let her know she is not alone. Carefully consider your body language and the words you speak. She needs compassion, not judgment, as she works through multiple layers of guilt, shame and pain on the pathway to healing. Your friendship and continued shepherding can help greatly as you listen and walk with her on her healing journey. Generally speaking, women come to a post-abortion support group five to thirty years after they have had an abortion.  

The anniversary date reaction is often manifested each year with heaviness, depression or a deep sadness around the time the abortion was performed or when the baby would have been born.  Mother’s Day is an especially difficult and painful day for many post-abortive women. The person with PAS suffers from impacted grieving, similar to an impacted wisdom tooth.  This grief is fully formed but below the surface and difficult to extract. 

In her book, Helping People Get through Grief, Deloris Kuenning states that grief suffered as a result of abortion is unlike any other loss.  She identifies the following problems that arise in grieving the loss of an aborted child.  

1. There is no external evidence that a baby ever existed.  The baby exists not even as a memory of a baby but as a memory of a pregnancy.

2. There is no formal ritual such as a funeral where friends and family can acknowledge her loss and grieve with her.

3. The woman has little support because few people are told about the abortion. For those who do know it usually becomes “the elephant in the living room” that no one talks about.

4. The woman has no permission to grieve openly. She suffers in secret, feeling like she is strange for having feelings of grief.

5. The grief is complicated by the guilt of responsibility for ending her baby’s life.  Many women find it difficult to forgive themselves. They live in pain and isolation.

6. If she tells someone, she may experience rejection, disapproval or judgment, which is devastating and causes her to retreat further into secrecy and isolation.  Or, because of her fear, she may never tell anyone.

7. Few are knowledgeable about how to help women work through the steps necessary to find healing, forgiveness and reconciliation with God.

8. Because those who advocate abortion provide no information about PAS to prepare the woman, she is surprised by her feelings of grief and loss, and feels she is abnormal.

9. Because of the heavy denial involved, the grief cycle and the timing are different from those experienced with other types of loss.  We have seen women whose abortions were 15, 23, even 35 years earlier.  The postponement of the grief creates a unique dynamic.  

Each person’s healing journey is unique and should not be compared with other women.  The small group experience is affirming and helps each woman begin to see God’s healing hand. The group helps a woman process her own past, especially when she hears and sees she is not alone. Although reasons for having an abortion vary, there is always hope and healing in the Lord. A shepherd offers compassion and sensitivity by willingly listening to her story. If Jesus could say to the woman caught in adultery, “Neither do I condemn you,” (John 8:11) certainly we too can reflect that kind of acceptance.  

See “Helpful Things to Say and Do” as well as web sites listing local support groups, on pages 148-150, Chapter 11, “Abortion Recovery,” Mindy Johnson, in Shepherding Women in Pain.