The saddest email I’ve ever received
Got it Saturday….
Hi Jill,
Just wanted to send you a few thoughts to encourage your efforts.
When my oldest daughter became pregnant several times over a period of years, she aborted for a variety of reasons.
First time, she was only 16 years old, and I didn’t want her to ruin her life. I was from the school of thought that was based in the 1950s and 1960s when a girl who got pregnant in high school literally disappeared. It was a shameful thing to have happen to a young girl and families tried their best to cover it up. When it happened to my daughter, the boy’s mother was pretty quick to offer to pay for an abortion. She may have feared criminal charges and certainly feared a claim against their small fortune….
In later years, I took a more active role and paid for abortions a couple of times because I thought she would never be able to raise a child as she had no marketable skills with which to get a job, and the young men she was with were no real prizes either.
When she was in her 30s, she was so soured against the idea of marriage and relationships she sat for many years without a significant other – chiefly because of the disappointments she’d had with losers she met in her 20s. I tried to tell her that she had been fishing at the bottom of the pond and that there were better quality people she had yet to meet but needed to give things a chance. So she started dating again and wound up happily married.
However, she’s now pushing 40, has no children and may not now be able to have them.
My point is this: I feel somewhat responsible for denying her a chance to have a family. Even though she might have had to raise a kid on her own, and I may have had to help her more than what I was willing to at the time, I think we could have managed.
In essence, an abortion is the systematic killing of your own family members, if you look at it right. In my 60s now, I think I would like to have had more family around me and have lived to wish I had not condoned and/or financed the abortions.
I don’t know if this insight is any benefit to you, but I thought I’d share the story with you anyway. Please continue to fight the practice of abortion if you can and tell whoever might benefit that I would encourage people now to ignore any stigma a birth might have and enjoy the life and happiness a child can bring to all, but who might be considered for abortion for the wrong reasons.
[Top photo by Joe Niem]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Dear Woman Who Wrote the Email,
Such insight and wisdom do the years give us! My mother encouraged me to have an abortion after being raped. She wrote the check and drove me there. It pained me so deeply, I considered suicide many times.
My mother thought she was doing “what was best”… she had no idea the affects abortion would have on me, and in reality, on her from her actions.
My mother recently passed away. I miss her. She truly was my best friend. I forgave her a long time ago for her encouragement at the death of my daughter.
I went through an abortion recovery program and encouraged my mother to do so as well. She died so suddenly she was unable to do so…. but I’d like to pass that insight on to you and your daughter.
I run an international association of counselors around the globe… if you contact me I’ll find you a counselor in your area.
Know that your grandchildren sit at the foot of Christ waiting for you and your daughter to be united with them. Just think how that first kiss on your cheek will feel! :)
May God touch both you and your daughter with His grace, forgiveness and mercy!
Covered in the Fingerprints of God,
Stacy Massey
Abortion Recovery InterNational, Inc.
info@abortionrecovery.org
Hi Jill,
I’m convinced this was a young woman with some serious emotional and mental health issues.
How tragic that her mother and “professionals” thought simply aborting this young woman and sending her home was the cure all. How often does that happen now?
Perhaps sexual promiscuity and associating only with lowlifes is telling you something, like maybe this is someone in desperate need of professional help?
Maybe her life wouldn’t be winding down so sadly and so empty if someone had recognized this was a young woman in desperate need of help instead of taking her to the abortion clinic
This mother’s letter, although good of her to send to you, *still* sounds cold and unfeeling. Maybe the daughter, through lust, was seeking warmth in whatever way she could find it? God first, then family.
My own mother always told me that if I got pregnant as a teen she would force me to have an abortion. (She denies that now, but she isn’t the most mentally stable person in the world. She once argued with me about whether I had told her some piece of family news and then when I detailed the entire conversation and when we had had it she replied, “Oh, but I don’t actually listen to you when you talk.” But I digress….)
When I got pregnant with Alison (pre-marriage) I hid the pregnancy for five months out of fear she would follow through on that … even though I was an adult! My beautiful Alison turns 18 this fall and not only did she NOT ruin my life, she was the driving force between making me GROW UP.
I honestly believe that had this mother supported her daughter in either raising or adopting out her child she may have grown up much sooner than her forties…
To the Author of the email,
Stacy Massey has offered you a precious lifeline. Please contact her if you have not already done so, and urge your daughter to do the same.
You are not alone in regretting past sins, whatever they may be. We all come to see the effects of our past sins through the lens of perspective as years go by. That’s normal. The regret you have expressed here is a very healthy step along the road of healing, as has been your sharing in an effort to save future babies from the effects of the fear, doubt, and uncertainty that influenced your own decision making.
Do know that God is rich in Love and Mercy, and that there are any number of post-abortive women here at Jill’s who have seen their own guilt and shame drowned in the ocean of God’s Love and Forgiveness. They too can help you in your continued healing.
Thanks for your courageous and thoughtful letter today.
God Bless.
I sincerely believe it’s situations like THIS that we want women to AVOID.
On the one hand, Wisdom comes with age and the realization of what the long term effect of what we do today does to our future and to our future generations (it also comes with regret).
On the other hand, an ounce of prevention is still worth more than a pound (or years) of cure…
If we are to make mistakes..let us err on the side of Life. And with Life, there is Hope.
I pray that more of these young women (and their mothers) do not have to go thru this painful realizations.
This IS a very sad e-mail. Sad that neither of them considered ADOPTION an option. Let me also just put my two cents in here: She says that her daughter is now ‘pushing forty’..meaning she’s not forty YET. I had my daughter at almost 42(without the use of ART, mind you), so late thirties is NOT ‘too late’ to have children. I hope she doesn’t give up, and is able to have(other) children. They are truly a BLESSING. :)
My mom pushed me to get an abortion as a teenager. Although I did have other children, it never made up for the son I aborted in my eyes or my moms. That person was a unique human being, made in the image of God.
However, what once was a wedge between us, ended up bringing us closer together and teaching us both what true love is. God can bring good out of all things, even abortion. Of course, that is not to say it was ok, but my son Joshua, taught us both a lot about love and forgiveness. It also taught us we are all sinners capable of any sin without the grace of God.
My mom ended up going for healing before she passed, and I am sure, is with my son now. God’s mercy is bigger than any sin we may commit.
Like Stacy said, find a resource near you for you and your daughter..hope and healing are possible.
My heart breaks for this mother and her daughter. I have family members who are post-abortive and God has healed them but there is still pain in their heart. Unfortunately, they never came to our family to let us help them (we are prolife), they hid their pregnancies and we did not find out until much later what they had done. After we found out we had to deal with the pain of losing our own flesh and blood and part of our legacy by the taking of innocent human life. May God help all post-abortive women, men and their families. I am praying for them all. BTW, I have a friend who has dealt with her mother forcing her to abort at 16 she still has a hard time forgiving her mother many years later.
Stacy, great note, thanks.
mlizzy, perhaps the letter seems a little “cold and unfeeling” because the writer was the girl’s father, not mother.
Having your dad tell you things like, “The person you’re with is a loser.”, “You have no marketable skills, so kill your kid.” seems like that would be damaging. My dad didn’t like the guy I ended up procreating with at first, either, and was quite vocal about it (I’m also the oldest girl in my family…). Luckily, I’m just as stubborn as he is, so eventually it came around to me saying pretty much “Too bad, so sad. This is the father of your grandchildren. Deal with it.” He wasn’t willing to give him a chance at first, but we stuck with it, and eventually (and after some military service…) he’s finally come to terms with it. It was hard, especially since he came from that same school of thought about girls being pregnant and unmarried, but I didn’t care. I was proud of my pregnant belly, and he loves his grandchildren so much, just as I knew he would despite his protests. I think most fathers aren’t prepared for their daughters becoming women and subsequently mothers themselves, because-and understandably-their job for the majority of their child’s life at that point has been to protect their daughters from that happening too soon. So, they tend to deal with such circumstances very poorly once they do occur. Maybe they feel as though they failed their daughter (at 16 I can understand such a feeling. I, however, was 20-21 years old, so my dad had no excuse. -.-) in not being able to stop her from becoming a mother, and I’m sure many fathers fall into the same trap that young men who feel unready for fatherhood do, thinking that abortion will undo the situation when really all it does is kill the baby.
Fathers: behave yourselves. You all do the best you know how for your daughters, but just as you must know how to protect them from becoming a mother too soon, you also must learn how to deal with your daughters becoming adults and mothers in a respectful and mature fashion when it finally does happen. I usually don’t like John Mayer, but he wrote a song that I think all dads should listen to called “Daughters”. It pretty much explains it all.
/rant
“..because the writer was the girl’s father..”
This horror of abortion really DOES affect everybody…
What’s the pro-abort mantra? “My body, my choice”…
Unfortunately, it maybe true it’s their body but the choice affects more than them…
“I would encourage people now to ignore any stigma a birth might have and enjoy the life and happiness a child can bring to all, but who might be considered for abortion for the wrong reasons.”
This woman still doesn’t understand what she did was wrong. There is no right reason for murdering an innocent child. She thinks she “would like to have had more family around…”. Her reasons for killing her grandchildren were selfish and so are her reasons for wishing that she hadn’t. Sad.
It’s the girl’s FATHER that wrote the letter, Jo, not her mother.
Father..ok…got it. :)
I’m so very glad this father realizes his mistakes and my hope is that he has asked God and his daughter to forgive him for his part in the deaths of his grandchildren. There is forgiveness for him.
A sad email, yes. But one that many post-abortive daughters would be grateful to receive.
Sorry I misread this and thought it was a mother not a father. May God help this father and his daughter.
Let’s pray for this father and for the fathers of the babies who were aborted.
We have to ask ourselves what has become of our nation’s men when they do stuff like this?
And we women have to ask ourselves why do WE let men do this?
Men need to recover their roles as protectors and not predators. :(
“I would encourage people now to ignore any stigma a birth might have…” I had to stop right there when I read those words. Stigma? A birth? So things have come to this: that abortion is the *norm*, the *expected* choice. And too often considered the *moral* choice. I cannot describe to you the feeling I have in the pit of my stomach as I write this. What has happened to the world, to our society? How did the murder of the innocent and defenseless become so commonplace? How did something so normal and beautiful as the birth of a child come to carry any kind of stigma? Lord, have mercy.
I’m glad the father has begun to understand. I’m glad he is beginning to heal. I’m sure it will take a while. And it will take God’s grace. I’ll keep him in my prayers. Him and all the others all over our planet who live in societies that too often have embraced the culture of death. May we all work together to build a culture of life. Everywhere.
Dear Father / Grandfather,
Thank you for taking time and finding the courage to write to Jill. Your journey is so familiar to me. But there IS hope and healing. I help facilitate a week end retreat for those hurting from past abortion decisions. I highly recommend the week end for both you and your daughter. You may attend together or separately – or both. The retreat is Rachel’s Vineyard – Healing the trauma of abortion – one weekend at a time. I promise, peace and healing is available. No matter where you live, there is one close. I am on the Las Vegas, NV team.
We’ve had women and men who are the mothers and fathers of the aborted babies as well as the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends attend Rachel’s Vineyard. Abortion reaches the souls of all whose lives would have been touched and affected by the lives of these chldren and therefore necessarily are affected by their loss.
Thank you so much for sharing some of your journey with your daughter with us.
I am also the executive Director of First Choice Pregnancy Services. We meet with people who are unsure what decision to make with their pregnancy. Many of the things you shared are exactly what we help the women (and men) look at, who come to us and are deciding between life and abortion for their babies – and those things help them choose life. Your letter helps me know that our advice is solid.
There are so many layers to your story – for both you and your daughter, so many events that helped shape the next decision and then the next. I encourage you to take the next step and allow someone to help you find healing. Stacy Massey gave you contact info in her message above. She has a great network. I too am available to help you begin your healing journey. I have included a link to Rachel’s Vineyard website.
It doesn’t matter who you contact, just that you make that step. None of us is attached to being “the one.” We are only interested in your healing and peace, because we know that – no matter how impossible and unattainable it seems – it is possible. God Is full of grace and mercy and He Is waiting with open arms to pour His Love over you and your daughter, to comfort you in your sadness and regret. It is a process, for sure, a journey that will take a little time – but most likely, not as much time as you might think. The journey you’ve been on has been riddled with pain and regret. Let’s get you on a journey of peace and hope now.
Ps 30: 11 You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, 12 that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever.
Your “Friend for Life,”
Pam
Help@FirstChoiceLV.org
702-294-2273
http://www.rachelsvineyard.org/