How abortion affects family members

Stephanie Gray wrote an article this week about how family members of aborted children work through the abortion issue. Or don’t.

This excerpt talks about survivor guilt:

That does something to you psychologically.  Consider the words of child and family psychiatrist Dr. Philip Ney who has done extensive research on the effects of abortion on siblings, something he calls post-abortion survivor syndrome:

“[Siblings of aborted children] have in common many of the conflicts that were found in those people who survived the Holocaust. For instance they have survivor guilt. They feel it is not right for them to be alive. And they wonder why they should be selected when their little siblings were selected to die … which is precisely what happened to the people from the Holocaust. Why were they selected to live and some of their friends, relatives, and family were selected to die? And it leaves this deep sense of guilt. And that is a difficult, difficult thing to treat, because it is so deeply embedded. And of course with that is how can you trust your parents? Are they capable of killing you too?”

This one isn’t about abortion, but about IVF and how it affected one woman’s determination of when life begins:

If that weren’t bad enough, it gets worse.  While speaking to a young female college student, my colleague was having a difficult time convincing her of the scientific fact that our human lives began at fertilization.  My colleague invited me into the conversation, hoping I could convince the young lady.

In our conversation I learned that the student was conceived through in-vitro fertilization (IVF).  And in that moment, I realized I had a nearly insurmountable task ahead of me.  It was no longer easy to explain that life begins at fertilization—not because it doesn’t, but because of what it means.

In directly making the case that life began at fertilization, I’d be indirectly making the case that siblings she’d always longed for actually existed…

Abortion affects not only the woman who is making “her choice.” It affects the family, the community, and society. It affects our understanding of who we are, what life is and when it begins. It affects our understanding of love, sacrifice, freedom and independence. It can affect our understanding of so many fundamental and foundational realities. It can change everything.

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