I Am Nobody's Anything

By Dave Andrusko

Even though we have extinguished the lives of over 41 million unborn children in this country alone, surprisingly few people are aware of the extraordinary pain many, many women endure in the aftermath of the decision to take their child's life. This is true even though more women than one might think have told the stories of their abortions.

Each has a common ending: a dead child. But as you listen to these emotionally devastated women pour out their souls, each tragedy, far from becoming commonplace, remains singular and unique.

Vera Faith Lord is the director of Alpha Omega Life, the newly formed pro-life outreach to the Greek Orthodox Church. Vera's riveting account of her abortion 19 years ago, her descent into post-abortion syndrome, and her emergence from the valley of depression, is not only heart-rending in its own right, it is also a striking illustration of the powerful role post-abortive women can play in our Movement.

Vera's talk, which she's delivered at more than 35 parishes in the Greek Orthodox Diocese of Pittsburgh and at numerous other Orthodox Christian and pro-life functions around the country, is immensely powerful. Mere moments into her presentation, there is absolute silence in the room.

As she begins her talk, Vera promises, "Today, we're going to take you through the looking glass and explore the land beyond abortion."

So compelling is Vera's story of the death of "Gabriel" (the name she gave to her son, who would have been 19) that even avowedly " pro-choice" people are touched. While she gives many talks to priests, one of her gifts is that Vera is also at home with other audiences, including on college campuses where a pro-life message can be an exceedingly difficult sell.

For those of us with no firsthand experience, Vera movingly illuminates the psychology of the woman in a crisis pregnancy situation. Most often, she interprets her situation in stark either/or terms: "It's my life or my baby's life--and I choose me."

As Vera points out, the abortion is intended to stop the woman's life from changing. But the tragic irony is that nothing is ever the same again.

In her talk, Vera explains that she had conceived Gabriel while in an abusive marriage. For a combination of reasons, she didn't know she was pregnant until two weeks before she aborted her son at 21 weeks.

It was to be her "last chance at being a mother." This is particularly significant because Vera, now divorced, was the only child of an only child who had Vera late in life.

As she explains, she has no legal or biological family. In words that haunt the listener, Vera says, "I am nobody's anything," meaning, "no one's daughter, sister, cousin, aunt, niece, or wife, but most of all I am nobody's mother."

Vera evidently suffered from a particularly virulent form of post-abortion syndrome. After 17 years of torment, her recovery was neither quick nor easy.

The healing process is an ongoing series of steps. To illustrate one phase, Vera offers a particularly vivid personal vignette.

A mother was carrying her child on her hip. As she went through a narrow doorway, Vera saw the child's head accidentally strike the door.

The child started to cry and the mom instantly dropped to her knees. Rubbing his head, she said tenderly, "Mommy's sorry, Mommy's so sorry you bumped your head." In a moment the boy was just fine.

Vera says the incident didn't impress her at the time but that it must have made a subconscious imprint. About eight hours later, she found herself on her knees in her apartment "rocking back and forth, sobbing, talking to my son, 'Gabriel, Mommy is sorry. Mommy is so sorry.' "

Gabriel would have been 19. Vera says, "There isn't a moment of my life that he's not with me."

It is almost unbearably painful when she talks of her moment of realization (which may come for a woman immediately after the abortion or years later) "when the maternal instinct rears its head and everything in the woman knows exactly what she has done. I cannot explain how awful that moment is. It's like sticking your hand into fire. Everything in you wants to recoil away from that minute when the total realization hits you. ... It's fine as long as we don't have to think about what we actually did."

But, of course, she can't. She has a dead child, just like a woman who lost a child to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or an automobile crash.

With the accidental death of a young child, society rallies around the mother--everyone "feels her pain"--and people are there for the woman, Vera explains. The woman who aborted her baby also has a dead child.

Only this time society says to her, "Baby? What baby?" This leaves her stuck in the denial stage of the death and dying process, Vera says.

Some women stay stuck in denial for years, which means they are not allowed to grieve and mourn their lost child. "It is the worst feeling in the world," Vera says, "it's impacted grief, it's self-hatred."

Vera quickly but thoroughly outlines the myriad issues involved in ministering to the woman suffering from post-abortion syndrome, whose manifestations range from trying to be "Super Mom," on the one hand, to contemplating suicide, on the other.

These women are tormented by what they've done, even though the culture tells them what they've done is legal and "her choice." As Vera points out, the first step is to ask for forgiveness from God. (The need for forgiveness from the Giver of Life is common, whether the woman has a vibrant faith life or no faith at all.)

As the woman navigates her grief, seeking a safe harbor, that is where the pro-life community comes in, says Ernest Ohlhoff, NRLC director of outreach. When we say we are there to pick up the pieces, that is almost literally true.

Our task is to be non-judgmental, Ohlhoff explains, to offer a shoulder for her to lean on, strength when she may have exhausted all her own. Pro-abortionists typically either don't understand how we can condemn abortion but help aborted woman or are, in a strange way, jealous.

For instance, a few years ago a pro-abortionist wrote a piece for a the Washington Monthly magazine, bemoaning that pro-lifers were the only ones helping women buffeted by the grief of abortion. He said in effect, "Why should they get all the credit?"

In fact, Ohlhoff observes ruefully, pro-lifers rarely are credited for this phase of the Movement. Indeed, the opposite is more likely.

But we don't attend to abortion's second victim to win credit or praise or congratulations. "We do it because abortion kills unborn children and maims their mothers," he says.

Helping aborted women is the right thing to do, Ohlhoff explains. Reaching out to them is as much a part of our efforts to create a culture of life as persuading women not to abort in the first place.

dave andrusko can be reached at dha1245@juno.com.