By Susan Stevenot Sullivan

Debbie, a Catholic, was seeing a counselor because she wanted to have another child, but her husband didn’t. She discovered she was pregnant and her husband walked out.

Devastated and using credit cards to buy groceries, Debbie aborted the pregnancy she had wanted so much.

“I didn’t have faith in things turning out all right at the time,” she recalled, preferring to share her story through a phone interview with the request that only her first name be published.

For five years Debbie “obsessed about the abortion every day.” She began to abuse alcohol and thought about suicide. She remarried during this time and had a child, which deepened her depression over the abortion.

Then her husband saw an article about post-abortion syndrome.

“It was like a blessing,” Debbie said. “When I read it, it was such a relief to tag it.” She called the Michigan program named in the article and they gave her Mary Ann McNeil’s name in Atlanta.

Debbie said when they met, Mrs. McNeil warned her that it was likely she would become physically ill on the upcoming anniversary of the abortion. Mrs. McNeil also invited her to join a post-abortion healing group at St. Jude’s Parish.

“I started the healing program in March of 1992,” Debbie said. “I also started a 12-step (substance abuse) program and counseling. I couldn’t do one without the others.”

After a three-month-post-abortion healing and Scripture study course, Debbie found her relationship with God and herself to have been transformed.

“When you’re going through this you’re afraid to talk to God,” Debbie said. “The group reinstates for you that god is forgiving. I had gone to church all my life, but never experienced the spirituality I did in this group.”

Debbie said the message in the group study course is that God still loves and forgives and that women who have abortions are not alone.

“You feel like you’re all alone,” Debbie said. “I had not talked to anyone about this for five years.”

Ann, a resident of a prestigious suburban area in Atlanta who did not want her real name use, was sexually abused for much of her childhood. Seeking therapy in her late 30s, she was alerted to the emotional price she had paid for an abortion in her early 20s.

About five years after the abortion, 15 years before she attended a post-abortion healing group, Ann decided to confess her sin. At the time she live in a very small town in another state.

“I was afraid to go,” she recalled. “I knew the priest would recognize my voice.”

Barely controlling her apprehension and shame, Ann made her confession to the parish priest, who did not know whether he had been given authority to absolve her.

“He said, ‘I’ll have to give you a number and then check with the top on this. When you come back, give the number.’”

“I actually went back,” Ann continued, “and he said he could absolve me. He gave me a penance. I was so scared I ran out of there.”

(In the Archdiocese of Atlanta all priests are authorized by the archbishop to forgive the sin of abortion at the time it is confessed.)

Even though she received absolution, Ann realized during her therapy years later in Atlanta that she was not yet healed.

“I began to understand how the abortion was affecting me. I felt guilty, but there was no way to express it and let it out. I saw a notice for a post-abortion healing group and I started going.”

Ann, mother of two older children, has finished the program at St. Jude’s and still attends a follow-up group every few months.

“I felt it was good that they took you step by step. They helped you decide what to do with your anger,” she said. Anger at the person who didn’t stand beside you and help you, how to deal with your guilt.”

Often Mrs. McNeil, who has a degree in social work and who has been working in the area of post-abortion healing for seven years, is the first person these women talked with about their experience. They usually do not know other women who have had an abortion. They think their experience, and aftermath, are unique to them and that they are “crazy.”

“Their reaction is a symbol of how human they are,” said Mrs. McNeil. “If you don’t feel anything, that’s a cause for concern. Feelings are a signal that something is wrong and I need to get better.”

“Catholic women have an especially hard time,” Mrs. McNeil said. “Our teaching is about the sacredness of life. Many of these women believe that, but they panicked. Studies show this decision is made over several days or a couple of weeks at the most.”

“The hardest thing is to forgive themselves,” Mrs. McNeil continued. “Even if they accept forgiveness from God, they can’t forgive themselves. Often the beginning of healing comes when they can ask forgiveness from their child.”

Ann said Scripture stories discussed during the weeks of small group meetings emphasize God’s forgiveness of those who killed people, including the sin of one of the greatest figures in the Old Testament – King David.

“God is all loving and merciful and I had never really felt that love and forgiveness in my heart,” Ann said. “I felt that abortion was a sin too big to forgive. It took me a long time to forgive myself.”

“I feel healthier now,” Ann said. “I’m moving on and ‘unstuck.’ Part of that is receiving the Eucharist several times a week.”

Ann still struggles with a pattern of abusive relationships.

“I find that a lot of women who’ve had abortions have a lot of abuse issues in their lives,” she said. She believes they should not be hurt further by those from whom they seek help.

“Pro-life people can be so condemning,” she continued. “Everyone has sinned. Some of us have committed this sin. Within our Catholic Church girls get pregnant and women are abused and battered.”

Finding help can be difficult, she said. “Many women have been told ‘Accept your cross.’”

“Sometimes I feel angry at the church,” Ann continued. “I’ve called about support for battered women and help with legal advice. They asked me if I was an alien.”

“There are a lot of women who’ve had abortions, even in the Catholic Church,” she said. “I’ve run into Catholic women who’ve stayed home and taken care of the kids and then the husband walks out.

“These women do not have a lot of resources and a sliding fee scale doesn’t help when you can’t even afford food. I wish there were more resources for young women with crisis pregnancies, more than a care seat, a box of diapers and a crib.

“The Catholic church is funding a lot of other stuff,” she said.