Phil McCombs
This year’s March for Life, in which 45,000 abortion opponents picketed
the Supreme Court, didn’t have the emotional impact on me that these
events often do. I was on my way out of town on business and scarcely
noticed.
Looking at news reports later, it seemed that everyone had been on his
or her best behavior. The abortion opponents were making it plain that they
oppose the use of violence to close clinics. The counter-demonstrations by
abortion rights advocates, as we’re careful to call them, were rare.
It’s all a little confusing to me. I don’t know anyone who—in his or her
heart—doesn’t hate abortion. And it seems odd to see Christian conserva
tives so eager to force their will through the armed authority of the state
when they already have at hand the far more powerful weapon of prayer.
Anyway, I like prayer. It’s all I have left.
And pain.
V' Slit ,
When the abortion was performed, I was out of town on business too. I
made sure of that. Whatever physical, emotional and spiritual agony the
woman suffered. 1 was not by her side to support her. I turned my face
away. My behavior was in all respects craven, immoral.
For some instinctual reason, or just imaginatively, I’ve come to believe
that it was a boy, a son whom I wanted killed because, at the time, his exis
tence would have inconvenienced me. I’d had my fun. He didn’t fit into
my plans.
His name, which is carved on my heart, was Thomas.
My feelings of responsibility and guilt are undiminished by the fact that
the woman had full legal authority to make the decision on her own, either
way, without consulting me or even informing me. In fact, she consulted in
an open fashion reflecting our shared responsibility, and I could have made
a strong case for having the child. Instead, I urged her along the path of
death.
And skipped town.
It’s not a lot of help, either—emotionally or spiritually—that the high
priests of the American judiciary have put their A-OK on this particular
form of what I personally have come to regard as the slaughter of inno
cents. After all, it’s the task of government to decide whom we may or
must kill, and not necessarily to provide therapeutic services afterward. In
the Army I remember being trained at public expense in the “spirit of the
bayonet,” which is, simply put, “to kill.” The spirit of abortion is the same,
in my view, though the enemy isn’t shooting back.
I feel like a murderer—which isn’t to say that I blame anyone else, or
think anyone else is a murderer.
It’s just the way I feel, and all the rationalizations in the world haven’t
changed this. I still grieve for little Thomas. It is an ocean of grief. From
somewhere in the distant past I remember the phrase from Shakespeare,
“the multitudinous seas incarnadine.”
When I go up to the river on vacation this summer, he won’t be going
boating with me on the lovely old wooden runabout that I can’t really
afford to put in the water but can’t bring myself to discard, either.
He won’t be lying on the grass by the tent at night, looking at the starry
sky and saying, “What’s that one called, Dad?”
Because there was no room on the Earth for Thomas.
He’s dead.
The latest numbers show abortions in America have been running at
about 1.5 million annually. That’s a lot of pain.
Secular men’s groups have tended to be focused on the “no say, no
pay” issue. “These men feel raped,” says Mel Feit of the National Center
for Men. “They lose everything they worked for all their lives. In many
cases they had an agreement with the woman not to have a baby and when
she changes her mind they call me up and say, ‘How can she do this to
me? How can she get away with it?”’ Feit plans to bring suit in federal
court.
I’m more interested in the traumatic pain that many men, as well as
women, often feel after an abortion. A healing process of recognition,
grieving and ultimately forgiveness is needed.
“There’s a lot of ambivalence for men when they get in touch with
their pain,” says Eileen C. Marx, formerly communications director for
Cardinal James A. Flickey of Washington and now a columnist for Catholic
publications. “They didn’t have the physical pregnancy, so often they feel
they’re not entitled to the feelings of sadness and anger and guilt and loss
that women often feel.”
V' She tells of one man, a friend, whose wife had an abortion. “He plead
ed with her not to have it. He said his parents would raise the child, or they
could put it up for adoption. The marriage broke up as a result of the abor
tion and other issues. He was really devastated by the experience.”
Marx has recently written about a post-abortion healing ministry called
Project Rachel, in which more men are becoming involved—husbands,
boyfriends and even grandfathers. There are 100 Project Rachel branches,
including one in Washington.
I found it helpful just talking to Marx, a caring person, on the phone,
though it was a little tough when she mentioned being pregnant and hear
ing the heartbeat and feeling “this wonderful celebration of life inside
you.”
She said not to be too hard on myself, that healing is about forgiveness
and God forgives me.
I said sure, that’s right, but some things are still hard.
Like looking in the mirror.
Phil McCombs is a Washington Post staff writer. ©1995, The Washington Post. Reprinted with permission.
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