You are not crazy, nor are you alone. There are tons of us out here who have felt the same way you do. This is the opposite of what the pro-abortion lobby will tell you, but it’s true.

A recent so-called study making the rounds says abortion has little effect on women’s mental health. “Women’s Mental Health and Well-being 5 Years After Receiving or Being Denied an Abortion A Prospective, Longitudinal Cohort Study” was published last month by JAMA Psychiatry. It’s referred to as the Turnaway Study, and was run by the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health program at the University of California, San Francisco.

The people who did the study have affiliations such as Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, and with the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health. Need I say more? Unbiased and without an agenda this study is not.

The pro-abortion crowd denies any negative effects of abortions and works diligently to remove abortion stigma in an attempt to make abortion an acceptable “normal” act of life. This is their dream study to prove that abortion really is no big deal.

The pro-life side likes to have testimony about how deeply damaged those who have abortions are. Too often pro-lifers don’t follow up by discussing the hope for healing after an abortion. It is important to many of them to make healing seem impossible after abortions, because they want to make abortion unthinkable for any woman to even consider.

This Is for All the Post-Abortive Women Out There

My purpose is not to debate the legality of abortion, or even its impact on all women. If you are a woman fine with participating in the death of your child and wearing it proudly and loudly on your sleeve, so be it, but that is not the case for millions of us. Even the abortion industry-affiliated Guttmacher Institute has stated that at least 10 percent of women who have had an abortion have adverse effects. That is millions of women, many who are suffering in silence.

We deserve to be heard, and we have a voice, a voice that often is ignored and marginalized. At one time we may not have been able to speak for ourselves because of our wounds, and because society denied our pain. Even today our voices are often drowned out, but we will continue to speak the truth from our experience so we can reach out to those still suffering in silence. These are people I am speaking to in this article.

I can only imagine the emotions that overcame you if you saw this article on the web or the news. I am sure it triggered a host of emotions, not least a feeling of craziness at the denial once again, of your experience with abortion. The message is clear: you are not allowed to feel negative consequences, because according to them there are none. Your feeling must be wrong or come from a different place.

This article was particularly crazy, actually telling us that being denied an abortion was more damaging than having one. For sure, these people have never experienced the post-abortion grief, shame, and guilt so many of us have lived with for days, months, years, and even decades.

You are not crazy, nor are you alone. There are tons of us out here who have felt the same way you do. We have suffered from depression, anxiety, and paralyzing fear, especially the fear of being found out.

Like many of you, we have chosen poor behaviors that damaged us further because of our lack of self-esteem, guilt, and shame, which came not from religion or society, but from participating in the death of our very own children. We get it, and we are speaking out and reaching out to you to let you know that your feelings are real and normal, and that healing is possible. We know, we have been there!

Face the Truth, and You Can Find Forgiveness

Many of us have sought counseling only to be told, as this study does, that our feelings are not from our abortions. Sadly, we trusted their professionalism and as a result of this lie continued on a road of self-destruction because no one addressed our pain and legitimized our experience. But this is ending, as more and more of us are reaching out to the millions of women who are hurting.

It is time for us to be there for each other and to speak for ourselves. No one knows better than we do the suffering of abortion, and we refuse to listen to studies such as these because we know the truth of what we experienced. We also know that you can heal, not from denying abortion’s impact, or removing its stigma, but from looking at and facing the truth and working through the dynamics of healing.

So don’t listen to the thunderous praise of this “study,” the purpose of which is to not only keep abortion legal but to expand its reach. Don’t listen to those who say there is no healing from abortion, and make you feel as though you will be damaged for life. Will you forget? No. But do you really want to forget your child? Instead, you will be able to look at it in a different way, a way of newfound peace.

Seek help from those who have been there and have walked the journey of healing. They may try to drown us out, but we keep coming up for air. And we are more than happy to light the way out of the darkness for you!