Category: Men and Abortion

Mark Bradley Morrow was working as a youth pastor when he impregnated three women, one of them twice. All four babies were aborted, with his approval.

Years later, when he married a woman with a young daughter, he began to suffer from depression and grief over his lost children. He tells his story in his book The Greatest Pretender: 1 Youth Leader, 4 Abortions, 18 Years of Secrecy. He writes about walking his stepdaughter, Ricque, to the school bus stop:

“When she was ready, I walked her out and watched the kiddos of various ages getting on the bus, shouting and playing happily. Suddenly something struck me. My four unborn children should be on this very bus. They should be playing, laughing, and making new friends. I became dizzy under the weight of that thought…

My other four children should be on this bus. I should have their elementary school drawings on the fridge, and they should currently be in middle school, going out for sports or plays. Soon they’d be heading into high school… In a few years, I should someday be teaching them how to drive, discussing dating, taking them to their varsity sporting events… They’d look and act like me in many ways, maybe even be into singing and music. I’d take them to Christian and Oldies concerts, see them go to prom. Homecoming, graduate, help them decide on colleges… I turned from the bus to hide the torrent of tears. My heart ached to realize I would never know them on this Earth. They were truly my invisible children.”

Mark Bradley Morrow and Brad Rahme The Greatest Pretender: 1 Youth Leader, 4 Abortions, 18 Years of Secrecy (New York: Morgan James Publishing, 2019) 179

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A man named Karl Locker tried to convince his partner not to abort his baby, but in the end gave in and drove her to the abortion clinic. He says:

“I tried everything, I offered to marry her, to take the baby myself, or to offer it up for adoption. She said she could never give her child up for adoption – it didn’t make cognitive sense…

I didn’t know how I was going to survive; I wasn’t going to jump off a bridge, but I probably would have drank myself to death. I’ve thought about what happened every day for the last 32 years.”

Eventually married another woman and had a family.

“The men who feel left out of US abortion debate” BBC News August 28, 2019

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Post-abortion father Kevin Albin tells his story:

“We had been together for a year and a half when she found out that she was eight weeks pregnant. At the time, we were both happy, and I thought at first that things were going to get better now that we were expecting a baby. Over the next several weeks, we began talking about what we would need. I had started making plans for a nursery, and we started buying things for the baby! She was just as excited as me. At about the 19th week, just seven days away from hopefully finding out the sex of the baby, things took a drastic change.

She went to a party at her family’s house that I did not go to with her because I was working. A few days later, out of nowhere, she comes to me and says she has decided she is killing our baby (obviously, that is not what she said, but because of my strong stance, this is what I believe abortion is, especially this far into the pregnancy) and that I had no say whatsoever in the matter.

For the next week, I pleaded with her. I begged her to let me adopt the child, but she refused to listen. She wanted me to take her to the procedure. I said no, and I began to pray that she would change her mind or chicken out. Two days later, she came back home and said it was over and that “it was a boy.”

I was so enraged that I told her we were through, and I gave her 24 hours to get out … I just could not face her without seeing what she did…. It took me a very long time to even forgive her, and, of course, by that time, it was too late. I never really had a chance to get closure and find out what made her change her mind out of the blue….

[T]here is not a day that goes by that I do not grieve for my lost son… In most cases, abortion advocates scream that men do not have an argument in the fight, that we have absolutely no say because we are just ‘sperm donors’ according to their logic.

The reality is that men feel an immense amount of pain as well, and we hold on to our own fair share of demons, whether it was our decision or not…There are so many fathers I talk to who have felt lost because they feel they have no rights and would do anything to hold on to their child.”

Kevin Albin “My Experience With Abortion And Its Effects” Human Defense March 22, 2019

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A man whose partner had an abortion called the clinic to ask about counseling for them  both:

“The receptionist told me when I phoned [the abortion clinic], and asked if counseling was available: “It’s the woman’s pain, and not the man’s, so you can’t get any counseling here, even if you wanted… Unless your partner is willing to have you sit in, while she is being counseled.”

Arthur B Shostak, Gary McLouth, Lynn Seng Men and Abortion: Lessons, Losses, and Love (New York, NY: Praeger, 1984)  244

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A woman who had an abortion and later regretted it recalled telling her boyfriend that she was pregnant and wanted to abort the baby:

“Once he arrived and we sat down to talk, he began to cry. He was begging me to keep our child. He promised to help me, even if I did not want to be with him. He offered to take the child himself and raise it if I did not want to. I was totally deaf to his plea. For a brief moment, I remember feeling for him as he was obviously in pain over this. How ironic that this young man although, not very much to the world and with little to offer anyone, was begging for his child… I told him I would consider all he had said and he left in no better state than in which he came. I did not speak to him again before the procedure.”

Many years later, she went through a bible study for healing after an abortion:

“I had to ask my child’s father to forgive me for aborting our child. It was maybe the most difficult letter I had ever written to another person. At the time the Internet was not readily accessible to me so it was to be an old-fashioned pen to paper plea for forgiveness.

I wrote my letter. I do not remember the exact contents but I know I was sincere and I remember sobbing as I wrote. It was a bit challenging to find an address for him and so I contacted his sister, who still worked in the same place and she said I could send it to her. She agreed to deliver it to him. I still have no idea if he ever received it. I never heard from him. Years later my oldest daughter Codi dated his first cousin. It was …. sad to hear that his life had been a mess full of time in jail, drugs, etc. I started to feel somewhat responsible, but God reminded me that I had given it all to him. I silently prayed for him one night and I let it go.”

Stacy Sistrunk Killing Sarah Grace: The Aftermath of Abortion (Revelazion Publishing Company, 2018) 43, 90 – 91

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Bill came with his partner to an abortion clinic and watched a video they showed. After seeing it he said:

“They showed a film; I was surprised at the brevity of the procedure, and the seeming painlessness.”

But after the procedure, he said:

“Looking back on it, it was a lot more painful than I thought it would be. Mentally painful. The emotions were very strange. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way before.

We talked about it some after, but not much. Didn’t seem like there was a whole lot to say.

I think things changed between us in a very subtle way. I felt resentment toward her. Maybe she felt the same way about me.”

Carole Dornblaser and Uta Landy, PhD The Abortion Guide: A Handbook for Women and Men (Rockville Center, New York: Playboy Paperbacks 1982) 83

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A man named Mike was interviewed while his partner was having an abortion. His baby was being killed in another room.

“You know, you see this stuff in the news where a father’s beatin’ hell out of his kids, or somebody’s found a baby in a trashcan or somethin’. That’s a life. Kim is seven weeks along. I don’t think the baby’s formed at seven weeks. So she’s havin’ an abortion. I’d rather see that then see a child layin’ in the trashcan…

And I don’t want to give the child up. If I was goin’ to have it, I’d have it and keep it myself. If you give it up you don’t know where it’s goin’, and I don’t care to see my child gettin’ into somebody else’s hands.

So we sat down and talked about it. I said, “You better look at it for one thing. You’re not gonna be able to work when you’re about seven months along and then you’d have a baby there. You have to have somebody to babysit.” There’s a lot of things that people don’t know before having babies. So we talked it over and that, and she thought maybe she wanted to have it, a baby, but I told her there’s a lot more to havin’ child than that…

I never thought about abortion before. I’ve seen this antiabortion stuff, but I never paid no attention to it. Then I found out she was pregnant and it hit right away. Maybe have an abortion. So I talked to my sister, she’s a nurse, and she knows her stuff pretty good. She was tellin’ me, she said, it’s not uncommon. She said, “You gotta know what you want to do, but if you don’t want to raise a child, that’s a good choice.”

You know I really like this program; this is really nice. They took us to the first film about birth control, and then they took us to the one where it showed how it’s going to be done. It really set us straight; I was really interested. Boy, Kim had butterflies a lot when we first came this mornin’, but now that we went through all those programs and seen all those films, she really straightened out.”

Carole Dornblaser and Uta Landy, PhD The Abortion Guide: A Handbook for Women and Men (Rockville Center, New York: Playboy Paperbacks 1982) 87 – 88

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Tom, whose girlfriend is having an abortion, said:

“The women here mostly looked distressed, worried, sad. But the men all looked different. One looked sorrowful, one looked guilty, one angry; one was asleep, one absent. The man’s part in an abortion is defined by uncertainty. In the absence of positive role models (if such role models are conceivable) and clear feedback of any kind, I felt very much alone with my feelings.

How am I supposed to respond to all this? I wondered at the time. I didn’t like the apparent emotional choices offered by the men around me, and the grave waiting lounge implicitly forbade conversation with anyone but the person with whom you had come.

I felt uncomfortable, awkward, out of place, but I also felt I should be there. I couldn’t bring myself to share these qualms with my girl. She was having the operation, after all. How could I complain about my mere uneasiness when she was about to go through the physical discomfort of an abortion?”’

Carole Dornblaser and Uta Landy, PhD The Abortion Guide: A Handbook for Women and Men (Rockville Center, New York: Playboy Paperbacks 1982) 79

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A man named Randy tells his story:

“I was just devastated. I remember falling off my bed …and I couldn’t get up. I thought I’d lost my mind. At that point, I was totally destroyed. Everything I believed in – that good triumphs over evil – was destroyed. My baby was sentenced to be killed for no purpose and it made no sense to me. You have to understand… I know that I’m a father. And I know you’re going to take my child (whom I love, want, and would die for), tear it to pieces and throw it in the garbage. Now, you really don’t believe those things happen.”

John Stanhope “The Other Parent: How Abortion Affects Men” Faith Today May/June 1988

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The Guardian ran a letter from a 25-year-old man who spoke about his partners abortion:

“I was in a relationship with an amazing woman for two of the happiest years of my life. Then we had an unplanned pregnancy. We decided to have the child together; I have a good job and I could have supported us both, and we loved each other.

Then she decided she wasn’t ready for the whole situation, almost three months into the pregnancy…. Personally, I’m against the idea of abortion – I was raised as a strict Catholic – but I always conceded it was a woman’s prerogative. …I was against the abortion but I loved my girlfriend and supported her….

Three months after the operation, we broke up, and I haven’t been able to sustain a relationship since. It has been almost a year. I have no problems attracting women but I just can’t bring myself to start a new relationship. I’m starting to worry whether it’s something I just won’t be able to get over before it’s too late.”

“My girlfriend had an abortion and we split up, but I can’t move on” The Guardian December 5, 2014

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