How Could She Do That?

by Jane Brennan

While doing pro-life work in my parish, I sometimes hear this question asked by well-intentioned people referring to an unknown woman who has had an abortion. They don't understand how a woman could have her baby aborted, and think that if we can just get women to realize that the cells growing inside them are in fact already a baby, then women would no longer have abortions.

All Alone

However, in their zeal to protect the unborn baby, pro-life people tend to overlook the plight of the woman who is often confused, terribly scared and desperately concerned with her own survival. By doing this, pro-lifers inadvertently play into the hands of the pro-abortion movement, which focuses totally on the woman. The pro-abortion movement represents themselves as empathetic advocates of women and their right to control their own bodies. It calls anyone who disagrees with them anti-woman, and because of this seemingly sympathetic position they win a lot of women to their side.

I'd like to explain what I mean by telling you a true story. It's not an easy story to tell, but I feel compelled to share it so that pro-life people will understand and not judge women who made this horrible choice, but instead reach out and help them.

I grew up on the East Coast in an average, middle-class family with a mom and a dad and a brother and a sister. My mother was a stay-at-home mom and my father was a bookkeeper. You would think we were a typical family, but that wasn't true. I was five years old when my grandfather started molesting me. When my mother found out what he was doing she was horrified and, although she put a stop to it, she didn't talk to me about it or comfort me. She didn't explain to me that it wasn't my fault. My father simply pretended that it hadn't happened. As a result, I was left to suffer the emotional consequences by myself, thinking that somehow I was responsible for this happening to me. It was the big, dark secret that no one in our family was allowed to discuss.

The nightmare didn't end there. When I was seven, an older female cousin started sexually abusing me. All the sick feelings from before came back, but I couldn't go to my parents because I knew how they would react. I had no one to turn to, so I just kept silent and bore it all alone.

Eventually I found a way to ease the pain and despair that I felt from the abuse: alcohol and drugs. By the time I was fourteen, I was getting high and drunk every weekend, and at fifteen, it was practically every day. I had a wrenching pain in my soul and didn't know of any other way to "heal" it. I was never taught that God was a loving father, so it never occurred to me to turn to Him. He just seemed to be a distant, punishing figure — one whom I was conscious of, but with no real meaning in my life.

When I was eighteen, I found something else that I thought would help heal me: sex. I felt terribly awkward and uncomfortable around boys when I was sober. So I would get high and drunk and then have sex because I thought this meant they loved me, and I was desperately seeking to be loved.

I went away to college in Boston where I fit right in because I lived in a coed dorm that had parties all the time. It all caught up with me in my junior year when I found out I was pregnant. I was terrified and didn't know what to do. My boyfriend wasn't concerned at all and just wanted me to handle the whole situation. I had no one else to turn to. I was scared and alone with no money, no job and no support. In those days there were many advertisements for abortions in newspapers, on buses, practically everywhere you looked. It seemed to be the only answer to my problem. Abortion was so accepted and easily obtainable that I didn't even consider any other options. I made an appointment, got half the money from my boyfriend, who was happy that I was taking care of "the problem," and off I went to the abortion clinic.

The counselor there was so nice and seemed so concerned for me that I began to feel comfortable with the idea of having an abortion. When she said to me, "It's just a clump of cells," I felt relieved because I thought I wasn't doing anything wrong since it wasn't even a baby yet. I didn't know about fetal development at that time, so I believed her. She made the whole procedure sound easy and told me that after it was done I could get on with my life. I decided having an abortion was my only choice.

After it was over and I got back to my dorm room, I lay on my bed and cried. A little voice in the back of my mind said that maybe I had done the wrong thing. I was raised a Catholic (although my parents hadn't been very religious) and I vaguely knew what the Catholic Church said about abortion. However I pushed that thought away very quickly, choosing to believe the counselor at the abortion clinic instead. I thought the Church was just a bunch of celibate, cranky old men who knew nothing about women. They couldn't be right, could they?

The Movement

In Boston in the early eighties, radical feminism was at its height and after my abortion I began to get involved with the movement. I felt drawn to them primarily because of their claim that women should have control over their bodies. As a result of the abuse I had suffered as a young girl, I never felt I had control over anything, especially my body. Feminism seemed to give me a voice, and I felt empowered for the first time in my life. All the anger I had that couldn't be expressed towards my grandfather, my cousin, and my parents found an outlet in this movement. What also spoke to me was their rhetoric about abortion being a woman's right that was going to help us and free us, concepts that justified what I had done and kept my nagging doubts at bay.

After graduation I moved to New York City. I couldn't find a job teaching in a public school, so I ended up taking a position in a Catholic school. Even working in that very Catholic atmosphere, I refused to accept the truth. I thought all the teachings and rituals were just a bunch of outdated fairy tales that didn't apply to me, a modern woman. I began volunteering for N.O.W, and believed them when they said that religion was just another way to control women.

Several years later, the fast-paced lifestyle of New York became too much for me and I decided to move out west. Soon after I got there, I met a man who was divorced and had custody of his two daughters and I moved in with them. I quickly learned that he was controlling as well as a heavy drinker. I stayed with him because, having not yet dealt with the trauma of my childhood, I mistook his bullying for love.

I became pregnant several months later and we decided to get married. Deep down I knew that marrying him wasn't a good idea because he was abusive. However, I went along with it, telling him that I would get an abortion while reasoning to myself that this would allow me to get out of the marriage if I had to. He thought that was a great idea. I didn't want to have another abortion, but I felt I had no other choice. I still hung onto the counselor's words that the fetus growing inside me was "just a clump of cells," but now I also believed that it was "my right." So I had another abortion. Although we got married, things between us got worse and eventually we ended up getting a divorce.

Afterward, I was out one night with a friend and met a man. We had a good time laughing and talking, so we began seeing each other. After the abusive treatment I had received from my first husband the fact that this man was good to me was comforting and I began to trust him and finally feel safe.

Soon after we started dating, we decided to get married. I felt my life was finally taking the right course and I was ready to start a family. So I got pregnant right away. We had a child and in short order added two more babies. Having three babies in diapers was overwhelming and in addition I suffered from postpartum depression. After awhile I realized I needed some help. I still believed very much in feminism, so naturally I thought that a feminist therapist would be perfect for my needs. However, the advice she gave me was contrary to keeping my marriage intact, and her influence soon began to cause a lot of problems between my husband and me.

I became more depressed. The therapist sent me to a psychiatrist who put me on three different drugs. They didn't help though, and I spent a lot of time just lying on the couch barely able to take care of myself, much less my children. My husband was frantic. He pleaded with me to stop seeing the therapist and to stop taking the medications, but I wouldn't listen to him and kept right on with my anti-men talk.

In spite of this malaise, I somehow found the energy to volunteer for Planned Parenthood and began to help young girls procure abortions and birth control. I even helped my sister get an abortion. I went to marches for women's rights. Every chance I got I yelled at my husband about how he was keeping me down and I refused to listen to anything a man had to say. Eventually he got so angry that he left me.

I was devastated. I stopped going to the therapist and stopped taking all the medications. I was scared because I knew I had hurt my husband and I didn't want to get a divorce. I still loved him and was hoping we could work it out. It took many months of heartache and apologizing but we finally reconciled.

Questions & Answers

My bad experience with the feminist counselor caused me to begin to question the type of feminism I had bought into and I slowly became disillusioned with it. I started searching for the truth. I wanted to do all the things that the radical feminists had said were going to keep me down and, since going to church was at the top of the list, every Sunday I went to a different one. I was still not ready to relinquish my disdain for the Catholic Church, so I would go to various Christian churches, but somehow they just didn't feel right to me. Something was missing. My husband, who was also a fallen-away Catholic, said that if I was determined to go to church he wasn't going to go to any church but the Catholic Church. I relented, thinking that at least he was willing to go to church and that I could always get him to change later. I looked in the phone book and found the nearest Catholic Church, and that Sunday I took my oldest daughter with me to check it out.

We got there a little late and I was afraid to go in. As we stood in the narthex, my heart started to pound and my palms got sweaty. I almost turned around and walked out, but then I felt a strong urge to enter. When I walked through the doors, and heard the familiar words of the Mass, tears came to my eyes. I started to tremble and a feeling of peace came over me. I know it sounds cliché, but I felt like I was finally home. An usher led us to a pew and as I stood there listening to the priest, I felt an overpowering force, like an invisible beam streaming down from above, and it knocked me to my knees. All the pain, shame and despair was leaving me and in that moment, I knew that there was a God Who loved me very much, that Jesus Christ was His Son and this was His Church and He wanted me there.

I started sobbing. My daughter became scared and asked, "Mommy, why are you crying?" I replied, "Because I'm so happy." After all those years of searching through drugs, alcohol, and sex, I finally found happiness in the Catholic Church, the last place I had ever expected to find what my heart ached for.

After that day, we began to go to Mass every Sunday as a family. During that time it became very clear to me that I also needed to go to confession. I began to understand that the things that I had done because I thought they were "my right" were actually sins, especially having two abortions. It took the Holy Spirit knocking me to my knees to see that. Through the forgiveness and compassion of Jesus Christ, I began to realize that the "clump of cells" really is life. Although I know God has forgiven me, it has been difficult to forgive myself. There are many days when I am gripped with sadness and regret for what could have been, and I will always live with the grief of having aborted two of my babies.

I often look back at my life and can't help but think about how it could have been different if there had been choices that were as easily accessible and as publicized as abortion. The anger that I feel towards that counselor's deception is oftentimes overwhelming, and I wonder what would have happened if someone had told me that it really was a baby and not just "a clump of cells"? I like to think that if I had encountered other options I would have made different decisions.

Since then the pro-life movement has made a lot of progress in this area by opening crisis pregnancy centers and offering sidewalk counseling to tell you the truth before you enter an abortion clinic. These ministries are very necessary and are helping to win the battle against abortion.

However, the next battle must come from within the ranks of the pro-life movement.

I am now doing pro-life work in my parish because I feel called to this ministry, even though I find it difficult to work on the abortion issue. I still feel ashamed of what I did, so I continue to keep this secret because I'm afraid others will point a finger at me in judgment. One day, during a meeting, a friend brought my fears home to me when she said, "How could she do that?" in response to hearing a story of a young woman who had an abortion. This unknowingly callous statement caused me to withdraw to the awful place of shame I had tried so hard to forget about. Thankfully though, God spoke to me in that moment, telling me that my unique perspective was to be used for His glory.

As painful as it is, I have told my story here to end this secrecy, so that those working in the pro-life movement will understand the reasons that drive women to the horrible choice of abortion and not judge us, but reach out instead with compassion. We women who have had abortions are not frivolous and uncaring, but women who made a tragic decision, often at a time in our lives when we were confused and terribly scared. In our pain and vulnerability, we believed a lie because we thought it was the best solution to what we could only see then as a problem. The vast majority of us deeply regret the choice we made and live with the pain of it every day of our lives.

The main focus of the pro-life movement has been on the unborn baby, and although this is a fundamental part of the issue, attention needs to include the woman, particularly the post-abortive woman. Important steps towards this end are programs like Project Rachel, which help post-abortive women heal through understanding God's mercy and forgiveness.

However, more needs to be done. The Catholic Church was in the forefront of the pro-life movement even before Roe v. Wade passed. The Church needs to be in the lead again in reaching out to post-abortive women so that we will have the support we need to tell our stories within our parishes. There is a huge, untapped resource in women who have had abortions. Please be supportive of us and help us overcome our shame so that we may speak out. Use us. We can help you. Welcome us into the pro-life ranks with loving arms, because it is our voices that will have a significant impact on stopping abortion.

One way to do this might be to invite a woman from Silent No More — an organization comprised of women who regret their abortions and are speaking out against it — to come to your parish and give her testimony. After hearing her, maybe other post-abortive women sitting in silence in the pews will also have the courage to come forward. Then the grim reality of how abortion shatters lives would be heard, and soon it would not be thought of as a clinical procedure or a fundamental right but the tragedy it is. This might cause people to say, "I don't want that to happen to my daughter, my sister, my girlfriend, or to me. In fact I don't want abortion to happen at all."

Jane Brennan, a former militant, anti-Catholic feminist and NOW and Planned Parenthood volunteer has a master's degree in counseling and has devoted her private counseling practice, Hope for the Journey to helping women heal from post-abortion trauma. Her web-site is www.motherhoodinterrupted.com

© Envoy Institute of Belmont Abbey College

This item 8601 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org