When Your Past Comes Calling: Healing from an Abortion
Editor’s Note: If you are working through a personal experience with abortion, we encourage you to reach out to pastors, counselors, friends, etc. in your real life for additional help and support.
I was sixteen when I had an abortion. Two weeks later, I went to cheerleading camp.
At try-outs the spring prior, I’d been excited about the fresh start awaiting me in a new state and at a new high school. I was ready to leave behind the baggage of boyfriends and bad choices. I looked forward to camp as an opportunity to forge new friendships before beginning my junior year. But I had no idea what would happen in those months in between.
Neither did my parents. They gave me an encouraging hug as they left me at camp to spend the week learning dances and stunts. I responded with a reassuring smile, waving them away and doing my best to disguise how sick I felt. I tried to ignore the cramping and bleeding, the nagging anxiety and overwhelming grief, but I was haunted by fear. Fear that the multiple layers of feminine products couldn’t hold up in the long walks, full days, and rigorous activity ahead. Fear that something was permanently wrong with me. Fear that everyone would find out.
And that fear followed me long after the bleeding subsided.
That was more than twenty years ago. In God’s kindness, I have walked with him for more than half that time. Countless hours of tears, prayers, worship, and therapy have stopped that fearful pit in my stomach from being such a constant companion. But every once in a while, it resurfaces. And in recent months, with all the news about Roe v. Wade filling my social media feeds, I’ve often found myself just wanting to hide again.
Confronted by Shame
Every sinful human knows what it’s like to feel like a fraud on some level—to believe deep down that you’re worse than everyone thinks. But I think there’s a distinct and lingering experience for post-abortive women, because abortion is one of those sins that can leave you feeling like you’re wearing a scarlet letter.
At sixteen, I despised motherhood. It felt like an infringement upon my childhood, my freedom, my future. I refused to accept it then and embraced it only reluctantly years later. So while I love my children more than I can express, I often feel I don’t deserve them. I’ve struggled as a mom, and as I look at the moms around me who always dreamed of having children—the ones who seem to fulfill their calling with joy and ease—I feel like a fraud.
And then there’s the way abortion makes its way into polite conversation. One minute you’re passing the potatoes, and the next, someone is commenting on how inconceivable it is that someone would even consider an abortion. I never know how to react in those instances. I don’t want to justify the sinful choice I made all those years ago, but I also feel compassion for my teenage self who wrongly believed she had no other option. I want to introduce nuance and kindness—to celebrate God’s mercy—but instead, I shrink a little and ask for the gravy.
Coping with Shame
When these feelings go unaddressed, they never stay beneath the surface for long. Shame leaves us on edge. When we forget the grace we’ve received, we lack grace for others. We become easily angered or irritable, prone to anxiety or depression.
But another outcome is equally viable. Feeling like an imposter, we bury the shame and pick ourselves up by our bootstraps. We become reckless and unboundaried. Maybe we overshare our stories, trying to confirm everyone’s understanding of our fraudulent status before we’re exposed. Or perhaps we try to justify our past actions, making excuses that cast us in a better light. Or we might become overzealous, convinced our pro-life advocacy will make up for the shame of our past.
Most often, we quietly put our heads down, determined to prove we’re not the frauds our consciences accuse us to be. We work hard, trying to be the moms we fear we’re not.
Comforted in Shame
If I’m honest, these past few months have been frustrating. While many Christians celebrate the overturn of Roe v. Wade, I’ve faced anew my haunting past, revisiting memories I thought I’d dealt with long ago. I’ve found myself back in the spin of shame. That pit in my stomach returned. I unwittingly believed I had to prove to myself and others that I was better than my tainted past. But this kind of denial is unhelpful. Neither shame nor good works assuage our guilty consciences. As the headlines and the dinner conversations and the haunting memories rage, the scarlet letter remains and the verdict is clear: we are all imposters.
It turns out that’s where the good news begins.
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” the apostle Paul writes (1 Tim. 1:15). Here, he offers the cure for everyone weighed down by shame: We don’t need to hide or make up for our sinful pasts. Instead, what we believe makes us forever unworthy of God’s love is in fact an occasion to know all the more the depth of his love for us in Christ. As those whose post-abortive status makes us acutely aware of our need for grace, we can join Paul in becoming an example of God’s mercy and perfect patience.[1] The one who has been forgiven much loves much.[2]
Knowing this truth doesn’t keep shame from rearing its head, but it keeps us from cowering under the accusations that are sure to come. Instead, we can lift our heads, clinging with confidence to the blood of Christ which wipes us clean and quiets the voice of condemnation.[3] In the words of my seminary friend, we can boldly and joyfully claim, I admit that I deserve death, I admit that I’m an imposter. What of it? For I know one who has suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and where he is, there I shall be also.[4]
[1] 1 Timothy 1:15–17
[2] Luke 7:47
[3] Romans 8:1; 1 John 1:7; Revelation 12:10
[4] Rev. Christian McArthur, 2022 Westminster Seminary California Graduation Address (Referencing John 14:3)
