Opinion: Abortion and Trauma, let’s admit the cause and effect and provide hope and healing.
I receive a Google alert each day for news events dealing with the issue of Trauma. There are many on the list each day! Trauma centered care is big industry and has grown immensely over the past 2 decades. None of the alerts, however, talk about trauma as a result of having an abortion experience. None! Maybe if you’re like me, you wonder why?
I’d like to share with you my own personal cause and effect experience.
At the center of Trauma-Informed care are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s), which can cause trauma to a varying extent. You can imagine that those experiences include events like child abuse of any kind, witnessing violence, neglect, unsafe home environments, to name a few. Unless these traumatic experiences are faced head on and treatment provided, the individual is likely to not only engage in risky behavior themselves as they grow up, but also pass it on to the next generation. This is called generation trauma. Trauma effects behavior, which leads to more trauma. The cycle goes on and on, until it is broken.
I am not an expert on trauma, but I have learned much about it in the last few years as I pressed through my own abortion related trauma. First, the attempt to take my life through the abortionist instruments traumatized me at about 13 weeks’ gestation. This violent experience was not discussed with my Mom until I was in my 30’s. Second, while submitting to the authority of others, I lost 2 children myself to abortion and then, after my loss, I pivoted to a job in the abortion industry. There is much pain and suffering to be healed of with these multiple experiences. Here is a partial list of symptoms as stated by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration: Anger, Fear, Shame, Self-medication, Eating disorders, Detached emotions, risky sexual behavior, and sleep disturbances.
Abortion is a violent experience that traumatizes it’s victims. One in 4 women are affected by an abortion experience. Men, families, communities and nations are affected too! It is and has been a destructive, violent and damaging reality for decades under Roe!
Abortion Trauma begets more trauma, generation after generation, unless there is a cycle breaker.
Before birth a severe trauma experience was set within my brain, and then it manifested through my behavior for the first 3 decades of my life. The affliction that abortion had over me was finally and eternally broken when I came to faith in Jesus Christ, receiving forgiveness, and being made new day by day. Christ is the cycle breaker and can change us from the inside out. His redemption is a miraculous gift!
I’ve accessed healing through the Abortion Survivors Network, after abortion healing from Forgiven and Set Free and other program, and from And Then There Were None, for when I worked in the abortion industry. I can attest to the benefit of healing and the hope the process provides.
For anyone having experienced the pain of abortion, if you want to be free, there is healing available, through many resources, books, videos and every kind of format. Look toward your local community for something or someone. Or, if I can help, reach out to me at pahurley@alaskan.com