Published November, 2002

Efforts to regulate the abortion industry have gained ground this past month as two major Arizona laws were upheld by the courts.

On September 30, the Arizona Abortion Clinic Regulations law survived challenge by pro-abortion groups in the U.S. District Court in Tucson.  Judge Raner Collins upheld the bulk of this law which requires all Arizona abortion clinics to follow basic regulatory rules covering sanitation, staff qualifications and training, medical protocol, record keeping, and emergency procedures.

Known as “LouAnne’s Law,” the law set forth regulations for abortion clinics as a response to the death of LouAnne Herron in 1998 as the result of a late-term abortion at the A-Z Women’s Center in Phoenix.  Dr. John Biskind was convicted of  manslaughter in 2001 for her death after a month-long trial which documented many practices considered substandard by medical experts.

Herron had undergone multiple ultrasounds which determined the age of her fetus to be as old as 26 weeks. Prosecutors presented evidence that Dr. Biskind coached his staff to manipulate the ultrasound probe to produce a fetal age under 24 weeks, the general Arizona legal limit for performing abortions.  When Herron’s records were turned over to the police, only one ultrasound of seven remained.  Although Dr. Biskind claimed it showed the fetal age at 23 weeks, expert witnesses declared it unreadable.

Trial evidence also revealed that Herron was attended by inexperienced medical assistants, several of whom were new to the clinic that week. Lacking supervision from either Dr. Biskind or a registered nurse, they were unable to respond to Herron’s heavy bleeding until it was too late.  Paramedics arrived within minutes of being called, but Herron was already dead.

Cathi Herrod, Director of Policy for the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP) recalls public reaction to the death of Herron,  “It shed light on the abortion industry.  It proved what pro-life leaders had long believed about the abortion clinic and about what went on in the abortion clinic.”

Legislators and pro-life forces quickly responded to the death of LouAnne Herron by drafting the Arizona Clinic Regulations Law in 1999, drawing on South Carolina law, Planned Parenthood abortion clinic protocol, and medical advice from the Physicians Resource Council.

The clinic regulations, amended by the 2000 legislature, were quickly challenged in court.  The Center for Reproductive Law and Public Policy of New York filed suit in U.S. District Court in Tucson against the state Department of Health Services.  They argued that regulations were unnecessary and were being used to put abortion clinics out of business.

Judge Collins, in the ruling issued, disagreed.  While striking several provisions, Collins determined that the bulk of the law does not “unduly burden” women and meets standards for constitutional equal protection.  Arizona abortion clinic regulations have survived this first legal challenge, but Herrod of CAP says, “I think it’s likely that this could still take several years of appeals before we finally get it enforced.”

In a separate court ruling filed October 9, The U.S. 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Arizona parental consent law in a 2-1 decision.  The Arizona Legislature passed the law in 2000 which requires a minor to obtain consent from one parent or a judge before undergoing an abortion.

Again, those active in the pro-life movement expect the decision to be appealed.  An Arizona Right to Life spokesperson says, “We anticipate that Planned Parenthood of Southern Arizona will exhaust every legal means to stop the law from going into effect.”

While the early pro-life movement began by defending the life of the unborn, these two laws and the court decisions affirming them have focused public attention on women.  Cathi Herrod says, “As a pro-life leader, we have to be as concerned about the life and health of the woman who walks in the abortion clinic as we are about her unborn child.”

And while court challengers argue that these laws are unduly restrictive, Herrod disagrees.  “In my view, the regulations don’t go far enough to protecting that the woman is given adequate counseling from the physician himself…that she’s adequately informed about her rights.  It’s a huge first step in doing what needs to be done to help the woman, but it doesn’t go far enough.”

As pro-life groups share their successes, they are learning to craft legislation that meets constitutional requirements.  For instance, Herrod says one of the legal models on informed consent laws, “talks about the woman being able to be in the room by herself with the physician.  I mean it goes to that level of detail to make sure that the woman has access to the physician and can get the counseling that she wants.”

Whether crafting new legislation or meeting future legal challenges, Arizona Right to Life speaks for many.  “Overall, the ruling[s] send a message to the abortion industry that it can no longer hide its unsafe profit-driven practices at the expense of women’s health.”

Published May, 1999

As I left the house for the office, I marveled at the perfect Tuesday morning. The sun shone bright on the young vegetable plants in our garden, and I was glad finally to be able to leave sweaters and jackets in the closet.

Our extended family would soon be together in Colorado celebrating our niece Angie and Matt’s marriage.  This occasion has special meaning for us because they are both U. S. marines, and we know the hopes of their future marriage live in the shadow of the military conflict in Kosovo.  But on a perfect Tuesday morning, Europe seemed far away.

I spent the entire morning in meetings and was glad to break away for a quiet lunch.  As I passed her desk, Mary shattered the peace of the day.  She shared the  news of the tragic school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, which had just begun and were still unfolding.  She couldn’t hold back her tears.

Like all Americans, my family once again has been sobered by the Colorado murders.  It hits hard.  My heart sank as I saw the small bare foot of a student lying on a stretcher.  How many times had I tickled my son’s bare feet while we stretched across the living room floor playing Scrabble?  We are reminded of how very vulnerable we are.  Paraphrasing the comments of one of Tuesday’s students, “This is America.  We should be safe in America.”

I wring my hands and worry for the safety of my own family and friends.  But I know this is useless worry.  I listen to the news.  Television commentators call for stricter gun laws, more police, parental involvement, school guidelines, government regulations…, and I have the feeling I’ve heard this all before.  What can one person do when the problems of rage and violence are so vague and overwhelming?

Today I find myself thinking more and more of a small quiet woman who lived across the world from us.  She lived in a city with an average population density of 79,000 people per square mile.  Her adopted country had over 740 million people.  She spoke Serbo-Croatian.  Her neighbors spoke Hindi and Urdu.  She was a Christian surrounded by Hindus and Muslims.

This tiny woman never wanted more than to help one person.  She ended up changing the lives of millions.  If anyone could understand our desire to change our society, Mother Teresa would be just the person.

Fortunately for us, admirers of Mother Teresa have worked to preserve her life in writing.   She was a small woman, soft with a heart of love, but tough with a soul of determination.  She lived 87 years, a living witness to the power of the Christian faith.  I turn toward her today to find the answers not offered on CNN.

Firstly, those who personally knew her as a young woman are unanimous.  She was nothing special.  They remembered meeting her, a quiet, unassuming, and “unexceptional woman.”  Our first lesson for these troubled times:  we cannot wait for an important, famous person to take charge.   Each “ordinary” person contains the seeds of courage and integrity to move mountains.

Secondly, she gave her life to Jesus, literally.  We don’t need to excuse ourselves from this duty simply because we aren’t Catholic or haven’t chosen a monastic life.  We must turn every second of our day over to Jesus.  He is our truth, our Way, and our strength.  Mother Teresa had a simple, quiet way of communicating this to her sisters.  She would raise her hand and touch her thumb to each finger, reminding them of a short five word sentence:  Do it all for Jesus.  She exhorted her followers with his words, “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’”  (Mat 25:40)

Thirdly, she never set out to change the world.  On one ordinary day, Mother Teresa saw one woman dying on the streets outside Campbell Hospital, where they had refused to help the woman because she was poor.  With only the desire to help one woman, Mother Teresa stayed with her until she died.  While this experience propelled her to build a ministry for the poor and dying, she built it one person at a time.  She often reminded the public she only did “small things” out of “great love.”   Our third lesson:  we must rid ourselves of fear and strengthen our love.

Fourthly, Mother Teresa was in constant communication with God through prayer.  Beyond their daily prayers, she and the sisters viewed their actions as moments of prayer.  They walked in prayer and served in prayer;  their strength came from the Lord.  How can we increase our time spent in prayer:  in the car, at our desk, working in the garden, or exercising at the gym?

Lastly, Mother Teresa let the power of Jesus speak through her life of action.  Every small action bathed in prayer became a witness of her life offered to God through love, doing it all for Jesus.

Is this anymore than what each of us can do?  The world needs the witness of loving Christians.  This can only come through action.  Worry and despair will not save our nation.  We must each throw ourselves fully into the fight to restore peace in America.  We must each become the Christian light:  Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  (Mat 5:15)

We each must find that one small expression of God’s love that we alone can do, strengthened by our prayers and love of Jesus:  Serve one another in love.  (Gal 5:13)  As busy as we are, busier still we must become.  We must look around us today, right now, for the “dying woman outside Campbell Hospital,” and get involved. We can:

• spend more time with our children,
• volunteer for school activities,
• call television stations and voice our concerns about violent programming,
• write letters to regulatory agencies in charge of television programming,
• fight for an important piece of legislation,
• campaign for a politician committed to improving America,
• write letters to advertisers of violent programs,
• stop buying their products of,
• refuse to see R-rated movies,
• turn off the television,

…and do it all for Jesus.

Published March, 1999

As American citizens, trying to resolve the problems surrounding President Clinton’s behavior, we have set a new tone of forgiveness for the near future.  Forgive me has become a social mantra demanded to cover public wrongdoing.

He who sees the sin has become the sinner.  He who demands correction is guilty of hypocrisy.  Worse yet, he is labeled a villain who won’t forgive.

Who doesn’t need forgiveness?  I know I do.  Upon the death of my mother, I found the letter of apology I wrote her.  In my thirties, with the wisdom of age and motherhood behind me, I wrote her asking forgiveness for my many inconsiderate acts during my college years.  Highest on the list is the late evening/early morning, at 2:00 a.m., when I told her I didn’t need to come in earlier.  “Don’t wait up.  Either I come home, or the police will call you.”  The simple ‘logic’ of a college student crushed the heart of my mother.  My life is filled with acts that require me to ask forgiveness.

I must also give forgiveness.  As a parent who often finds my child “with his hand in the cookie jar,” I and other parents have learned from experience.  Our children will appreciate our quick understanding and “forgiveness.”  But understanding and forgiveness given quickly and without discipline usually fails to change a child’s behavior.  Cookies are much too tempting.

After decades of permissive parenting, child psychologists are returning to the common wisdom of our parents:  spare the rod, spoil the child. Counselors of the 90’s tell us, “Love the child, but not the behavior.”

‘Consequences’ is the modern buzzword; enforce natural consequences with consistency and love.  Love continues in the midst of discipline.  A child’s tears may grab at our heart, but we stay the course.

I only have to consider my own life to know the power of this truth.  My greatest learning has come from the pain of great mistakes.  I’ve lost a good friend with one word of gossip thoughtlessly passed.  I’ve spent years rebuilding trust after a single broken promise.  I’ve struggled to buy groceries because I splurged to buy a fancy car.  Life disciplines.

As parents, our ultimate goal, of course, extends even beyond keeping the cookies in the jar.  We hope to teach repentance and forgiveness.  Again, it’s easier said than done.  We’ve all probably once directed a child, “Now say you’re sorry.”  If your experience was like mine, you know the hollow victory of a child’s sullen, insincere, “Sorry.”  His words are a shell around the empty heart that isn’t sorry at all.  The child simply wants to go back out and play.

Like my children, I’ve been able to escape repentance many times, easily forgiven.  I know my husband will forgive the curt words and sour looks I use to “pay him back.”  He loves me.  But in the early morning hours, with only God to impress, I know how reprehensible my actions are.  My own repentance is not measured by my husband’s gentle and loving spirit.  I know my duty under God’s firm command.   For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Heb 4:12)

Cheap repentance is the result of cheap forgiveness.  With loving discipline, we parents hope the feelings of repentance will grow into our children’s hearts.  In the meantime, our check and balance for rearing our children is consistent discipline.

This discipline is the bold stripe that must be woven into our social fabric.  America’s criminal system has tried to undo the harm of cruel punishment unchecked and without balance.  Years of legal precedence and finely tuned laws seek to strike a balance between compassion and punishment.

Our nation benefits greatly from the Constitution’s system of checks and balances.  This concept brings wisdom to complicated matters.  If we were to look at forgiveness with divine wisdom, we might see the beautiful checks and balances given by the hand of God.

God, the only perfect reader of human hearts, has given all people the checks and balances of His Word, The Bible.  He knows we seek forgiveness.  We would just as soon “go out and play.”  He loves us, but he knew better than to let us have our own way without Ten Commandments.  God’s Word teaches us to love the sinner, but to hate the sin.

Forgiveness is our heart’s desire.  But it sits on the far end of a teeter totter that struggles to achieve balance.  Americans, as we become a public jury to public crimes through the power of the media, must be ever vigilant to guard our social conscience against cheap forgiveness.

Are we asking prosecutors, instead of proving a crime with evidence, to prove they are themselves forgiving people?  Do we want juries, instead of deciding guilt or innocence, to demonstrate their own understanding and forgiveness?

Social commentators during the President’s trial have capitalized on our natural desire to avoid concepts of sin and discipline and, instead, to prove our compassion.  In a secular society, we are treated to healthy doses of carefully selected scripture from a Bible that otherwise lies untouched and unread by many.  Some would have us believe we are never to judge and never to cast the tiniest stone.

The good news is that The Bible is a perfect place to turn for wisdom.  It is God’s delicate system of checks and balances.  God has much to say to us, if we only value Him enough to read and listen.  While He teaches the power of forgiveness, He gives serious counsel to parents, kings, and priests on the dangers of being consumed by sinful thought and action.  Cheap forgiveness is not God’s way.

Unchecked and unbalanced, the moral fabric of our country is in danger of being measured by the victim’s ability to forgive instead of the citizen’s ability to behave within the law.  A cloak of moral integrity is not made with one thread, forgiveness.  It is woven of many threads.  The Bible speaks this truth.  It weaves a strong fabric of truth and integrity over centuries of human history.

God intended us to live with compassion toward one another, but he offered the balancing command:  “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied.  “There is only One who is good.  If you want to enter life, obey the commandments.”  (Mat 19:17)

Published April, 1999

Six teens sat, each with a parent, on the television stage.  Everyone’s arms were folded, and twelve frozen glares faced the camera.  For 50 minutes they had accused one another of years of pain and suffering, prodded by a talk show host and audience anxious for a shouting match.

Quiet now, they waited for the last ten minutes of the talk show to find the cure for their hates and anger.  After laundry detergent and car commercials, the host finally announced the arrival of her favorite psychologist, who appeared center stage.  Looking to the teens on her left, and then to the right, she made her pronouncement, “What we see here is a lack of unconditional love.”  Twelve heads nodded in agreement

Unconditional Love, it sounds so pretty, so full of promise.   If unconditional love is so important to the salvation of the world, if so many people extol the virtues of unconditional love, why is there such an overwhelming lack of it?  Just keep your eyes on the pointing finger, and we can trace its directional aim to the source of the problem:  that person over there.

Like the teenagers and parents on stage, I fold my arms and set out my own mental demands for the world, “Give me unconditional love.” I want unconditional love.  I want it from everyone:  from her, from him, from you, from everyone.  It will make me feel better.  I deserve it.  I’m a good gal.

Meanwhile, day by day, I am unnerved by the flow of unloving thoughts that crowd my mind.  Just a little judgment here.  And there, a little anger.  There’s that person who is critical of me.  Another who rejects me.  Several who talk about me behind my back.  A job supervisor who plots the destruction of my love one.  Classmates who snub my children.  I would love to love them unconditionally.  Just as soon as they clean up their acts and love me unconditionally.  I’ll wait.  If only I could understand what they are waiting for!

While God directs his message of love to each of us, we turn our gaze and our pointing finger at our opponents, shifting our own personal duty to love others as we would have them love us into a command for ‘them.’  How many of us cry out in despair, “Lord, why do I fail to give unconditional love?”

As I retrieve my demands to receive unconditional love from other people and focus my eyes toward those needing my own unconditional love, I run into insurmountable difficulties.   I’m willing to love them,…as soon as they get their act together, repent, reform, and deserve.  It appears that unconditional love is more blessed to receive than to give.

Unconditional love is a modern phrase being used to browbeat others.  It is a hammer covered with rose petals.  Beautiful and full of promise, but beneath, it remains a hammer.  It is a demand handed down from pedestals, following the path of pointing fingers.  Long pointing fingers, which never turn and accuse the person behind them.

Nowhere in The Bible does God command us to evaluate the love other people give to us, making sure it’s the unconditional kind of love.  Every command of love presses upon us,–upon me.  “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.  God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”[1]

God’s Word provides the key.  It is no mistake that The Bible places great emphasis on forgiveness and humility. Under the command to humble ourselves, God demands forgiveness of others, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy‑seven times,“[2] in preparation for us to step out in love.

Humility requires a loving identification with each and every person we encounter.  Humility does not fold its arms and arch its eyebrows, waiting for perfection in others, “but in humility consider others better than yourselves.”[3]  The minute we draw a line between ourselves and others, we have failed in love.  Love is God’s command.  Not his suggestion.  Love, by God’s definition, is always unconditional.

This is the mystery of the love of Jesus.  This is what draws me to Jesus more than anything else.  At the top of the cross, looking down on our hostile crowd of humanity, he chose to forgive.  He chose to love.

Jesus needs no further explanations attached to His love.  He would not need to call it “unconditional.”   His love was His “Yes” poured out upon us in forgiveness.  Nothing more.  Anything more would spoil it, covering it up with explanations and apologies.  Love.

Looking inward, I fall to my knees asking forgiveness that my Love is so small.  It rests inside my heart waiting for the moments when I feel like loving.  It waits for people who deserve love.  It hides behind my excuses for withholding love.  Meanwhile, Love chafes and bridles at the suggestion that it needs explanation, a long word “unconditional” to explain it.  Love.

“Unconditional” is the ultimate decoy.  It sets us to watching the other guy, waiting for him to fail in his love “test.”  “See, there, he put a condition on his love,” we are tempted to protest.  We fold our arms.  We glare at those who fail to love us.  We wait.  But if we pause and turn to look up to the cross, we can feel the loving gaze of Jesus upon us, asking us when we will take up our cross and share His burden.  Love.

Love,– one word, one syllable, one command.  Love.

Published March, 2001

The verdict is in.  Dr. John Biskind is guilty of manslaughter.  It took only four hours for eight jurors to sift through a month’s worth of testimony, concluding that Dr. Biskind “recklessly caused death” of LouAnne Heron in her late term abortion.

The trial of Dr. John Biskind and his associate, clinic administrator Carol Stuart-Schadoff, began on January 22, 2001, in Superior Court on manslaughter charges stemming from the death of Ms. Heron.  Facing the breakup of her marriage, the 33-year-old mother of two went to A-Z Women’s Clinic for an abortion.

Four weeks of testimony opened the door on an abortion industry long cloaked in secrecy.  While A-Z Women’s Clinic is no longer open and was only one of many clinics providing abortions, evidence from the trial revealed examples of serious deficiencies affecting the operation of abortion clinics in general.

The trial began with testimony from seven young medical assistants who worked at A-Z on the day that LouAnne Heron died.  Prosecutor Ahler pointedly asked each woman about her training–extensive educational programs ranging from six to twelve months long.  Many of them were young mothers, supporting families.

Yet, for A-Z Women’s Clinic, the bottom line of profit controlled employment practices.  Medical assistants earned only $7.50 per hour, with no benefits and no insurance.  They consistently worked from 36 to 38 hours per week, just under the required 40 hours that would classify them as full-time.  Instead of a regular lunch hour, they routinely snatched a ten-minute lunch together with the doctor in the front office–only a brief pause in a day packed with up to 25 surgeries and procedures.

With their hourly wage little more than that of fast-food servers, it is no surprise that help was difficult to keep.  The two medical assistants attending LouAnne following her abortion were on duty in the recovery room for their first time.  As one nurse testified, “There was a big turnover in general.”

Staffing problems at A-Z Women’s Clinic included the nurses, as well.  Clinic administrator Stuart-Schadoff tried for a week to find a nurse to cover the afternoon of LouAnne’s surgery on April 17.  Though no nurse was available to supervise the medical assistants in the recovery room, the regular schedule of surgeries was planned.  For this, jurors returned a negligent homicide verdict against Stuart-Schadoff.

Medical assistants and nurses are not the only staff problems for abortion clinics.  John Biskind, at 75, is one of a growing number of elderly doctors leaving the practice of medicine.  As malpractice insurance rates climb and the field of medicine expands, fewer universities offer training in abortions, and even fewer doctors care to make a career of performing them.

These may be positive signs that support of abortion is weakening, however, they also belie major safety concerns in abortion clinics.  Time and again, as employees quit and leave their jobs in the abortion industry, they tell of  understaffed clinics, surgeries hurriedly performed, and frequent injuries to patients that were ignored or mishandled.

The Biskind trial provides a vivid background for legislation pending in the Arizona legislature ensuring a woman’s right to receive medically accurate information about the abortion procedure and its related risks.  Although consent forms were used at A-Z Women’s Center, abortion counseling consisted only of a brief group meeting of the 12-20 patients led by a medical assistant on the same morning of their surgery.

Proposed legislation will require clinics to provide set standards of informed consent protecting the woman’s right to know about her surgical procedure.  Public support of this legislation is vital to its success.   A verdict in the Biskind trial serves justice.  But there’s no better way to honor the memory of LouAnne Heron than to support a Woman’s Right to Know.

 Published November, 2000

The experts are right.  When Robin left the office, she felt a sense of relief.  Finality.  Her problem was taken care of, and she could now go on with life.

Robin knew she had made the right decision.  Her boyfriend was still in high school.  And her parents would never be able to accept that their beautiful daughter was pregnant.  The counselors at the Planned Parenthood confirmed Robin’s deepest fears.  They assured her, abortion was her only answer.

As a high school student, she was too young for an abortion, but the counselor reassured her, “Just lie about your age and pay in cash.  The doctor won’t ask any questions.”  He didn’t.  A nurse held her hand, and the doctor removed the 14-week fetus from Robin’s young womb.  Finally, her problems were over.

More than twenty years after her abortion, Robin is a confident business–woman who exudes a quiet peace.  “I’ll sit here right now and tell you a woman walking into an abortion clinic today is probably going to walk out relieved.  Most women are very relieved after an abortion.  We’re told that is our problem, and it’s over.  But it’s not.”  She quickly recounts the events following her abortion.

Life did move on for Robin.  She finished high school and met the man of her dreams.  Three years after her first pregnancy, as a married woman, she and her husband began a family.  And finally, pregnant with her first son, she began to have serious thoughts of her abortion.

For the first time, reality challenged the abortion doctor’s statements to Robin.  He had calmed her fears, saying that her pregnancy was simply a “mass of tissue.”  He had emphasized how small it was, “the size of the top of my thumb.”

But as Robin followed the growth of her son in her womb, she came to know the truth.  The “mass of tissue” had actually been a vigorous moving, kicking, smiling baby in development.  At 14 weeks, Baby-Joshua was sucking his thumb, squinting, swallowing, and he was sensitive to touch.  Baby-Joshua had been able to feel the abortion that ended his life.

Robin talks about facing the truth of her abortion.  “For me there was not a moment.  I think there was a part of me that knew prior to the abortion, but I was so frightened….And then, when I became pregnant, I started to have the realization of the differences.”  Thinking of her aborted fetus and the tiny fetus now moving inside of her, “The only difference was that this one was wanted.  They couldn’t have taken him away from me, they would have had to tie me down.

“That’s when the denial started to break, and I had to start thinking about it in a different way.”  Looking back, Robin explains how she fought for peace once again.  “It was very uncomfortable.  So then I started shoving those feelings aside.”

She also decided to use her experience with abortion to help other women who might be facing a crisis pregnancy.  She volunteered to work at a Crisis Pregnancy Center, (CPC).  She thought, “I don’t want anyone to know what I’ve done, but I’m going to see if I can’t help make sure no one else goes through that.”  She went to CPC to help other women, but ended up facing her own problems.

Although Robin hid her own abortion from everyone, at a CPC training for volunteers, a stranger broke through the veil of secrecy.  She walked up to Robin and said, “Well, when are you going to let God deal with the pain in your life?”

Robin gives the woman credit, “She did not know I was post-abortive, but she was very insightful.  I realized then that I was really no good to anybody else until I dealt with my own concerns.”

As Robin worked through the post-abortive recovery program, she came to understand many of the common concerns facing women.  “It’s very painful.  Most people don’t want to talk about it.”  She shared with other post-abortive women a feeling of shame, intensified by years of hiding the abortion and maintaining secrecy.

And the effort to deny her feelings over the years had taken its toll.  Robin explains, “Of course, we all know now, you can’t select certain feelings to shove aside.  When you shove the bad ones aside, you also shove the good ones aside.  Like so many women then, I became full of rage, anger.”

As the anger worked inside of Robin, it rose to the surface inside of her family.  “I verged on child abuse because I did not see that I could become a good mother.  I didn’t see that I deserved to be a good mother.  I was awful with my children.  I didn’t bond well with them.”

In a final attempt to reach peace, seventeen years after her abortion, Robin attended the CPC recovery program for post-abortive women.  “God finally turned up.  He healed it.  But it almost destroyed my life and my kids and my husband, anyone in my path.”

With the courage gained from her recovery program, Robin remembers the most empowering experience that helped her make it through the process.  She decided to bring her experience into the open.  “I think for me it was probably the first person outside of my family that I told.  If she had not been wholly supportive, I probably would have crawled right back in my hole.  It was my sister-in-law who is one of the most influential pro-life persons in Texas.  I just figured that I would be condemned all the way straight to hell when I told her I was post-abortive.  And she just loved me.  I think I told her how much that has meant.”

Today, Robin knows final peace, complete peace.  She has been able to face the truth of abortion and accept the forgiveness offered by Christ on the cross.  But she knows it’s not easy.  “During the group, it just became very evident that this was where I needed to be.  This was where God was calling me—in the ministry to work with other women who have been through an abortion experience.”

In 1998, she and three other women retreated to a friend’s cabin in the Flagstaff area.  “We were in total awe and exhilarated by the vision God gave us as we committed each and everything to Him in prayer.  We felt the ministry was birthed at this time.”  Pathway to Peace was formed upon their prayers and God’s promise.

It’s been a long road since a scared teenager walked out of an abortion clinic many years ago.  And it’s been a hard-fought battle to reach a Final Peace.  But Robin has made it.  And she gives God the glory that he might now allow her to bring other women along that same path to recovery, a Pathway to Peace.

 Published December, 2000

It can be argued that every person in the United States has been touched by abortion, even if they don’t know it.  Nearly 1,500,000 women have abortions each year.  And since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, over 31,000,000 American abortions have been performed.   Christians can not count themselves exempt.  One out of six women who have had an abortion are evangelical Christians.

These statistics gain meaning when compared to events we know.  Consider 31,000,000 abortions compared to the number of Americans killed in war.  During World War II, 407,316 Americans lost their lives; in the Vietnam War, 58,655 died.

War and abortion can be compared in another significant way.  Long after the battle, soldiers may discover they are trapped in a personal battle to survive once again, suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorders.  Likewise, as many as twenty years or more after an abortion, many women face Post-Abortion Syndrome.

Thankfully, today there is help for women who seek healing from an abortion.  Pathway to Peace is a Phoenix ministry that offers women a safe place to talk.  Surrounded by other women who have experienced abortion, they are finally able to talk about the secrets and pain they have worked so hard to ignore and hide.

Sharron Hummel, one of the founders of Pathway to Peace, is no stranger to a ministry for women of post-abortion.  For ten years, Sharron directed a local crisis pregnancy center (CPC) and its post-abortion program.

She knows how hard it is for women to seek help after an abortion.  Sharron explains, “It’s a painful issue for a lot of people.  It’s very painful….There’s a lot of shame for one thing.  I think the biggest thing is the shame of it.  They don’t want to expose themselves.”

While society teaches that abortion is “just another surgery,” Sharron points out that many women don’t know the biology of the fetus.  She recalls what a client Ann told her, “I didn’t know the truth about abortion.  I think if somebody had showed me an ultrasound, I would have never,…I know I would have never done that.”

When a woman eventually comes to believe that an abortion removes a life from the womb, her emotional pain can become overwhelming.  That’s where Pathway to Peace can help.

Pathway to Peace is a ten-week Bible study that serves as a recovery program for post-abortive women.  Sharron and other trained facilitators provide a safe, confidential atmosphere where women and men can meet.  Together they work through the series of Bible study lessons that focus not only on the abortion, but on how Christ ministers healing to hurting people.

Robin Matteson, a co-founder of Pathway to Peace, explains.  “We walk through this path that these women are walking through because we’ve walked there, too.”  Robin also had an abortion as a high school teen. “There is so much involved,” she says.  “It’s more than any other issue, I believe, that I’ve ever dealt with with people.  I think because it goes to the very core of a woman’s creative purpose.  No matter how you feel about pro-life or any other issue, only a woman can conceive a child.  That’s a part of what makes her unique and special.”

Pathway to Peace uses this God-given uniqueness to help post-abortive women find peace.  Sharron encourages women to see the church as the first step in healing.  “If the church will start talking about it, encouraging these women to seek God’s forgiveness, that there is healing, that you don’t have to continue to live in your shame and your guilt…if the church will start talking about it, it will free women.”

The Bible study lessons at Pathway to Peace lead women through a grief process toward peace.  “The first thing that we do is discover where they need healing,” Robin describes.  “The Bible study is designed to let God reveal to them what needs to happen.  So they look through their own experience and discover where it is that they need to be healed.”

Women are encouraged to extensively read and study the Bible, guided by the lessons and group encouragement.  Robin continues, “There’s a huge amount of actual Bible study in this.  We walk through grief issues:  denial, anger, forgiveness, and finally, acceptance.  Forgiving yourself is the final step, that total acceptance and accepting that you’re forgiven by God and have forgiven yourself.”

Sharron’s eyes are bright as she describes the effect of the lessons on post-abortive women.  “Right before your eyes.  It is totally amazing because you will see changes within the second and third week.  They’ll start wearing brighter colors, they’ll start fixing their hair better, they’ll start wearing makeup.  You just see a transformation taking place before your eyes, and you can’t explain it.  It’s totally a God thing.”

Women in Pathway to Peace groups conclude their last session in a special evening, Celebration Night–a night to honor the work that God has done in their life.  Sharron’s smile is a clear sign that women feel God’s love and reach peace.  “My desire, our desire, is to reach the women in the church and see the Lord set them free.  And that goal has become a reality.”

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UPDATE 2013:  Pathway to Peace refers anyone interested in post-abortion issues to:
CPC, Greater Phoenix
PACE Program – Post Abortion Recovery, Susan Little, PACE Coordinator
http://cpcphoenix.org/
phone: 602-508-3340