The Devil’s Bargain

There is a great need for us to be compassionate and understanding toward the women, men, and families who have been involved in abortion. The temptation to judge them and condemn them is a great evil because such attitudes push people away from the embrace of God’s healing. Such attitudes build up walls and drive people away. Instead, while never condoning abortion, we must recognize the great pressures which make people feel they have no choice but to abort, and we must recognize the great need they feel afterward to be fully reconciled with God, their community, and themselves.

When women and men are faced with an unplanned pregnancy, their lives are turned upside down. They may face tremendous pressures to abort from other people, from circumstances, or simply from within, because the birth of a child threatens the status quo. It threatens what they have and treasure here and now.

Many women are openly threatened by loved ones that if they keep the child, they will lose the love and support they need and desire from their boyfriend, husband, or even their parents. Or maybe they feel that their future career plans are threatened, or they fear losing the chance to have the type of home and family they have always planned. After all, the problem with unplanned pregnancies is that they throw off our plans. They make us feel out of control. And we all like to feel in control, don’t we?

Now picture yourself like one of those cartoon characters who has an angel on one shoulder whispering advice into our ear and a devil on the other shoulder. You’ve just learned that you or a loved one, a spouse or a daughter, is pregnant. The news makes you feel trapped. All your plans for the future, for yourself, or for your loved one, now seem scattered to the wind. What should you do?

Your guardian angel whispers into your ear, “Trust God. What looks like a burden is actually a gift. You may not see how, but God has a plan for you and this child. The sacrifices you will have to make now will be rewarded a hundred-fold.”

But the devil whispers instead, “Sure babies are good. But not now! You’re not ready for it. It will ruin everything. Nothing will ever be the same again. You have to save what you have. An abortion will give you back control over your life. Then you can save what you have, save what you’ve been working for, save the love of the people for whom you and this baby will be just another burden. Make this little sacrifice now, give up this pregnancy and wait for another day, and you won’t have to lose anything. You can save it all.”

So it is that God asks us, in trusting Him, to risk everything on a future for which we have not planned, while Satan asks us to give up just one little thing, an unborn child, to keep control over our lives and save everything we have planned for. The devil uses despair, the fear of losing what we have, to make us do things which we would normally reject. No one likes abortion, but if we fear that we will lose more than we can bear without it, many of us will cave in and accept it as an “evil necessity.”

But the devil’s bargain is a false one. Abortion does not turn back the clock. It is not something a person can have and forget. After an abortion, everything is still changed.

After the abortion, Satan, who used despair to drive the woman to choose abortion, now uses despair to destroy the woman in other ways. He becomes the woman’s accuser. “You’ve killed your own child. You’ve always wanted children, but now you’ve gone and killed a child instead! You’re a terrible person. You betrayed yourself and your child. God will never forgive you. He’ll punish you. Sooner or later, He’ll get you. And everyone else will despise you, too. So you had better keep this one a secret, especially from those goodie-two-shoes who don’t know what it is like. They would only want you to suffer even more than you are already. So if you need a little comfort, you might as well find it in the embrace of an affair, the bottom of a bottle, or even in the silence of suicide. You did this to yourself, and now you are alone and you will have to live with it–alone.”

So it is that Satan tries to use the same shame, fear, and despair which drive women to abort to keep them from finding the healing compassion of God and their communities. That is Satan’s agenda. But what is Christ’s? Does Christ desire punishment for those who have had abortions? No. He desires reconciliation. After an abortion, or any sin, Christ offers us hope. He stands with open arms greeting us, saying, “Come to me. I want to share your tears. I want to comfort you. Know that all is forgiven. See, your child is in my arms, waiting for you to join us when your day is completed.”

This is the difference between Satan and Christ. Before we sin, Satan is “on our side,” offering us excuses to defend our sin. After our sin, Satan is our condemner. Christ, on the other hand, stands before us with arms outstretched asking us not to go this sinful way. But afterwards, He, who has a right to condemn us, offers us forgiveness instead.

But Satan does not want us to be reconciled with God. So he tempts us to fear God’s judgment and to fear the judgment of people around us.

No matter what our sins may be, we must always resist the temptation to despair of God’s forgiveness. It is true that we don’t deserve God’s forgiveness, but it is a gift which He wants us to have.

For those who have been involved in an abortion, their sin was that of refusing God’s gift of life. To these people we must say, “Don’t commit the sin of refusing this second gift, the gift of God’s forgiveness, the rebirth of your spirit in Christ.”

And we must all play a role in bringing the healing gift of God’s mercy to others. As one woman who had an abortion has written, “It takes the blood of Jesus to deliver us from guilt, but it takes the acceptance of others to deliver us from shame.”

By this, she is telling us that the road to recovery from an abortion is not always simple and easy. Even after one accepts God’s forgiveness, there is still the temptation to not forgive ourselves and to live in dread of the judgment of others. Such fears and doubts create obstacles to developing and maintaining open and loving relationships. They rob us of the joy in life which God wants for us.

This is why the emotional consequences of abortion are so severe. Women who have abortions are four times more likely to engage in drug or alcohol abuse. They are more likely to have difficulty maintaining good relationships with men and to experience sexual dysfunctions. They have higher divorce rates, are more likely to seek psychological counseling, and are more likely to be less healthy physically. Approximately half of the women who have had an abortion experience suicidal thoughts, with over one in five actually reporting having attempted suicide. Many experience difficulty bonding with later children because they have not finished going through the necessary process of mourning the loss of their aborted children.

Others become obsessive mothers; they are overprotective because they feel a need to make up for their abortions or because they fear that since God is planning to punish them, He may do so by hurting their subsequent children. Some struggle every day with intrusive thoughts of their abortion, which can make it difficult for them to concentrate on their work or family. Others struggle to avoid thoughts of their abortion; they get all up-tight seeing articles about abortion in the newspaper; they hate the sound of vacuum cleaners because it reminds them of the suction aspirator; or they are bothered by the sight of little children who would be the same age as the child they lost during their own abortion. They may have unexplained feelings of depression every year, during the month when the abortion took place, or during the month when the child should have been born, or on Mother’s Day or at Christmas.

In these and a hundred different ways, abortion can cast a pallor over a man or a woman’s life. And in many cases, it can result in severe physical and emotional problems from which it can take years, or even decades, to recover. One study has found that, on average, it takes over eight years for a woman to even begin dealing with the emotional baggage of a past abortion.

Most women simply suffer silently because they feel that no one will understand. After all, in our society, abortion is supposed to be something that “helps” women. Women’s lives are, at least in theory, supposed to be improved by abortion. So most women endure their pains and doubts in silence, or they try to push them down and deny that they have those pains and doubts simply because they fear it would be too hard to confront them.

But by creating a healing environment, one which frees women and men from shame and fear of judgment, we can help them come more quickly to feel at peace with God, themselves, and our community. Only in this way will they eventually be free from the pain and temptation of despair. Only in this way will they recover the full joy and peace of mind which God desires for them.

But why, you may ask, don’t we simply “let sleeping dogs lie”. Why not just let memories of an abortion remain buried and forgotten? There are a lot of answers to this question, the most obvious being that, like the sleeping dog, these buried memories inevitably wake up. Worse yet, as long as these feelings and memories remain buried, they will continue to bubble up as an ongoing series of problems and disruptions in a person’s life. They demand our notice precisely because we are trying to ignore them. In this way, buried memories are just like a neglected child; the more we ignore them, the more trouble they cause.

Perhaps most importantly, the failure to reconcile a history of abortion has spiritual consequences. Many women and men will try to run from their past by trying to rationalize their choice. They become fixated on trying to make arguments to convince themselves and others that the abortion was somehow excusable, or even for the best. The spiritual consequence of such rationalization is that it involves a denial of objective moral truth. It is a choice which leads one to live in darkness, in a dreamland of one’s own creation, rather than in the light of Christ.

As long as one clings to rationalizations, one cannot truly cling to Christ. Which would you really rather have? The cold comfort of excuses or the warm embrace of our Heavenly Father, who not only forgives us, but kills the fatted calf to celebrate our return?

There are other women and men who don’t try to excuse their mistakes; they know they did the wrong thing, but they simply try to push it out of their minds. To help them push down negative feelings and memories, they may become compulsively busy with work or hobbies because they simply can’t stand any quiet time for reflection or contemplation. Some bury their regrets and pain in drug abuse or alcoholism.

In all these cases, people are denying themselves the greatest fruits of life. They do not truly know peace and contentment because they are running from their past. Because they are avoiding contemplation, they also end up avoiding prayer, and in avoiding prayer, they are avoiding God, who is actually the only One who can free them from their past.

These things are true for all sins, not just abortion. When we try to rationalize or excuse our sins, we are actually holding ourselves back from the embrace of Christ’s forgiveness. On the other hand, when we are afraid to confront and acknowledge our sins, it is then that we are most entrapped by them.

The solution is found in humbly and courageously facing our sinful past and giving it over completely to God, not with an excuse, not with eyes averted from the truth, but with a humility born in the knowledge that God truly loves us. We are His children, and He so desires to make us whole in Him alone that He will forgive us anything. Indeed, He came to die for us, accepting the punishment we deserve for our sins, so that we would be free from the shackles of sin which hold us to the past.

Instead of hiding from our past sins, we must confront them squarely and give them over to Christ. Sometimes the shame or pain is so great that it is not easy to do. But with prayer, and the help of each other, it can always be done.

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Originally published in The Jericho Plan: Breaking Down the Walls Which Prevent Post-Abortion Healing, by David C. Reardon (Acorn Books, Springfield, IL.) Copyright 1996, David C. Reardon.

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