Stephen Arterburn: Every Abortion Involves at Least One Man

A few years ago, I was asked to speak at a Baylor University chapel service. And while there were a lot of things I wanted to say to the students, what I felt compelled to let them know was what happened to me there. I told them that I came to the school to get a Christian education, but what happened is that I got a girl pregnant – and I paid for her to have an abortion.

I didn’t fully grasp what I had done until about three days later. That’s when it really hit me. This shame just came over me.

I had destroyed the life of my own child.

And I just – I just couldn’t believe it. There was nothing I could do to reverse it or undo it. It was done. I felt like I had sinned too much, gone too far. God could never use me, never forgive me.

There was no funeral, no way to grieve, no one I could talk to. The silent shame started ripping through me, and I had so many ulcers that I ended up in the hospital.

I was dealing with the physiological effects of post-abortion syndrome – the guilt, the shame and the silence. It was horrible.

More honesty required

A few days after I shared my story with the Baylor students, I received a phone call from the young lady I had been involved with. And she said, “I heard you told our story at Baylor Chapel.”

“Yes,” I said. “You know, I – I hope I did it in a way that no one would know that you were the person.”

“Oh, no, that’s not a problem,” she said. “I heard you said that you paid for the abortion.”

“Yes,” I said. “I wanted them to believe that I was responsible.”

“The next time you tell it,” she said, “maybe you should be a little more honest.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, you didn’t just pay for the abortion,” she said. “You pressured me to have that abortion. You made sure I knew that you wouldn’t be there for me or for our baby that I wanted to bring into this world. You pressured and you pressured. So I just did it because I didn’t think I had a choice.”

Well, it was pretty tough to hear just what a coward I had been! When that wonderful young lady and my baby needed me to be a man, I had been anything but.

Facing reality

I’ve learned that the man’s role doesn’t end once a baby is conceived. The man’s role is to provide and protect for the life he’s created. When you don’t do that, and then you move to destroy that life … well, that was a tough reality to face.

I didn’t marry her. Years later, I married, and we very quickly discovered that we were an infertile couple. We could not have children. Seven years and thousands of dollars worth of trying, but every Mother’s Day was worse than the Mother’s Day before.

Then some Christian comes up to me and says, “Have you ever thought maybe that the reason you can’t have children is because you paid for an abortion when you were in college?” As if I didn’t have enough shame and regret! That person, of course, would have me believe that every bad thing in my life is a result of the abortion, and I was just getting what I deserved – that I should be willing to experience anything as a result of that shameful thing that I did.

The unspoken shame of abortion shows up in so many areas, and so many times the woman takes full responsibility. And yet every abortion involves at least one man. It could be a boyfriend, a husband, a father, a pastor, a physician or a counselor. So often I hear a woman say, “I chose to have an abortion when I was 14.” But the reality is that she didn’t choose it; she had an abortion done to her, put upon her by a man – a cowardly man just like me.