WHEN Jodie Meakins (not her real name, see story below) decided to have an abortion, one of the deciding factors was what people at her church would think.
There were other factors, but fear of disapproval from her congregation and her Christian parents certainly played its part in her decision-making.
Jodie is not alone, says Jenny Baines, who has worked in pregnancy crisis and pregnancy loss for more than 30 years, and runs Open, a initiative of the CARE charity.
As part of her work for Open, Mrs Baines offers post-abortion recovery retreats. “One of our first retreatants became pregnant at 16 years old. Her parents were very involved with the church, and she was in a home group, in which there was a couple who were also expecting a baby.
“People would ask the couple about the scans and so on, but nobody ever asked her. In the end, she spoke up, saying: ‘I’ve done things the wrong way round, but I’m having this baby, and please don’t ignore me.’
“A few years later, she became pregnant again. Both her and her parents felt they couldn’t go through that again; so she had an abortion. She came to us, very affected by it afterwards.”
Mrs Baines is keen to challenge the above scenarios. “There should never be an abortion because people are too afraid to share with the church that they’re pregnant. There but for the grace of God go I, very often. People do become pregnant outside of marriage in churches. What do we do if this happens in our church?”
“Many more people in church have experienced abortion than I think most people realise,” says Georgina Schoeb, a course leader for Restore and Rebuild, a post-abortion course which began in Holy Trinity, Brompton (HTB), in 1993.
Georgina Schoeb
Her experience of Christian women who seek post-abortion help is that abortion affects “every kind of situation and every kind of demographic”. For example, one-tenth of all abortions in the UK involve married women, she says.
Ms Schoeb says that it is always the case that the women she sees feel, for whatever reason, that they had no other choice.
Mrs Baines recalls a married woman in a church that she attended, who had a child with a serious condition. Having also been very ill throughout her pregnancy, when she discovered that she was pregnant again, the woman and her husband decided to have an abortion. “Neither of them felt they could say to the other: ‘We can do this.’”
The woman sought post-abortion help, after finding herself on top of a car park contemplating suicide, and is “an advocate now for this type of work,” Mrs Baines says.
According to Marie Stopes International, one of the largest factors leading to unplanned pregnancy is ineffective use of contraception.
A 2017 report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Abortion Care: Our responsibility, suggests that one woman in three in Britain will have an abortion by the time she is 45.
Mrs Baines says: “There will be people who have had abortions [in your church] because of that statistic; so we really feel within churches we need to be addressing this and offering support and healing. However, men and women affected by abortion often feel that church is the last place they can share about it. . .
“Not everyone experiences abortion the same way,” she continues. “But emotions that are common include anger, guilt and shame, and grief: ‘Have I been able to grieve my baby, and do I have the right to do that?’ This isn’t everybody, but the people who reach out to us need help.”
“Life is messy,” Ms Schoeb acknowledges. “Of all the women who’ve been on courses I have helped on or run, the majority were already Christians. People have a whole load of preconceptions about abortion. . . There have been various studies — more in the US — but most concur that the percentage is the same inside the Church as outside. Anecdotally to me, that is definitely the case.”
Open’s primary vision is “to equip churches to bring a pastoral response to these issues, and to help create environments where people can talk about abortion without being judged and be received with compassion,” Mrs Baines says.
As well as providing in-person and online training for church leaders, pastoral workers and in theological colleges, Open also offers speakers who can visit church congregations. “I rarely speak about abortion as such, but look at how we can experience grace and truth. We all have regrets; so how can we bring grace and truth to subjects?” Mrs Baines asks.
OPEN’s next post-abortion healing retreat takes place from 6-8 May at Penhurst Retreat Centre, in Battle, East Sussex. The retreat costs £195 all-inclusive, but CARE underwrites this for people who cannot afford this sum.
The retreats cater for a maximum of six participants. “We tend to say: leave at least six months before you come, as it’s too raw,” Mrs Baines says. “But we have had some people come because they’ve been too devastated, and we’ve thought: if we don’t offer this opportunity now, they might not seek it out again.
“It’s a hard weekend, but a good weekend. Women share in as much or as little detail as they want. But usually we find the challenge is to stop them talking. For some, it’s the first time they have ever articulated their story.”
The director of the Pregnancy Centres Network (PCN), Judy McGibbon, will run the post-abortion healing retreat at Penhurst with Mrs Baines. PCN is a network of independent Christian pregnancy centres all over the UK, offering pregnancy-choices counselling and post-abortion counselling, as well as support for women struggling with miscarriage, loss, and stillbirth.
Judy McGibbon
“The weekend looks at different emotions . . . and then comes through to a point of [starting to] look at being able to forgive those involved, including themselves,” Mrs McGibbon says.
“We finish the weekend with an act of remembrance, kind of like a service,” Mrs Baines adds. “We have candles, we have readings, and whatever the women want to do: acknowledging our babies and lighting the candles, acknowledging that they existed, and that we are loved by God, and they are. Other than sharing, this is often the most significant for them; it gives dignity to their babies and their experience.”
POST-ABORTION courses run by Restore and Rebuild normally run in a similar format to Alpha: a nine-part, once-a-week meeting (plus one Saturday) with a meal, followed by a talk/presentation, a short group discussion, and a time of prayer.
Covid forced groups online, and, in future, the hope is for there to be a choice of in-person and online groups. There are currently about eight centres in the UK offering Restore and Rebuild courses.
Groups, again, are kept to six or below. It is recommended that participants are over 18 and that they are at least 12 months on from their abortion experience. The course is free, although some centres charge a nominal fee for food.
“It’s like a bereavement journey,” Ms Schoeb says. “For most people, it was such a difficult experience that they’ve had to put everything in a box just to continue with their life. They’re not able to open the box, deal with it, and process what’s happened.
“So, we start with denial, and they take the lid off the box, and then we start working through the emotions that come up. Often, anger comes up first: we have a session on anger. Then we work through anxiety, depression, and guilt and shame, and we work through to grief.
“After they have a chance to start processing their grief, which is often the real problem, then we can move forward on to accountability and forgiveness.
“Every situation is complicated, and different parties are involved in how things are worked out. And men and women, because they’ve never been able to talk about it, often haven’t had the chance to process any grief related to the abortion, and they’ve just been carrying round this grief, often for decades.”
IN THE 15 years that Ms Schoeb has worked for Restore and Rebuild, very little has changed in the Church in terms of willingness to talk about abortion.
“It’s a massive taboo,” she says. “I understand that it’s very hard for a church leader to put their head above the parapet and give a message and feel that it’s not going to be misinterpreted by some elements within their church.
“I think it’s a very hard topic — but it’s also really tragic that this massive thing [experienced by] like, a third of women in the UK, is never talked about. A large number of them are really struggling emotionally and spiritually, and yet it’s this big taboo that they don’t ever feel safe to talk about, or receive healing.”
Mrs Baines says: “For many, it’s debilitated them spiritually for years, because they’ve not sorted it or addressed it. It’s like a spiritual separation from God.”
Jenny Baines
Ms Shoeb adds: “What I find really sad is how many women seem to drift away from church after an abortion, because it’s not talked about.”
Mrs Baines: “We need to start talking about it within pastoral teams, initially. Then being aware of help that’s out there, and where to signpost people.
“Have it on your website that this is something that you talk about. It’s about breaking the taboo and breaking the silence, and creating safe spaces within our church where we can talk about it, for which there is all kinds of training available.”
For churches wanting to do more themselves, the Pregnancy Centres Network currently offers more than 75 UK Christian pregnancy crisis centres around the UK, with more set to open. While each centre is autonomous, they share PCN’s vision of offering non-directive and non-judgemental support.
“Our vision is that no woman is more than 20 miles from their nearest centre; so we have a lot more work to do,” Mrs McGibbon says. “If churches are interested in opening a centre, we would love to talk to them; we offer [accredited] training and manuals.” Open is also looking to “extend the team”, Mrs Baines says.
“It’s a really important issue for churches to be talking about,” Mrs McGibbon says, “but to be talking about with great compassion.”
The other partner
IN EVERY pregnancy there is obviously a man involved. “Sometimes, a woman has an abortion without telling the man, but that is relatively rare,” says Jonathan Jeffes, who developed Restore and Rebuild at HTB, and is the co-author of several books on abortion.
“Men are affected by abortion,” Jenny Baines says. “Often they say: ‘You make a decision, and we will support you.’ But we know that so many more women, if their partners say: ‘We can do this together, let’s make this decision together, let’s carry on with the pregnancy,’ they would have made a very different choice.
“Some are afraid of losing their partners; they feel they have the decision to make, and feel subconsciously that maybe the man doesn’t want them to carry on with the pregnancy. On the other side, there are some men that really don’t want their partner to have an abortion, but they have no say, even if they’re married.”
Restore and Rebuild offers support to men whose partners are doing the women’s course: phone calls to discuss any concerns, and a handout on what to expect. And they can also do the course on their own behalf, though this is often as a one-to-one.
“Men go through exactly the same emotional reactions and issues as the women,” Mr Jeffes says. “There might be a slightly different order in which they experience the emotions, but they feel as deeply as the women.”
PCN centres are open to both men and women. “We love it if the partner will come with them, and we can also see them separately,” Mrs McGibbon says.
Statistics
THE latest figures from the Department of Health and Social Care, show that, in 2020, 209,917 abortions in England and Wales took place, the highest annual figure since the Abortion Act was introduced in 1967.
In 2020, women aged 21 were the most likely to seek an abortion; but the largest increase was among women aged 30 to 34. In England, women in deprived areas are more than twice as likely to have abortions then women living in the least deprived areas.
In the United States, data from the Guttmacher Institute’s 2014 Abortion Patient Survey reported that “many abortion patients reported a religious affiliation — 24 per cent were Roman Catholic, 17 per cent were mainline Protestant, 13 per cent were Evangelical Protestant, and eight per cent identified with some other religion. Thirty-eight per cent of patients had no religious affiliation.”
‘I couldn’t see how I could raise a child’
Jodie grew up in a church family. At the age of 21, she had an abortion
I WAS taken to church since I was young. Every year, I went to the Keswick Convention with my family, and would find the talks really inspiring. I’d come back saying: “This year, I’m going to live my life for God.” But, then, every year, I’d fall away.
I knew what many Christians’ opinions were on abortion, and always said it was something I would never do. But by now I was studying, and university life for me included drinking, taking drugs, and having sex.
In 2012, when I went to Keswick, I had just split up with my boyfriend and found out I was pregnant. I came back, and it was: “OK, I’m pregnant, what are we going to do?” David (who is now my husband) and I decided that we would have an abortion.
For a start, I was studying, and was halfway through my course. And I thought: what would people in the church think? What would my parents think?
Also, I couldn’t see how I could raise a child, because my life was so messy at that point: we were heavily drinking and taking drugs. The stuff I was putting into my body, what effect had that had on the child already?
All these things made me feel like: “I can’t do this.”
After the abortion, I was angry at everyone and everything. Sometimes I felt suicidal because I felt I couldn’t live with what I’d done.
We didn’t talk to anyone about it for at least a year or two. But then we got engaged, and we decided we couldn’t carry that into married life, not telling anyone.
My husband hadn’t grown up going to church, but in the middle of us going through with the abortion, he became a Christian. So, we went to our pastor and told him what had happened.
When I went for the abortion, I had only been at the church for a couple of weeks, and I thought I knew what people would think. But, when we spoke to our pastor, we were met with such love and grace.
After that, I went for some counselling, and I undertook some counselling training myself. Then I booked on to a post-abortion retreat.
That was a major turning point for me. I was totally unburdened on that retreat. There was stuff that I left there that I hadn’t even realised was affecting me.
There was so much understanding of how women get into the situation of feeling like abortion is their only choice, and of how to help them through it.
It opened my eyes to other people’s journeys, because everybody’s story is different.
We did this exercise with stones, representing different people on our journey, where I realised the resentment that I was carrying for the doctors. It’s something I hadn’t realised before: how angry I was that there are people doing this every day, and they did it to my baby.
I had gone asking for that to happen. It wasn’t their fault. But I felt anger at the doctors for whom it’s their job.
At no point did anyone ask me how I felt, or talk me through what the other options were. It was a real tick-box experience. I went to the clinic and it was: “I want an abortion.” “Right, go in and see these people.” It was cold and clinical. And it was really quick.
If someone had stopped me to talk about it, I don’t think I’d have gone through with it, because it actually went against everything I believed in.
David is a pastor now himself, and we found going through this together that we have been able to support each other. He never sought out specific counselling, but we have talked about it a lot: what we did, and how it made us feel.
We wish that it wasn’t a part of our journey, but there has been a lot of good that has come from it in terms of helping other people.
We have two children, aged seven and three. The first time I was pregnant I was still struggling with guilt and thinking: “God’s going to take this baby away, because I’ve done something awful.” It was the longest nine months of my life.
I thought I would be upset about this for ever, but I’ve come to a place of acceptance and letting go, where I know I can’t change what happened. And I know that the baby is in the best possible hands.
Periodically, I’m given the space to share my story in church, so that abortion is a topic that is talked about openly.
And, in the future, I’m hoping to help other women think through their options, in a way that I wasn’t given the chance to.
Jodie (not her real name) was talking to Christine Miles.