Category: Personal Stories

Men often get lost in the abortion debate, they are often depicted as pressuring women into abortions and cold heartedly manipulating them. And in many cases, this is true. But men too can suffer emotional pain and regret because of their partners abortions. Here is one testimony:

“I was a participant in two abortions with my ex-wife… It has been six years since the last abortion, nine since the decision for the first one. Every time I see children of the approximate age of the two lost ones, I cry, no matter where… church, the mall, the park, the library. I want to call their names, Michelle, Danielle, Stephen, William. Their legacy is gone. Their beauty unfinished, nullified by a decision to which I agreed… I have gone from pro-choice to pro-child.”

From an email to the pro-life group Human Life Alliance

“Tired yet?” Human Life Alliance Advertising Supplement 

“Trauma from an abortion can also affect men. Guilt and hurt after an abortion can drive couples apart, especially if one partner was unsure about the decision. Often couples split up following an abortion.

You may want your relationship back to where it used to be, but this is impossible. Sometimes men react with a gut instinct that it is better to do something quickly and worry about the consequences later. A common reaction is “Get rid of it”. But this is not one of those situations, and an abortion will not put things back as they were. In short, both you and your partner have been permanently changed by the pregnancy.

Some men feel guilty about what they have done and then find it difficult to form close relationships in the future. Some disguise their feelings by remaining emotionally cold and distant. One man said “following the abortion I split up with my girlfriend and it was only years later I realized that I’d never settled down and got married because of the abortion.”

There is a deep instinct in man to protect women and children. An abortion can undermine a man’s confidence in himself and he can come to think of himself as a failure – a failure as a partner, a failure as a father, a failure as a man.”

Men and Abortion, Information from Lighthouse Family Trust

Quoted in Cara Acred The Abortion Debate (Independence Educational Publishers, 2012), Kindle edition

Get more information and read some testimonies from postabortion men

Dr. Arthur Shostak of Drexel University in Philadelphia found that 72% of the men he interviewed in a four-year study disagreed with the statement that “males generally have an easy time of [abortion] and have few, if any, lingering disturbing doubts.”

He requested funding for further research from the National Institutes of Health:

“They told me off the record that this type of work could be construed as antiabortion. It could indicate that the absence of counseling is leaving behind a destructive residual in many men. It would be seized upon by antiabortionists.”

They denied his request for funding.

James McBride, “Men and the Pain of Abortion: a Close-Up,” National Right to Life News, February 22, 1982, 5

There has always been bias in the medical community against research showing the physical and psychological hazards of abortion.

Read more about the impact of abortion on men here.