On Father’s Day this Sunday, many dads will be blessed with colorful sweaters, loud ties, maybe a burned breakfast from their kids, and lots of hugs and kisses.
But for some fathers out there, Father’s Day is a day of pain—a reminder of an ugly event in their lives: The day their unborn children were aborted.
As astonishing as it may seem, according to the experts, fathers of aborted children often feel even worse than mothers.
I recently interviewed my friend Brian Fisher on “The Eric Metaxas Show.” Brian is co-founder of Online for Life, and the author of a book titled “Abortion: The Ultimate Exploitation of Women,” in which he allows men to tell their stories.
As one father put it, “Hardly a day goes by that I don’t shudder and almost weep again for the murder I helped bring about . . . My actions, despite my confession and repentance before [God], continue to rob much of the joy from my life.”
Another man—who tried to talk his wife out of her abortion—wrote: “My heart was crushed; this was pain I had never felt. Our family was broken and torn apart by this abortion.”
According to the research, Brian writes, “Men often experience . . . harmful effects from abortion, whether they wanted the abortion or not.”
He says, “While abortion seems to bring a sense of relief, [men] also report feeling anxiety, grief, guilt, and powerlessness.”
Abortion researcher Dr. Catherine Coyle concurs. She notes that when it comes to a decision about an unexpected pregnancy, men usually defer to their partner’s wishes. It’s only later that these fathers “suffer intense grief . . . as well as regret, helplessness, guilt, anxiety, anger, and emasculation.”
For some men, post-abortion suffering “may be so profound as to cause post-traumatic stress disorder” which may lead them to self-medicate with drugs.
Why do these dads suffer so much? It’s partly because they’re hard-wired to protect and care for their children. And on a gut level, these men know they have violated the moral law. A law that says it’s wrong to kill. They recognize that they behaved in a less than manly way by doing nothing while their child’s mother aborted their baby—or worse, by coercing the child’s mother and paying the abortionist.
No wonder they can’t sleep at night or take up drinking to forget their pain.
Now I’m glad to say that many fathers of aborted children are going public with their stories, just as post-abortive women are.
If you or a man you know is suffering from the loss of a child through abortion, help and healing is available by contacting www.menandabortion.net. You can also visit www.fatherhoodforever.org. We’ll have those links for you at BreakPoint.org. Just click on this commentary.
Friends, you and I need to share efforts to let men know what they may be in for if they push their partners into aborting their child. Educate yourself by reading books like the one by Brian Fisher. Start a Sunday School class on men and abortion, or speak to your church youth group. Make sure the young men you know realize that if they’re responsible for an unplanned pregnancy, they need to man up—or they may be in for a lifetime of regret.
And on Father’s Day this year, take a moment to say a prayer for the fathers for whom it is too late—the ones who won’t be receiving a loud tie or any other gift from their lost children. Pray that they will receive healing from the One who forgives and washes away our tears.
BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today’s news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions.
Eric Metaxas is a co-host of BreakPoint Radio and a best-selling author whose biographies, children's books, and popular apologetics have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Publication date: June 19, 2015
