Abortion. How To Live On?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Abortion. Behind such a short word can be hidden an abyss of feelings and experiences. These are forbidden tears, these are thousands of tragedies every day. This topic is still under discussion, despite the fact that it is an almost ubiquitous practice that has affected almost every family.

For some, abortion continues to be a means of protecting and regulating the number of children in a family. And for someone it becomes an unhealed wound for many, many years.

Loss of a child - this is perhaps the most terrible thing that parents can imagine. When they lose a child after birth - in the very first hours or after many years - the parents and other close relatives experience acute grief that turns into a feeling of loss. The parents of the deceased child are supported by loved ones who understand what needs to be done in this situation, understand that the loss must be mourned, and mourn as much as necessary.

For women, suffered a miscarriage when the termination of pregnancy did not occur on their initiative, sometimes one has to deal with completely different reactions. On the one hand, someone supports and treats with understanding, on the other hand, a devaluation of the event may occur, since an unborn child may not be perceived by others as a child. Especially if the miscarriage occurred in the first trimester, when only the woman and, possibly, the father of the child knew about it.

Often, a woman herself wants to quickly forget about what happened, does not give herself enough time to experience the loss, begins to diminish the significance of the event, drown out the pain, and try to replace the loss with a new pregnancy.

If in a situation with a miscarriage a woman can still receive support, then in a situation of abortion, as a rule, a woman is left alone with her feelings … With the exception of abortion for medical reasons, when the attitude towards the event can develop as in the first two options.

In our article, we will consider the third option, when a woman deliberately makes a choice not in favor of having a child. We will not touch upon the moral and ethical aspect of abortion. However, let us touch on the socio-psychological, since it is the attitude towards abortion in our culture that is both a consequence and a provoking factor for the psychological consequences that a woman may have after an abortion.

After the legalization of abortion in Russia, which took place in 1920, as well as after a temporary ban in 1936-55, the practice of controlling the birth rate by abortion became widespread. Many women used abortion as a means of contraception, having a history of not only 1-2, but also 10-15, and sometimes 30 abortions. And here we are not talking about women of frivolous behavior, but about ordinary married women who live in a family and have one or two children.

In places where predominantly female groups worked, there was even such a practice as taking a day off for 2 days for an abortion. They treated me with understanding and support. At the same time, in all biology textbooks, a picture was posted, which, to illustrate Haeckel's biogenetic law, depicts a human embryo in the early stages of its development, where it was a fish or turtle, but not a child.

The attitude towards the unborn child as an "unknown animal", the tacit approval of society, socio-economic instability, militant atheism, the availability of a free procedure in a public medical institution and other factors have led to the fact that over the decades of practice there was a devaluation of human life at the moment conception and emasculation of emotional reactions to the event

It turns out that a woman who has had an abortion is more likely to receive support and justification in this than in her experiences, if any.

And if there are experiences, then the likelihood of developing post-abortion syndrome (PAS) is high, i.e. a condition similar in psychopathological symptoms to post-stress disorder (PTSD). But if in a situation with PTSD a person knowsthat he has experienced severe stress and reacts to it accordingly, then in an abortion situation it matters personal meaning perfect.

If for a woman it was “just medical manipulation”, “cleaning”, “scraping”, then the likelihood of developing experiences is low. If a woman realizes that she voluntarily gets rid of her own child, experiences the situation, and, perhaps, would give birth under other circumstances, then here we can talk about the likelihood of developing PAS.

Let's list the symptoms of PAS:

• feelings of guilt and regret, manifestation of the depressive triad: decreased mood, motor retardation, negative thinking;
• persistent obsessive thoughts about abortion, nightmares, flashbacks (one-step vivid memories of the abortion procedure), strong experiences on the anniversary of the abortion and on the days of the alleged birth of the child;
• psycho-emotional isolation, avoidance of all situations and conversations that might remind of abortion, sudden break with the father of an aborted child, avoidance of contact with children, intolerance of baby crying, active support of other women in the desire to have an abortion, participation in movements for women for the right to have abortions looking for excuses;
• the desire to give birth to another child as soon as possible, replacing the aborted, a decrease in warm and tender feelings for their own born children;
• suicidal thoughts and even intentions, alcoholism, drug use, withdrawal into any known form of addiction;
• search for extreme situations, active promiscuous sex, multiple abortion, self-loathing, increased trauma, self-injury, perverted sexual relations, avoidance of relationships with men and search for relationships with women, unusual for a woman before an abortion.

Such a "rich" palette of psychological consequences of abortion is based on a destructive feeling of guilt and the inability to mourn for your deceased child. These "forbidden tears" arise from an intrapersonal conflict between conventional permission, approval of abortion and a deep, not always clear understanding that this is an unnatural, destructive, tragic event in a woman's life.

Women say that even when they come to confession in church and talk about abortion, they do not feel relief, they cannot forgive themselves, they confess again and again. Sometimes psychological work does not bring results, since, firstly, the topic of abortion is not the most common in the training program for specialists and is usually considered in the framework of work with psychological trauma, which cannot fully answer the questions posed, and secondly, the psychologist himself experience the symptoms of PAS, and, third, have their own beliefs and attitudes that justify abortion.

Where an event is recognized as significant in a person's life, guilt will multiply. In order for a destructive feeling of guilt to be transformed into a desire for repentance and repentance, it is necessary to go through several steps, which can be called "steps of repentance." (adapted by the author "Steps of Repentance", developed by psychologists O. Krasnikova and Archpriest Andrei Lorgus).

1. Recognition of the fact that the child was. Awareness of feelings of guilt and other feelings about this, no matter how frightening they may be. The name of the unborn child.
2. Clarification of responsibility for the event. Despite the fact that it is the woman who goes to the abortion, part of the responsibility for the abortion lies with the child's father as well. If there was pressure on a woman (mother, friend, doctor), then they also bear part of the responsibility. This helps to reduce the intensity of feelings a little, since feeling guilty for everyone at once is an unbearable burden.
3. Repentance: "I am very sorry that I did it."
4. A request for forgiveness addressed to the unborn child.
5. Feasible help to other children and adults (as the heart suggests).
6. The transition of the feeling of guilt into the awareness of the feeling of sin. If the feeling of guilt expresses an attitude towards oneself, towards one's actions, is understood as a part of oneself, then sin is something that is alien to human nature, something that can be "washed away", leave after repentance and confession.
7. Confession and sincere repentance.
8. Relief, lightness.
9. Thanks to God and myself for this relief.
10. New experience. There is an adequate attitude to what happened. The unborn child takes its place in the heart, in the memory, as one who has lived a very short time and has died.

But all this does not mean forgetting about abortion, as if nothing had happened. This means - in such a situation, make a choice in favor of having a child, understanding what an abortion is in essence, and what its price is.