A number of years ago I was at my brothers dining table with my niece, an attorney at the time, now a mom of four , and my nephew, a doctor and father of three. In an instant, I had a searing flash that there should/could be one more at the table with us, the child that my girlfriend aborted many years before. The child would have been about 16 or so at the time.
Many years earlier, in a rather difficult time, my girlfriend came to me and said she was pregnant. She went to the local hospital and received an abortion. I did not even go with her or feel anything at the time. It was her business not mine. Like Pilate, I washed my hands of the incident. I was drinking and drugging in those days and was just not concerned about it.
I had long since quit drinking and drugs which led to the exploration of a spiritual path which brought me back to the Church of my youth, the Catholic Church. At the moment of awareness of this long forgotten abortion, and in light of my Catholic faith, I was startled to realize this was my doing as well. I was scared a bit. I had murdered. I did what Catholics do, I went to confession. I had been using this sacrament to ask forgiveness from God for all the sins of my past life and was used to the cleansing wave that washed over me when I honestly repented of my sins as I confessed out loud before God and man that I honestly wished to be forgiven. I know I took a life. I feel curious as to what the child would have become. I recently buried my mother and was her caretaker in the last years of her life after she had a stroke. I was so happy that she had someone who loved her there to care for her. I thought how sad it is to interrupt the cycle of life and take away the possibility of having a child see me through my own last days.
I have found peace with the abortion and I believe my faith is part of the reason. I did become a good son even though I had been a bad father. I do not minimize the issue but I have come to accept it and writing this reminds me that when I feel overwhelmed with fear having a sense of God might offer the comfort needed for the journey of life. I recently was reminded of a book about a psychiatrist's experience in a Nazi concentration camp. The brutality of his descriptions was extraordinary. One thing he said was that those with religious traditions and rituals, like Catholics, seems to get through the ordeal best. Another story of Auschwitz was of Maxmillian Kolbe, a Catholic priest, who offered his life to the Nazis to save that of another man who had a family. This reminds me that while we might have failed under the pressure of being presented with an unexpected pregnancy, there is forgiveness and things one can do afterwards to make something good come from something bad.