered abortion in both contexts. “I’ve never
met a person who went through it who thought it was
easy or who didn’t have at least some sense of
regret,” he says. “But it’s not always traumatizing.
It depends on the person and their experience.”
There is limited literature on the psychological
impact of abortion on men. The most well-known study
was conducted by sociologist Arthur Shostak and is
featured in his 1984 book Men and Abortion: Lessons,
Losses, and Loves (Praeger). Shostak interviewed
1,000 men who had accompanied their partners to an
abortion clinic. He found that a large number of
them had thoughts about the child, had dreamed about
it, and anticipated misgivings after the abortion.
Some studies suggest men may actually be more likely
to have an adverse psychological reaction to an
abortion than women. A 1989 Los Angeles Times survey
of men and women who had an abortion in their past
found that two thirds of the men regretted the
choice compared to one quarter of the women. A 1993
study by sociologists Eileen Nelson and Priscilla
Coleman found that 33 percent of women and 52
percent of men reported a sense of regret following
the abortion.
Finding forgiveness
Most post-abortion counseling programs have been
designed, for obvious reasons, to meet the needs of
women. The most well-known Catholic ministry of this
type is Project Rachel, which was developed in 1984
by Vicki Thorn in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and
has spread to a large number of dioceses around the
United States. Although her program was aimed at
women, Thorn found she was getting calls from men as
well. “The pain of fathers is so incredibly
desperate,” she says.
In Thorn’s experience men’s emotional reactions
following abortion vary widely. Men who opposed the
abortion might feel anger and helplessness
immediately. Those who may have encouraged the woman
to have an abortion or at least supported her
decision might not feel the impact until years later
when an event—marriage, pregnancy, the birth of a
child—brings the emotions to the surface. Thorn has
also noticed that men with unresolved issues about
abortion often act out, engaging in risky behavior
such as using drugs or alcohol.
There is also a spiritual dimension to the pain many
men feel about abortion. A man who encouraged or
pressured his partner to have an abortion—or failed
to convince her not to—may experience a crisis of
faith and feel estranged from God. On the other
hand, there are men who were not particularly
religious prior to the abortion who find consolation
and healing by returning to an old religious
tradition or embracing a new one.
Father Mike Mannion, rector of the Cathedral of the
Immaculate Conception in Camden, New Jersey and
author of Abortion and Healing: The Cry to Be Whole
(Sheed and Ward), has found that for Catholic men
struggling with abortion the sacrament of
Reconciliation can have particular power. “The
timing of the sacrament is important,” says Mannion.
“If it’s too early, the person may not feel
forgiven.”
Mannion suggests readings to the men he counsels so
that they better understand the sacrament and can
come to believe they really will be forgiven. “The
ultimate issue is how much the individual believes
in God as creator with the power to heal.”
Even some abortion clinics are recognizing the need
to provide better emotional support to the male
partners of their clients. According to a recent
article in Psychology Today, Planned Parenthood in
New York City found that the response to a trial run
for male-targeted counseling services was
overwhelming.
Since 2002 abortion clinics in the San Francisco Bay
Area have been making referrals to Project Exhale, a
post-abortion counseling service with a pro-choice
philosophy. Executive director Aspen Baker runs a
hotline aimed primarily at providing emotional
support to women who have had abortions. But about
10 percent of the 200 calls she receives every year
are from men.
Baker’s experience is that men tend to avoid dealing
with their own feelings and focus on their partner.
“They ask questions like ‘She cries all the time,
shouldn’t she be over it by now?’ or ‘She doesn’t
want to talk about it, what should I do?’” says
Baker. “I’ve had men say to me, ‘I wish I could have
had the abortion for her.’”
A large number of Exhale’s male callers are
pro-choice. While one might think such men would be
less likely to suffer emotional distress as a result
of the abortion, that may not always be the case,
says Wyatt. “Some of these guys want to be so
supportive of the woman’s choice that they neglect
their own experience. They don’t feel they have a
right to their own emotions.”
Despite his pro-choice convictions, Tony
Cantalamessa found that abortion brought more
emotional consequences than he had expected.
Cantalamessa, who lives in New England, has faced
the abortion decision twice, both times involving
the woman to whom he is now married. The first time
he and his then-girlfriend, Beth, were in college.
She was overseas when she discovered she was
pregnant with his child. After some phone
conversations they agreed she should have the
abortion.
“It was mainly her decision,” says Cantalamessa. “I
was in support of whatever she wanted to do. We were
young, and we didn’t think we were going to spend
the rest of our lives together.”
But Tony and Beth ended up getting married after
all. Realizing the abortion could create issues in
their marriage, they worked with a supportive
minister on a ritual they hoped would bring closure
to that chapter of their lives. They placed some
writings and photographs in a vase, corked it, and
cast it into the ocean.
While they had worked hard to put the past behind
them, there were signs that some emotional issues
remained unresolved. When their first child was born
they delayed naming him. “We thought about names but
didn’t name him until after a week,” says
Cantalamessa. “I never thought about why we didn’t
name the baby.”
Tony and Beth’s spiritual paths diverged somewhat in
the years after the abortion. Tony, a self-described
agnostic before the abortion, did not find that the
experience led him to reconsider his religious
beliefs in any significant way. Beth, however, found
the experience deepened a call to Christian ministry
that she had already been feeling. She decided to
focus part of her thesis for her master of divinity
degree on the topic of abortion. Tony supported his
wife’s decision to pursue a career in ministry, and
he participates in the life of the congregation
where she ministers. But he does not consider
himself a strong believer.
Two years after their son was born, Beth became
pregnant again unexpectedly. With Beth working in
ministry and Tony home full-time with their son,
their financial situation was precarious. They
discussed the possibility of abortion. This time
Tony was more strongly in favor of the abortion, but
Beth was much more ambivalent. In the end they
decided to go ahead with the abortion.
Afterward Tony recalls feeling a jumble of emotions.
“I was relieved, but my wife wasn’t, so in some ways
I didn’t want to feel what I was feeling. I was
confused about whether I was feeling the right
thing.”
Tony remains strongly pro-choice, but he does not
dispute that there have been emotional consequences
for him and for his family. “It’s definitely left
some sort of mark. There is a sense of loss. There
needs to be more support for people who go through
this.”
One of the most successful post-abortion ministry
programs in the United States is Rachel’s Vineyard,
developed by Theresa Burke, a Catholic psychologist
and author of Forbidden Grief: The Unspoken Pain of
Abortion (Acorn). Burke initially designed the
program as a curriculum for support groups of women
who were grieving the loss of their children through
abortion.
In 1995 Burke expanded and adapted the curriculum
into a format for weekend retreats. Despite the fact
that Rachel’s Vineyard did not have an office,
budget, or staff other than Burke and her husband,
Kevin, the retreat format spread rapidly by word of
mouth and through the support it received from the
organization Priests for Life. In 1999 there were 18
Rachel’s Vineyard retreats. By 2004 the number had
grown to 250, and retreats were being held in 45
states and 11 countries. Although not officially
affiliated with the Catholic Church, the program has
been adopted by a large number of Catholic dioceses.
One change the Burkes made when they developed the
weekend retreat was to welcome men as participants.
“For many years post-abortion outreach was mostly
geared to women, which makes perfect sense,” says
Kevin. “But I think over the last two or three
years, there has been increasing recognition that
men need healing, too.”
The Burkes at first had some concerns about opening
the retreat up to men. “We wondered how the women
would react, because so many of them feel that they
were abandoned by their male partners when they
became pregnant,” says Burke. “What we found was
that it was a powerful moment of healing for these
women to see men grieving the loss of their
children.”
The presence of women can also heal some of the pain
men bring to a weekend. Scott Miller attended a
Rachel’s Vineyard retreat in British Columbia in
late 2003. For many years, says Miller, he felt
anger toward women because of his own experience of
abortion 25 years ago.
“I was 20 years old, my parents had just divorced,
and I had turned to alcohol. In the midst of all
this my girlfriend announced she was pregnant. I
thought ‘Oh my God, I have to get a job, I have to
deal with this, I have to tell my friends, I’m a bad
person, I’m ashamed,’” says Miller.
His girlfriend told him she was going to have an
abortion. “It kind of stopped me in my tracks,” says
Miller. “I didn’t know what to think. I thought it
would take care of all these problems. But it didn’t
feel right to me.” Miller’s mother, who strongly
supported the abortion, ended up accompanying his
girlfriend to the abortion clinic.
“After it was all over I felt terrible,” he says.
“The shame and guilt hadn’t gone away, and now there
was something else—murder, I guess. All I did was
add coals to the fire. I made it a hundred times
worse. I couldn’t face my girlfriend, and I felt
angry at my mother.” His relationship with his
girlfriend deteriorated and they eventually
separated.
As part of his journey toward healing, Miller would
go on to experience a profound religious conversion.
He eventually sought out an Anglican priest whom he
trusted.
“I told him I wanted to do a Confession, though I
didn’t really know what it was,” says Miller. “He
read Psalm 51 to me and talked about how God had
forgiven David for committing adultery and murder. I
didn’t realize God was like that. I couldn’t accept
that I had done this. But God was bigger than me. He
had more room for love, mercy, and forgiveness than
I had for myself.”
Miller ended up going to seminary, and is now an
ordained minister with the Assemblies of God. He is
married with a 5-year-old daughter. But he says the
anger he felt toward women remained with him at some
level until he attended the Rachel’s Vineyard
weekend.
“I saw the hurt in those women, and it really
surprised me. They felt like I did. To see them
grieving and crying like me gave me a whole new
perspective,” he says.
Miller now serves as a resource person at Rachel’s
Vineyard retreats. He recently helped with a retreat
in Minneapolis, the city where his mother had taken
his girlfriend to have the abortion 25 years ago.
“This time, rather than sending my girlfriend to
have an abortion, I went there to serve other
women,” says Miller.
Burke has found that experiences like Miller’s are
common on Rachel’s Vineyard retreats. “We never have
an agenda to convert people or demand that they
become pro-life,” says Burke. “We’ve had atheists
come on the retreat. But I can’t remember anyone who
has come who has not had an encounter with a loving,
compassionate, and forgiving God. What they do with
that is up to them.”
Ryan Hunter, who had been haunted by leaving his
wife in the waiting room, also eventually found
healing at a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat. He and his
wife, Kathy, were sitting at Mass one day when
Monika Rodman, the Respect Life coordinator for the
Catholic Diocese of Oakland, California, invited
women and men affected by abortion to a retreat.
“We spent a lot of time talking about it and decided
to go,” he says. “But at that point I was doing it
for Kathy. I didn’t think I needed it. I thought I
had moved on.”
The retreat proved cathartic for Hunter as well. “I
had shoved it into a corner and never dealt with it.
As the weekend went on, all this emotion came out.
My wife never realized how much pain I was in
because I had never shared it. I felt it was a
mistake that we had gone through with the abortion,
but I had never told her.”
During the course of the weekend, the Hunters
decided to name the child they had lost to abortion.
They named her Ryanna. “We always had a feeling she
would have been a girl,” Hunter says. “We talk about
her and speak of her by name now. We consider her a
child that we lost. But we know that the Lord is
taking care of her now.”
Rodman believes naming the child lost to abortion is
often important to men. “One of the things we try to
do with men is help them to reclaim their lost
fatherhood,” he says. “Facing an unplanned
pregnancy, couples often think of the child as a
‘problem’ and abortion as the solution. We are
helping people understand that this was a child, a
child they were unable to welcome into their lives
because of the pressures they faced at the time. But
that child can still be part of their family tree.”
Hunter feels the retreat saved his marriage. “If we
hadn’t gone on the weekend, I don’t think we would
have been able to keep it together. The
communication and openness just weren’t there.”
Freedom to grieve and a stronger marriage may not be
the only gifts the Hunters obtained from the
weekend. Two years later, Kathy gave birth to a son.
“He’s definitely the Lord’s child,” says Hunter, his
joy mixed with a fatigue every father of a young
child can recognize. “We’ve been blessed.”
These stories are all the more poignant for the fact
that they have been shared with so few. While they
may struggle internally, men continue to face
barriers to the help they need to deal with the
emotional fallout of abortion. First among them may
be a tendency to minimize their own feelings.
“With men, the first step is giving them the right
to talk about it because they don’t feel they have
the right to do that,” says psychotherapist Wyatt.
“Giving them permission to discuss it and explore it
is important.”
Men who decide to seek professional help must
contend with the fact that the therapeutic community
is hardly untouched by the nation’s cultural war
over abortion. In March 2004 the American
Psychological Association issued a position paper on
the psychological impact of abortion stating,
“Abortion is a safe medical procedure that carries
relatively few physical or psychological risks.” The
tone of the statement seems calculated to dismiss
rather than validate claims of psychological pain
related to abortion.
“I think most therapists want to do the right thing
for the client,” says Wyatt. “But you could
certainly see if a therapist had strong pro-choice
convictions, they might want to deny the reaction
and minimize the emotional impact. On the other
hand, a therapist who was strongly pro-life could
have a problem in the other direction. You need to
listen to what the client is saying.”
“The professional therapeutic community is so
essential,” says Burke. “They are on the front
lines. They are seeing the symptoms, and abortion
may be the source of those symptoms. If they are
unable to get beyond the politics of the issue and
to look honestly at what their client is wrestling
with, healing can’t take place.”
Men who turn to their religious communities for help
may face a different set of challenges, particularly
if the community—like the Catholic Church—is
strongly pro-life. While the pope and many bishops
have issued statements encouraging men and women who
have experienced abortion to seek both spiritual
reconciliation and emotional healing, attitudes
toward post-abortion ministry can vary widely
between parishes.
While Hunter’s own journey to reconciliation after
abortion brought him into the Catholic Church, he
has encountered attitudes that have given him pause.
“I was in RCIA one night, and the subject was
forgiveness,” he says. “One person asked if there
were any sins that couldn’t be forgiven. The teacher
said, ‘Well, maybe abortion.’ I challenged him
because I felt the message of Jesus was that if you
really are sincere in your repentance, you will be
forgiven. He backed off, but I wish I’d had the
courage to share my story at that moment.”
Rodman believes a greater recognition by Catholics
that abortion is something inside the church as well
as outside would make it easier to offer
reconciliation to those experiencing abortion
without compromising the church’s defense of the
unborn. Many Catholics raised to respect life find
themselves making a different choice when confronted
with a crisis pregnancy, notes Rodman. “If we can be
a community that speaks first of mercy and
forgiveness, it may be easier for us to speak the
words of truth and justice our culture needs to hear
about abortion.”
Hunter, for his part, hopes that more men and women
come to experience the mercy and forgiveness he and
his wife have known. “We did an unspeakable thing.
But Jesus died so that even sins as terrible as ours
could be forgiven. I wish more people could come to
know the power of that forgiveness.”
J. Peter Nixon is a graduate student at the Jesuit
School of Theology at Berkeley. Some of the names in
this story have been changed to protect the privacy
of the individuals involved.