Wednesday, January 23, 2008

“I Have This Stain on My Soul”

‘Pro-choicers’ worried about growing number of men who say they have been traumatized by wives’ or girlfriends’ abortions

From I have this stain on my soul” published 1/8/08 at CaliforniaCatholicDaily.com

Abortion rights activists are “warily” watching the “mobilization” of a movement of men who claim that aiding and abetting abortions gotten by their wives or girlfriends has left them with emotional or psychological scarring, reported the Jan. 7 Los Angeles Times.

“If anecdotes from grieving women can move the Supreme Court, what will testimony about men's pain accomplish?” asked the newspaper.

...
The Times interviewed three men who say they have been troubled by abortions they’ve aided. One, Chris Aubert, said he had been unconcerned about the abortions of two of his girlfriends -- one of which he helped pay for. But then he and his wife saw an ultrasound image of their first child, and he saw abortion was wrong. Aubert and his wife subsequently became Catholic, and they now have five children.

A successful Houston lawyer, Aubert admitted that, had the abortions not occurred, he might not have “the blessings I have now… that’s an intellectual debate I have with myself. I struggle with it.” His former girlfriends, too, he said, might have a better life, now. Yet, he always goes back, he said, to the fact that abortion is immoral. And though he does not feel the angst other men say they feel, "I have this stain on my soul," Aubert said, "and it will always be there."

Read the whole article.