As a physician, she knows more about the physical, emotional, and mental symptoms of trauma after abortion than most folks. Post-abortive herself, Dr. Grace English’s unique viewpoint includes a healthy dose of compassion and empathy. After abortion healing is essential, according to Dr. Grace.
For instance, she remembers when her children were old enough to be told about her personal experience with abortion.
“She got it! You know what I mean? I didn’t even have to say it was her half-brother. I just said I felt like I had a baby boy. Immediately, it was, ‘Mom, I have another brother!’ ‘You do!’” said Dr. Grace, in awe.
“‘Mommy, when people ask me, do I tell them I have two or three brothers?’”
“Oh honey, it’s just too complicated right now,” responded Grace, with a chuckle. Looking back, Grace marvels at her daughter’s instincts.
After Abortion: PAS Symptoms
In her practice as an internal medicine physician, Dr. Grace daily comforts those experiencing PAS, Post Abortion Syndrome. (For more of our conversation on Fireside Talk Radio, click here. Or, sign up for our weekly blog on tough topics and creative ideas, all related to companionship.) Everyone wants to politicize the issue of abortion, but for Dr. Grace and me and the millions of women who’ve experienced abortion, abortion always hits at a personal level. After abortion healing becomes the focus.
“A lot of the symptoms I see in my patients are struggles with anxiety and grief and depression and addictions. A lot of times, I will ask them if they’ve had an abortion in their past,” Dr. Grace says, “At the same time, I will tell them quickly, ‘I have had one, too, so I’m not asking to judge you. I feel that it’s really important for you to get better. This is one major event in your life that you can’t ignore.’” Once people know they won’t be judged and condemned, they begin to open up, according to Dr. Grace.
“I would say that one out of three patients that I ask, say, ‘Yes.’ I have patients in their twenties all the way to their sixties who’ve shared that they have had abortions. It’s common ground. (My office) is a safe place for them to discuss it with me because I can identify with their loss.” As women open up to compassion, after abortion healing begins, no matter how long it’s been.
Help is Out There After Abortion
If people don’t let go of shame, they struggle to get through the grief which always accompanies the loss of a child. For after abortion healing to happen, many people yearn to grant humanity to the child they lost, according to Dr. Grace. Fortunately, when we open ourselves up to trustworthy people, we discover God prepared the way of compassion and truth that leads to life. Often, the healing story embraces self-forgiveness and self-compassion.
“My ability to love my living children that I did have subsequently, I mean, it (the abortion) truly would have affected me. If the Lord hadn’t healed and forgiven me for sin. If I hadn’t forgiven myself for choosing to abort my first baby,” Dr. Grace says. Because a common challenge for after abortion healing means self-forgiveness, it seems Jesus forgives more quickly than we can forgive ourselves!
Her Story
Compassion Please, One Beloved Doctor’s Story of Abortion with Dr. Grace English
Compassion, Please! Healing After Abortion with Dr. Grace English, Her Wisdom
Like so many women, Grace experienced an unplanned pregnancy and made the decision to abort as a student. “In 1985, it was legal so I thought it must be okay if it’s legal.” After abortion healing seemed out of reach; she struggled emotionally and mentally for the next five years. Her pain finally led her to Jesus. As a first year of medical school student, she accepted Jesus’s offer of salvation and began a life-long relationship with Him.
“I accepted Jesus and I knew for the most part He’d forgiven me. But the sin of abortion was a separate sin which I would not ever address until I became a parent several years later,” she says. “It’s one of the most painful things that a woman is gonna go through. There are so many of us who’ve kept that shame and secrecy for years.” Only Jesus gives the forgiveness to make after abortion healing possible, according to Dr. Grace.
She told her husband about her abortion before they married, thinking that he would leave her. Instead, full of compassion and mercy developed from his own faith, John committed to their future together. However, years later and pregnant with their third child, she knew something was still seriously wrong.
Compassion After Abortion, There’s Help
“I did not know where all this anger and rage was coming from. A really dear friend of mine, Beverly Kline, knew my story.” Bev invited Dr. Grace to a Bible study designed to help those who struggled to make sense of an abortion. Unconvinced, Grace refused to accept the idea that she needed help or after abortion healing.
“She kept pestering me,” laughs Grace, adding it wasn’t easy to go. “Finally, I went. It was one of the hardest things I ever did. But, I’m telling you, it was one of the best things I ever did. I’m so grateful for her persistence.”
Bev continues to serve as director of several YWAM ministries, including Living Alternatives, Loving Alternatives, Fatherheart, and FORthe1, to name a few. Together with Judge Carol Clark and many others over the last twenty plus years, Bev teamed up to help humanize the arduous process by which children can be connected with forever families in east Texas. (For more about the amazing philosophical shift available to our court system throughout the United States and beyond, called Trauma Informed Care, watch for an upcoming interview with Judge Carole here. Or, sign up for our weekly blog to receive all our interviews with folks we admire.)
As a result of Grace’s time in Bev’s Bible study, Grace felt God nudging her to pull together a team of men and women to create CARE, Christ-centered Abortion Recovery and Education for help give others after abortion healing.
In Spite of the Myth
Sometimes, people come to CARE studies with another false idea. The other big myth? If they talk about their abortion at church, they expect their church to reject them, even boot them out. Maybe God even rejects them, they think.
Fortunately, CARE’s confidential Bible studies confirm the opposite is true. Consistently, pastors and church leaders eagerly seek to restore and care for those who feel traumatized after abortion. After abortion healing becomes a joyful fact of life.
How Can Churches Help?
Because pastors listen to the brokenhearted, they realize women and men on every pew suffer with long-term affects after abortion. Pastors may feel weighed down when they take on the topic of abortion. How does a pastor address the pain of abortion without sending people into hiding? They certainly do not want, through shame and condemnation, to interfere with the opportunity to help men, women and families. How, then, can the church address abortion and PAS with truth and compassion?
One way is to invite CARE to help. Often, pastors experience relief when CARE volunteers come to talk about this issue with tenderness and empathy. Because we understand the personal cost of being so pubic with an extremely personal experience, CARE practices a strict confidentiality policy, even as leaders share their own stories. The strict confidentiality policy allows CARE to protect the men and women they serve, while providing a safe chance to heal. Thanks in a large part to Dr. Grace’s insight and integrity, pastors all over east Texas trust the tenderness of CARE’s approach. (For more on community and companionship, sign up here for our weekly Camp Krafve blogs.)
Wounded Hearts, Partitioned Off
Dr. Grace views abortion as a deeply personal topic, no matter the politics of others in any dialogue.
“Unfortunately, abortion is equated with politics in this country, but it is so much more than that. This is beyond political lines. This is so personal. People don’t understand that this decision will determine the quality of their life, really for the rest of their life,” she says.
Hearts tend to partition off the pain and negative emotional baggage that go with the trauma of abortion, making whole-heartedness impossible. A heart partitioned around pain impacts our relationships as a wife, mother, even with the Lord, according to Dr. Grace. She advocates compassionate, reasoned conversations on the topic.
Pro-life, Pro-choice, Pro-healing?
“If you can get them into a conversation, women and men who made this decision really suffer. They have regrets for years on end. They don’t know what to do with that.” Fortunately with help, folks discover their hearts can heal.
“People don’t see that when you choose life for your baby, even in the most difficult circumstances, you’re protecting your own heart.” She speaks out clearly to educate the public about what people can expect if they choose an abortion.
After Abortion Recovery
“Doing abortion recovery now through the years, and in my own personal story, it’s helped me realize (that if I failed to address my past abortion), then I would feel unworthy to receive any love from my children. I would have felt so unworthy and shameful, like I didn’t deserve to have any sort of love that would be granted to me from my living children.”
Fortunately, Dr. Grace courageously reached out to get the help she needed. Now, as a physician, she passes along solid information, filtered through her understanding of human physical and emotional well-being. (For more resources to open conversational adventures about human physical and emotional well-being, sign up here for our weekly Camp Krafve blogs.)
What Can You Do to Help?
To get a great conversation going in your home or at church about the aftermath of abortion, or PAS, just pop in our podcasts with Dr. Grace or with CARE Executive Director B. J. Garrett. At Camp Krafve, we create tools to maximize companionship. We like to do that by taking on tough topics on Fireside Talk Radio. We call our interviews with heroes, like Dr. Grace and B. J., conversational adventures. You can get those delivered to your inbox, here.
Especially around the topic of post-abortion, remember you can turn to CARE for confidential help, for resources, or to make a donation. For instance, CARE volunteers have produced some terrific materials over the years. We love it when folks make donations to help pay for the materials used at each CARE Bible study retreat. That’s a great way to bless folks working very hard behind the scenes to heal hearts. Or, you can invite Dr. Grace or CARE Executive Director B. J. Garrett to speak at your next event.
As Christians, our conversations can easily spark up conversational adventures for our family or Sunday school class! Over and over, we’ve seen churches catch fire with enthusiasm as people get free of their burdens. Also, for more conversational adventures, sign up for our weekly blog on tough topics and creative ideas, all related to companionship.
Heaven Awaits
Additionally, once free to grieve, Dr. Grace tenderly explains that many families are finally able to humanize the child they lost. One possible way to reflect on the beauty of the child you lost may be by naming your child.
“I really felt the Lord had given me a son and I named him Jonathan,” she says.
In her gentle way, Grace describes her own personal realization that she has another child in heaven with a unique personality, a special voice she will love, and particular gifts that will be dear to her heart.
“One day I will get to meet him, just like you’ll get to meet your child who was aborted,” Grace says, “These are real, live human beings. Even though we may not have given them birth, we do have an eternal relationship with them.”
For myself, I am eager to meet my own child and to introduce that little one to my friend Grace and to meet her son, Jonathan, too. In the meantime, I am constantly blessed by Grace’s tender heart and her ability to handle such a difficult topic with compassion and empathy.
May I pray for you?
Dear Father, oh, how we groan under the weight of abortion. The pain abortion caused partitions our heart because we could not cope with such guilt and loss simultaneously. Thank You for giving our hearts a way to survive when they were so broken. Help us to find those who can share life and compassionate companionship with us along the way. Let us share with each other the tender love You offer each one of us.
Teach us, O Lord, to have mercy on ourselves daily. Thank You for Your Son, Jesus, who died on the cross in advance of our birth in order to pay the price for our sin. While we were lost in our own pain and grief, You were already seeking us out to love us and bring us into companionship with You. Oh, the glory of a relationship with One who is so good and kind! Oh, Risen One, even when we feel our most unworthy, You confirm our worthiness with Your love. For this we thank You, O good and merciful God. Bless us today because that is Your heart’s desire. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.
We love to hear from you!
Where have you turned for comfort? When have you experienced God’s unfailing, merciful love for you? How do you help yourself to tone down your own opinions? (We hope you leave comments in the box at the end of the page.)
Free Printable Templates For Fun Family Time!
Yep, just in time for Easter, something super fun to do with your kids! Our darling printable templets are perfect for a Sunday school craft or entertaining. What kid doesn’t love glue, scissors, and sharing chocolate?! Each template sports inspiring messages to be cut out and wrapped around a candy bar. They are the perfect homemade treat to let friends know they are loved. Sign up for our blog and get your free templets here!
Or, find lots more easy ideas about spending time with creative kids from Anna Krafve Pierce, here. Also, if you’ve ever struggled to write a stack of thank you notes, watch for our “Foolproof Thank You Notes” cheatsheet, which will be available soon!
More Stories and Wisdom to Bless Our Hearts
If you, too, are committed to creating companionship in our world, we want to encourage you! Joyfully, we’ve interviewed experts. Don’t miss their stories and wisdom, shared just for you on Fireside Talk Radio: Tina Meier, James Kemp, Charlotte Canion, Alise Cortez, Chris Legg, Henda Salmeron, and Tony Johnson, to name just a few more people we find heroic.
Cathy Krafve, host of Fireside Talk Radio, Speaker, Blogger, Podcaster, and Christian Communicator, invites your stories, ideas, and questions at CathyKrafve.com. Truth with a Texas Twang spoken here!
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