Mourning My Loved Ones Lost to Abortion

Below is a post I wrote back in 2010. I re-post it now because my heart has been actively aching lately, for the aborted children I personally knew in some way before they were taken from us. 

For me, anti-abortion work (which falls under the ProLife umbrella) had deeper meaning when it dawned on me that I knew real-life babies who were involved. As I mention in my original post, a co-worker, two of my friends, and two of my close relatives faced crisis pregnancies and chose to have abortions. More specifically, they chose to end the lives of the babies they themselves helped create. Focusing on my relations with them, they chose to end the lives of children with whom I would have played and taken care of. They were children for whom I would have made and decorated birthday cakes. Our decisions impact others. In this case, I am left to process my grief and mourning rather than my joy and celebration. I know, I am not one of the parents, so my feelings are secondary, but secondary does not mean negligible or worthless.

Here is my original post.

A Repost of September 20, 2010

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I am not talking about mourning my loved ones who had a chance at life on earth.  I am talking about mourning the babies in my life who never had a chance to begin with.  More specifically, I am talking about the never-born babies of my coworker, my two friends, and two of my relatives.  They were all aborted at some point, and today, I miss them.

Why today, I do not know, but I do know my grief is real.  I was overwhelmed with it in Daily Mass this morning.  A vision flashed before me.  My "niece" and "nephew" and the other "children" were playing in a field, laughing.  Tears literally came to my eyes.  I will never get to know them, and they will never get to know me, or anyone else, even their very own parents. 

Abortion is often close to home, as it is with me.  That is because it is so prevalent and cuts across all boundaries in society, e.g. poor, rich, black, white, younger, older.  It is one of the biggest kept secrets.  Of course, the genders are not really known, but they were in my vision.  Girl, girl, boy, girl, boy.  God touched me and I wept because they were not with us.

This is one of the less talked about effects of abortion.  Mourning, I mean.  Mourning.  Mourning like Mary mourned at the foot of the cross when Jesus was taken down dead.  It does not matter that the child was never born and never had a body like we all have.  The mourning still occurs.  I am witness to it, and I am not even closest to these children.  I can only imagine what their parents experience.

I doubt that abortion clinics tell the young women and men that they will mourn the loss of their aborted one some day, or that their relatives will mourn the loss as well.  No.  The aborted babies are not considered people.  They are not considered flesh and blood.  They are inconveniences and money makers to the abortion clinic.  Their loss, no, their murder, is job security for the staff.

I hope God continues to bring these visions to me.  I hope He overwhelms me again and again with grief like this.  It keeps me in touch with the horror of abortion, and it keeps my ProLife conviction alive.  It also brings compassion in my heart for all those involved, directly or indirectly.

If you or someone you know is mourning the loss of an aborted child, consider Project Rachel.  There is hope after an abortion.  "It's normal to grieve a pregnancy loss, including the loss of a child by abortion. It can form a hole in one's heart, a hole so deep that sometimes it seems nothing can fill the emptiness."

Kathleen

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 image - https://thinkingonscripture.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/mourn-tears.jpg