A Question of Post Abortive Mental Blocks

I’ve been writing a lot lately about religion, morality, and politics. Maybe it is because they are issues of our age. These issues, so called ‘womens issues’ in the even more so-called ‘wars on women’ really involve everyone because they affect our culture.

One of the things that comes up often in conversation among other pro-life people is the big question… how do get people to see the reality of what abortion is? The general belief being that we cannot changes hearts and minds without lifting the veil of propaganda off the issue. 

 It has, however, started leading down a road of other questions about the likelihood of a woman who is post abortive to change their mind and become pro life. Now don’t get me wrong, I know this happens. But with our recent statistics showing around 40% of women having had an abortion in their lifetime, it makes me wonder how many of them will never change their view – and why.

It struck me that it is so easy to go from being Pro Life to having an abortion. You can close your eyes, pretend what you’re doing isn’t what you’re really doing. You can call it a mass of cells instead of a baby. You can undo all of your pro life beliefs with rationalizations so that you can have an abortion.

Afterward though, you have a serious investment in making yourself really believe and validate those rationalizations. After all, if you cannot convince yourself that your rationalizations were valid, you have to start considering the pro life viewpoint. That you killed your own child. That, I don’t think, would be a comfortable reality for any mother to ever accept.

I mean, lets put this in a non-abortion context. Let us consider a woman who is backing out of the driveway in her car and accidentally runs over her child and kills it. It’s a gruesome idea, but bear with me. This is such a traumatizing experience that the reality of it could literally break the mind of that mother. She may never be the same again.

Now lets consider a woman who thinks she accidentally backed over the family cat instead. She may feel some deep remorse and guilt for what happened, but the chances are good that she will not be permanently devastated by this horrible accident. She doesn’t have the same traumatic response as if it were a child, despite the fact that she acknowledges that it was a living creature and experiences some sadness.

Let’s extend this hypothetical idea by saying there are two more people there now, one standing on each side of the car. This first person says to the woman who backed over her child, “Don’t worry, it was only a cat.” The other person says, “You murdered your own child!”

In this case the woman runs to the side of the car with the first person and looks down and sees a cat. She shouts at the person across the car, “You’re crazy! It’s just a cat!”

The other person beckons her to come to the other side and look from their point of view.

The question is – even if she managed to summon the courage up to walk to the other side and look down at what someone says is the body of her child she has killed, will her mind be able to allow her to see it, or will it protect itself and see a cat?

Coming out of the hypothetical, it’s even more potentially traumatic for women. Not only would they have to admit that it is their child they have killed, but that it wasn’t an accident, that they did it intentionally.

It’s a serious question I have, and one that I want to examine more fully. We know that trauma can force the mind to bury thoughts, memories, to completely wipe out parts that are too painful to accept in order to spare us the devastation of it all. I wonder how much this affects women who have had abortions and are confronted with people trying to get them to see the other side of it.

How many women simply cannot allow themselves to ever entertain the other side of the discussion because it would mean accepting that they murdered their own child? If that is the case, how do we get an entire generation of women to come to terms with reality without breaking their minds?

Worse yet, if they are psychologically blocking out the other side, it would only follow that it opens the door to other well known psychological behaviors. One that comes to mind is referred to commonly as group guilt, whereby someone with guilt encourage others to participate in their own ‘crimes’ in order to share guilt with someone else and prevent them from condemning their own behavior.

So many questions, so few answers, so much research to do.

1 thought on “A Question of Post Abortive Mental Blocks”

  1. That’s a very interesting comparison. The life of an animal is non-sentient, and limited in ways which we can comprehend and control. Human life has spiritually unlimited potential and each person’s value is equivalent to our own. Add to that, the inherent responsibility of physical creation through motherhood, the responsibility of parenthood and mothering a child. Acting against all that, places a great burden on the conscience (sin).
    You can condone sin by “hardening your heart”. Everyone does it do some extent. Nobody wants to accept it when they have done something wrong, or made a mistake with something they have great responsibility for. In that case, you make reasons to try and justify yourself. It alters your thoughts into a distortion of reality.
    Whereas acknowledging your sin or mistake, accepting the consequences, and changing your future actions, is a humbling experience which allows you to eventually grow stronger by removing the mental, emotional, and spiritual limitations which would otherwise be imposed by constantly denying the truth.

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