Denise A. Stearns | The Michigan Catholic
LAKE ORION — It’s the elephant in the room. The experience of abortion and its results are excluded from polite conversation. The issue is politically incorrect. It’s too polarizing and can tear individuals, couples, families and communities apart.
The Catholic Church teaches that abortion, the deliberate killing of an unborn child, is a most grave evil, yet more than one in three regular church-going Americans have been in an abortive relationship — either having had an abortion or being the father of an aborted child, according to Rachel’s Vineyard, a national post-abortion healing ministry run by the Priests for Life. And many of these deeply wounded people — who come from all walks of life — have never dealt with its impact on their lives or experienced the miracle of Christ’s forgiveness, healing and loving call for recovery and renewal.
Audrey’s story
Audrey grew up in the affluent suburbs of Ann Arbor. She did especially well in math and science. Though a baptized Presbyterian, her family never attended Sunday services. By modern social standards, her family was successful. Her parents, working professionals, remain married to this day.
Looking back, Audrey recalls that her parents were functional alcoholics — personally distant from her sister and herself. Her upbringing didn’t include dialogues on dating, sex, children, death, drinking, drugs, depression or other life issues. There was no active faith to speak of — the family considered themselves Christians, but only as far as checking the “Other Christian” box on government, university, census and clinic forms.
“While I certainly don’t blame anyone else for my decisions as an adult, my upbringing left me ill-equipped to deal with life’s failures and rejections,” said Audrey, whose real name The Michigan Catholic chose to withhold. “I was able to get by with little effort. I fit a secular stereotype — blond, college-educated, wealthy sorority girl — life was pretty good. I learned to be self-sufficient early and became a tough and assertive person when I needed to be. This worked well for me until it didn’t.”
Audrey looked for men who would be emotionally unavailable to preserve her independent self-image. At 21, she was involved in a relationship that met her needs for company and parties. Casual sex was the norm of the prevalent culture that Audrey embraced, so she followed suit.
She became pregnant, but refused to tell the baby’s father — that would shatter his perception of her as a “together” 90s woman. She couldn’t talk to her sister or parents. Lacking a developed spiritual support system, she didn’t seek counseling from a clergyman. Nothing led her to see herself or the baby living within her as children of a loving God. Rather, she imagined herself as an intelligent, modern, self-reliant, independent woman, whose life was as it should be, except for this pregnancy.
Keeping up this image, this persona she had created, was her life, her religion. She trusted it. How could she possibly be so common — and stupid — as to allow herself to get pregnant, to be caught in this situation? It simply would not do; it was too embarrassing.
“I would avoid dealing with it, pretend it was nothing, ignore the elephant in the room,” she said. “I never considered adoption because that would reveal my secret failure.”
In retrospect, she was ashamed. She was hurt and angry that the persona she created had let her down. She detached herself from her inner feelings; she told no one. Instead, she drove herself to Planned Parenthood and “had it taken care of.”
Downward spiral
The day of her abortion, she was numb. The clinic staff was courteous but offered no counseling or options. Women in the waiting area were quietly reading magazines. Audrey had the sense that “we were there for a manicure, not a life-changing event. It was so odd. We were being led to spiritual death, to a decision that would haunt us for life.”
The process of having an abortion, which Audrey now refers to as “an assembly line of death,” affected her psychologically and physically for years. Racked with unknown, internal feelings of guilt, ambivalence and self-loathing, the next few years were filled with “ways of coping” that included alcohol abuse, indiscriminant sex, fiscal irresponsibility and isolation, she said.
At 28, all she had left of her once-stellar image was her professional position. Once again, she found herself pregnant, and back she went for another abortion.
“The best vision I can give of the end of my ‘pre-healing days’ is waking up from days of drinking not being able to brush through my hair, not having taken the garbage out for months — living in complete hell,” she said.
It wasn’t until Audrey began regularly calling in sick and her job was in jeopardy that she decided to seek counseling.
“By the grace of God, the counselor I found was Catholic. In the first five minutes of my initial visit, I told her about the abortion. It was the first time I ever told another living soul,” she said.
The counselor suggested a weekend retreat at Rachel’s Vineyard. She waited until she had 30 days’ sobriety and then attended a Rachel’s Vineyard weekend.
A path toward Christ
Audrey’s encounter with the healing power and mercy of Christ was transformational. On the weekend, she struggled with other suffering women who sought healing from post-abortion syndrome.
“I was able to meaningfully play back the last decade of my life,” she said. “I finally connected all the horrible dots. Deep down, I always knew with every fiber of my being that the abortions were the source of my misery.
“Even back in my twenties I knew that this act — a mother voluntarily killing her child — goes against our very creation. Our soul knows it, even if our minds mask and ignore it. We are changed forever. Adding avoidance and complete denial of the truth creates a trauma, a time-bomb in the psyche,” she said.
She links the organization’s Christian message to her ability to heal. “The retreat experience, watching the mercy and healing that occurred over that weekend was directly responsible for my early belief in a higher power,” she said. “Nothing else could have explained what I experienced and what I saw in others. That comes from someone who grew up needing tangible proof from math and science.
“So many have not sought healing, have not ‘connected the dots’ to the impacts of abortion. While we want no abortions to occur, it’s critical we get healing from the trauma to prevent repeat abortions,” she said.
Audrey remains perplexed as to what led her to her fateful choices those years ago.
“I can never undo my decisions to kill my children willingly,” she said. “What total insanity is it that an educated woman can actually make a statement like that? If I can save one baby, one woman or man from years of destruction, I must. Abortion is irreversible, fixed by neither time nor money. Rachel’s Vineyard offers healing; we face the elephant in the room. Abortion wounds can heal, a scar can form. I can allow Jesus to use my wounds as strong weapons for life, for others, for God.”
Audrey sought a committed faith life after her Rachel’s Vineyard weekend. While she never expected to become Catholic, the more she looked, the more she found that the roads led her to Rome. She received the sacraments of initiation and became a Roman Catholic in full communion with the Church at the 2010 Easter Vigil. Now 39, she leads a post Rachel’s Vineyard monthly support group, now in its sixth year.
Denise Ann Stearns is a freelance writer/graphic artist living in Lake Orion. Her company, LIFESTAR SERVICES, provides publication support and print management services to pro-life organizations. Email her at [email protected].
Upcoming Rachel’s Vineyard weekends
Detroit area
May 31-June 2
Chris Elwart: (248) 494-6363
[email protected]
Grand Rapids area
May 31-June 1
Maggie Walsh: (616) 340-1824 or (800) 800-8284
[email protected]
Ann Arbor area
June 14-16
Beth Bauer: (734) 369-3470
[email protected]
Manistique area (Upper Peninsula)
June 21-23
Lori Hardwick: (906) 644-2771
[email protected]
Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries
Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries is an organization offering weekend retreats for women who have had abortions as well as others who have been wounded or hurt by abortion. Women, men, couples, grandparents and former abortion providers are welcome. The Rachel’s Vineyard program provides an opportunity for women to examine their experience with abortion and identify ways that the loss caused by abortion has impacted them in the past and present.
Rachel’s Vineyard is a ministry of Priests for Life and has a broadly Roman Catholic ethos with a Catholic Mass celebrated as an integral part of the retreat, but the organization offers non-denominational retreats for non-Catholics. Rachel’s Vineyard offers 196 retreat sites in 41 countries and is available in 19 languages.
Visit the website at www.rachelsvineyard.org or call the 24/7 phone help line at 1-877-HOPE-4-ME.
