If you have chosen to have an abortion, you may find yourself suffering from some sort of loss right after the abortion or many years later. These feelings of loss can be very normal and there are ways to effectively deal with them and heal. Below are a number of resources that may be helpful in this healing process.

Project Rachel

http://hopeafterabortion.com/index.cfm

Diocese: Sioux Falls
Project Rachel
Contact: Sr. Martin Mergen
Referral Phone: 800-700-7867
Email: mmergen@sfcatholic.org

Diocese: Sioux Falls
Project Rachel
Contact: Jan
Referral Phone: 866-700-2376
Email: jsanford@sfcatholic.org

4Exhale

http://www.4exhale.org/index.php

Books:

The Healing Choice: Your Guide to Emotional Recovery after an Abortion
Candace De Puy, Ph.D., M.S.W. and Dana Dovitch, PH.D., M.F.C.C., Simon & Schuster, 1997

Experiencing Abortion: A Weaving of Women’s Words
Eve Kushner, Harrington Park Press, 1997

Peace after Abortion
Ava Torre-Bueno, Pimpernel Press, 1997

Faith Aloud!

http://www.faithaloud.com/

Faith Aloud!  (1-888-717-5010)

It was formerly the Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice; now a national organization that provides sex-positive, pro-choice, spiritual counseling for women experiencing reproductive loss.  They have some excellent videos on their web page.

Hope Clinic

http://www.hopeclinic.com/publications.html

“Spiritual Comfort Before and After An Abortion” (publication)

Upon reflection, the director explained that what was troubling to him was not only the man’s behavior, but also the response of his colleagues to the situation. His female colleagues put him in charge of speaking with this man about the issue because they were also alarmed by this man’s behavior. The director explained that he felt like he had to manage not only the problematic behavior, but also the dynamics among his colleagues, which he had some lack of clarity around. What compounded the situation was how he also had some kind of emotional reaction to the situation that made it difficult to determine how exactly to proceed with resolving it.

I initially asked him if the non-profit organization had some liability involved in this as I didn’t know from a legal perspective what they were responsible for. Given that is not my area of expertise, I encouraged him to think of that as a separate issue from the relational issue that he was describing. I also initially determined that the nature of the situation was one of boundaries being crossed, without a direct threat to the women’s’ safety. If there had been a direct threat to the women’s safety, I would have encouraged him to contact the appropriate authorities. Given this, it appeared the situation would need to be managed on an interpersonal level, which is something I could comment on.

As I listened further, it occurred to me to ask how the women who had originally reported this behavior had handled the encounters with the man. The director told me that they had said nothing to him and went directly to the organization’s leaders to report the behavior. This struck me as worthy of further exploration given in essence, the women had brought in a third party, the director, to resolve a conflict in which they were originally part of. In the psychological literature, this is referred to as triangulation. Triangulation occurs when a conflict between two people cannot be resolved, at which time, the coping mechanism chosen to deal with the issue is for one or both of the parties to bring in a third person to offset the conflict between them. In this case, the conflict never gets resolved and other people get involved to ultimately complicate and compound the issue. Many therapists target triangulations as part of therapy when the dynamics of a triangulation are keeping conflict between people stuck. To undo a triangulation, ultimately each person in a relationship has to take responsibility for communicating their own experience and resolving their own issues. In essence, a triangulation is a way to avoid taking responsibility.

As we further explored the situation it occurred to me that the nature of the triangulation was made more complex by the nature of sexual offending and the victim-offender relationship. In my clinical practice, I have worked with both sexual offenders and victims of sexual abuse. At first glance, one would not give much thought to the nature of a “relationship” between a victim and an offender, yet clinical practice has shown me that the relationship is quite complex and has lasting implications. Many victims report a sense of losing themselves in the victim-offender dynamic. This is frequently the result of them not being recognized as a separate person from the offender in a sexual offense. In healthy sexual relationships, each person is recognized and acknowledged for themselves. Likewise, many offenders spend a great deal of time in treatment gaining the capacity to understand that their victims are separate people, or clinically what is referred to as gaining victim-empathy. What frequently occurs in the dynamic between victims and offenders is the victim’s sense of powerlessness in having their own experience go unrecognized by the offender. The offender suddenly appears larger than life and beyond the victim’s control. In working with victims, much of the work in sexual abuse recovery is really to help clients regain their sense of personal power and control and taking back their own experience as separate from the offender’s experience that was forced on them or unwanted.

Knowing this, I explored with the director that given no direct threats were made, one approach to resolving the relational dynamics among the female community members, the man and the director’s colleagues was to encourage each person involved to take responsibility for setting their own boundaries in the situation. For the females who felt offended, this would mean clearly communicating their boundaries to the man. For the director and his colleagues, this would mean placing the responsibility back onto the female community members to resolve the issue by asserting themselves.

The bottom line is that if someone crosses your sexual boundaries in a way that doesn’t constitute a direct threat or breaking the law, a productive course of action is to assert your boundaries directly to that person. The natural tendency of many people in this situation is to shrink away and give the aggressor some sense of power over you. Or, as in this case, to bring someone else into the situation to offset your sense of powerlessness. This, however, is not empowering to you. Your sexual rights are an important part of who you are and setting boundaries around them is empowering and healthy.