They're Not Sorry - What Now?

Some commentary is being tossed about at After Abortion reviewing the stories posted at I’m Not Sorry, testimonies of post-abortive women who claim they have no regrets, women whose stories remind me of my mother (see "Is There Something Missing in Me?. In the comments, rightly or wrongly (and I admit I am sensitive), I heard a tone that had kept me a stranger to the pro-life movement for decades. I heard people judging the reasons why the women who weren’t sorry had their abortions. The reasons came up short, of course. They are all flimsy excuses for killing: careers, financial resources, immaturity, lack of support from the baby’s father, etc. Many of these women don’t sound dire and desperate enough to have resorted to the ultimate solution: killing the expected problem-child. But why are we even looking for good reasons in the first place? There are no good reasons for an abortion. It is an inherently selfish and self-serving act because it eliminates a human being who would otherwise require our attention and care. It’s fruitless to search for good reasons, and even more pointless to state the obvious – their reasons aren’t good enough. But I hear the women being judged for their poor choices anyway, and my defenses go up. I think we can concede the point – it was a poor choice. Now what do we do with their flimsy reasons, particularly those of us who are pro-life Christians?

Well, let’s don’t judge the sinners. Remember “hate the sin, love the sinner?” From our perspective, other people’s lives look darned easy. But we are not called to pass judgment on the lives of others. We can judge their actions as being good or bad – the distinction is important. We cannot judge the person or the inner workings of a person’s mind (reasons). Only God can discern the righteousness of the soul. But apparently we still have to teach Christians how to treat post-abortive women. We have to remind church-going Christian people that the woman standing next to them might be post-abortive, and they should not treat her unkindly. Why? Shouldn’t we also remind our church-going Christians that the person standing next to them could be a liar, or a thief, or an adulterer, or a fornicator? Shouldn’t they already be aware that such a person might have been staring back at them in their mirrors that morning? “There but for the grace of God, go I.” No one is exempt from sin, but all sinners can be forgiven – even the baby killers such as I – if we repent. The woman who is not sorry is not a lower creature. She lacks enlightenment, all too often because the pain of facing our own ugliness is too great for her. Are we all standing so strongly on such high moral ground that we can look down on her weakness and berate her for it?

Better yet, let’s listen to what these women think were dire and sufficient reasons for abortion, and come up with solutions based on them. I see quite a few who were in abusive relationships. Pro-life people need to be vocal about protecting women from domestic violence, particularly since homicide is now the leading cause of death among pregnant women. So many of them were young when they made the choice. We need to support our crisis pregnancy centers. We need to support married couples, to keep families together and fathers in the household. Young girls who find love at home don’t seek it elsewhere. These aren’t all the answers, of course, but every abortion story is a roadmap that can tell us what these women needed in order to a) avoid pregnancy in the first place, or b) choose birth (often a lack of access to legal abortion would have sufficed). And each story tells us what these women now need in order to live with the truth of the choices they made, giving us directions to help them see that truth.

Lastly, as we listen to what is at times cold-blooded testimony of infanticide, words that can even make a pro-choicer wince, we have to remember there’s a human mouth on a human face speaking those words. We can’t see that face, but I have seen at least one of them. My mother held back the bitterest tears as she said she was not sorry. I think the most compassionate response is to listen as if the speaker is a woman who desires to justify her decision to have an abortion because she is unable to live with her choice if it was unjust. I hear in many of the stories a woman who suffers more than other post-abortive women, but in such silence that she cannot even hear it herself. I hear many of them say they are sorry about something – sorry for getting pregnant; sorry the father was such a bastard; sorry she didn’t have the resources or the time to have a child at that moment; she is often sorry, but to admit she is sorry for the abortion itself, she has to admit to the sin, and such a sin it is: to kill one’s own helpless and innocent child.

The post-abortive woman (sorry or not), like all sinners, needs our compassion and, if we are true Christians, our prayers. If she seems obstinately unrepentant, it is entirely possible, and perhaps likely, that she is in a cold, dark void, crying out for someone to please help her deny the truth, tell her it was all right, and that she’s not really a bad person after all. The pro-choice movement stands ready with arms wide open to embrace her. The pro-life movement has not been there for women like me in the past, and still some seem to resist help from the post-abortive ("Be Gentle with the Wounded Soul"). It’s time for that to change. If you work in the pro-life movement and your hands are clean, God bless you. Now let's help those whose hands are not clean. Let's try to bring them gently out of the void and the darkness with compassion and love. They are not our enemies, no matter how loudly they insist “No, I wasn’t wrong, and I’m not sorry!” They are our sisters, and if they are not as enlightened as they should be, we have to reach out to them – out, not down. If we start picking apart a woman’s reasons for choosing abortion, we automatically put her in a defensive position from which she will be unable to hear us. If we lead her to the true nature of the act of abortion instead, helping her see that her child was a human being entitled to his life, his own life to make worth living, then she will also be brought to the truth that there were no valid reasons to justify the taking of that life.