GYC 2014: At The Cross

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Abortion and the Redemptive Grace Revolution

Antionette Duck

Dianne Wagner

Life After an Abortion: part 1

This message was presented at the GYC 2014 conference at the Cross in Phoenix, Arizona.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

I'm just going to open us with a word of prayer and then we're going to jump right on in.

Father, I thank you and praise you for this opportunity.

I thank you and praise you for the people that are here.

I thank you and praise you for the truth that will be spoken and will be heard in the lives that will be changed.

Send your Holy Spirit and speak through Diane and I.

We want to invite you on a journey to awaken, perhaps for the first time, a deep, rich, glorious understanding of what is perhaps the most fundamental truth about our existence.

Not based on what you achieve or become or possess.

You're valuable because you were created in the image of the 1 who was and is and is to come.

It's an intrinsic value and an eternal significance.

That is what defines us, and it cannot be diminished or destroyed.

In pointing people to the value of human life, all human life, young and old, men and women, born and unborn, we point people to what is perhaps 1 of the most fundamental truths that will ever be.

And yet that is not the end of your story.

Because we are not just a people created in the image of the Lord.

We are a people who have been redeemed, set free from the bonds of guilt and shame, condemnation and despair.

Through the power of the cross we are re-created.

For the post-abortive woman and man, meaning someone who's experienced the tragedy of an abortion, for the post-abortive, honoring the sanctity of life, the value of life, does not condemn, accuse, or vilify them.

Rather, honoring the sanctity of life invites them to understand this truth, that they are intrinsically valuable, that their child too was intrinsically valuable.

And though they have done what cannot be undone, just like you and I have done many things that cannot be undone, the Savior awaits, offering freedom for our bondage, joy for our devastation, and hope for our despair.

1 concern about speaking about this subject has been people are hesitant because they think, well, what if somebody in the audience has had the experience of an abortion?

I think being sensitive is huge, but I think being sensitive has kept us too quiet.

I was 1 of those ladies in the audience, and I lived in a secret sorrow for a long time.

And that's why when I met Antoinette at the 2011 GYC in Houston, I was so blessed because the Lord had called her to use her voice and she responded.

Now the Guttmacher Institute is the research arm of Planned Parenthood, so these are their statistics.

Between 1973 and 2011, nearly 53 million legal abortions took place.

21% of all pregnancies end in an induced abortion.

Now an induced abortion is an intentional interruption where the life of the fetus is terminated.

1 is medical, which is using drugs, pharmaceuticals, and the other is a surgical, and a surgical abortion is invasive.

That's when they do go into the woman's uterus, and they remove the fetus as well as the placenta.

Well, now half of American women will experience an unintended pregnancy by 45.

4 in 10 of these are terminated by abortion.

Half of these women have had at least 1 previous abortion.

About 61% of abortions are obtained by women who have 1 or more children.

I had been brought up a Seventh-day Adventist.

I loved going to summer camp, and later when I was older, I worked at summer camp.

I went through our academies and I loved my memories.

Choir and band trips, temperance rallies, and Bible conferences.

I loved it all and I have great memories.

Now I had been baptized in elementary school, but it was in academy at 15 that I gave my heart to the Lord, and I remember it well.

College was harder, the reason being is my parents had gotten a divorce during this time, and I saw the prejudice and the inconsistencies within my church.

I had to reevaluate my convictions about this church.

I distanced myself and I asked questions that I'm sure many young adults do.

Is God here, even with the hypocrisies I see?

Does the God that I gave my heart to at 15 even exist?

Was I just living in a little enchanted Seventh-day Adventist bubble while a child?

In all His wisdom, He knew how to answer each 1 of my questions.

So when my college sweetheart and I decided to get married, we both knew that we wanted a Seventh-day Adventist home, and not just a Seventh-day Adventist home, but a Christian Seventh-day Adventist home.

I felt the Lord had anointed this church, and I believe, still believe, we've been given a very high calling, which is a privilege.

Well, 6 months before my wedding day, all this bliss was shattered because I found out I was pregnant.

And the shame and embarrassment was more than I could bear.

How could I break the heart of my grandmother?

How could I face the disappointed and critical expressions of those in our church.

My husband and I, we had only been intimate once, but that didn't matter.

What did make matters worse is that I'd had a series of x-rays on my lower back.

The tech had asked me, is there any way you can be pregnant?

And that just added to my embarrassment and shame later, because I knew.

Well, I called every physician I knew and worked with at the time and asked them, if I was your wife, what would you want her to do?

Every single 1 of them told me, abort, abort, abort the pregnancy.

I don't even remember my husband's response when I told him.

I called the abortion clinic, found out how much it would cost, how far along I had to be, and I made the appointment.

Now at the clinic, I talked to a counselor first.

She wasn't a Christian, just a sympathetic ear to my dilemma.

And she assured me that at this time in my pregnancy, it was just a fuzzball, just a tiny fuzzball.

Life After an Abortion: part 2

Okay, I think we'll go ahead and pick it up.

Before I get started though, I had a friend of mine not too long ago, a man, came up to me out of the blue and said he has a daughter 25 and a daughter 23.

And he believes the reason they don't talk to him is because way back in college, he and his girlfriend had an abortion.

We're friends, but I hadn't shared with him at that point what I was involved in or my story.

He just out of the blue came up and told me that.

And I was really, really taken back because he had been harboring all this heartache.

Another gentleman came up to me and shared with me his story.

And when he read my story, he said it gave him the courage and he actually, bless his dear heart, came to some kind of conclusion about the decision he had made back in college.

And he went to the clinic where he and his girlfriend had gone to have this abortion.

Now you know the abortion clinic is not going to let people start coming and putting crosses in their front yard.

And the reason I'm bringing this up is because, you know, surgical abortion is invasive And there is a trauma that occurs to women that men do not have to go through.

But a lot of men are very traumatized by this.

When I went to the retreat, which I'll mention later, for the post-abortive, there was a young man there and he and his girlfriend had had 2, and he wept and he cried and it had been maybe 12 years since he'd gone through that.

And I was so touched and I was so glad there was somebody else there, a man, who gave me a little bit of insight into what the guy was going through.

You know, there have been other men that I've talked to, some very close and dear, and some just acquaintances.

And they say, you know, I just wanted to be there to support her.

So they thought, well, what I can do is support her.

That's part of the reason, yes, again, education is so important.

We cannot remain silent about something that is this critical.

I covered The women who once again are victims, they don't, the society doesn't want to legitimize the trauma.

She was weak prior to her abortion, so she's weak now.

She's damaged prior to her abortion, that's why she's damaged now, as I've gone over.

The negatively affected women are those who are most psychologically fragile before their abortions.

So, instead of validating the trauma, the credibility of the victim is attacked.

When I was doing my research, I was impressed.

In the late 1970s, however, a few women who had experienced emotional or physical problems after an abortion started banding together.

It made me think of those Vietnam vets who came back, and they found comfort and support in each other, as do the women, post-abortive women, and men.

Men are more and more speaking out about this.

1982, the group Women Exploited by Abortion was established and had a national impact by offering group and peer counseling programs.

Well, within a year, this WEBA had thousands of members in every state in the United States.

And a lot of the post-abortion ministries today were actually started by women who had been members of that WEBA organization.

Well, at this same time, more and more psychologists were beginning to recognize that the women they were treating who had a history of an abortion were displaying clusters of symptoms that resembled post-traumatic stress disorder.

And 1 of these guys, Vincent Rue, he was the first 1 to define post-abortion syndrome as a variant of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Coming up into the 80s, the Elliott Institute was established.

It was established by a David Reardon, and he has done a lot of research into the effects.

In other words, people were being affected by this.

It was on the rise, damage is being done, and it cannot be ignored.

So Even though the American Medical Association called it a myth and the Psychiatric Association attempted to squelch any recognition of post-abortion trauma, the evidence about the traumatic nature of abortion continued to accumulate.

According to the Elliott Institute, 61% of women feel guilty for what they've done.

I've been reading a book about the effects of men.

They didn't have the studies that they do have on the women, but the very same thing, especially anger.

52% said they suffered regret and they endure anguish.

There's, let's see, remorse, despair, did I have that 1 up there?

Unworthiness, there's loneliness, hopelessness, helplessness, 57% felt self-condemnation and confusion.

There's anxiety, self-hatred, 54% were unforgiving of themselves.

They experienced emptiness, uncontrollable weeping, and a loss of dignity.

1 study said 10% of relationships, Whether they're married or not, make it after an abortion.

Another study of men said that 77% of relationships collapse after this decision.

All of a sudden, best buddies love each other, the communication is shut off.

They don't know how to deal with the stress, what they've done, the trauma.

Now listening to this, these kind of things, you can see why so many end up with alcohol and drug abuse.

Another thing that everybody is silent about.

So we're going to be silent about the abortion, now we're going to be silent about how we deal with it, by either medicating ourselves with drugs or alcohol.

There's other self-punishing behaviors, cutting, eating disorders, promiscuity, suicidal thoughts, career problems, Problems with relationships.

And I can certainly see how that can happen.

Now The percentages that I just gave you are actually low.

There's a delayed reaction to the trauma, and then there's a refusing to participate in the studies.

In the Elliott survey, over 60% of the women surveyed reported that there was a period of time which they would not have reported any negative feelings about this abortion.

They reported that the average time before they even recognized that they had negative reactions was slightly over 5 years.

Women – I've got to put in there, and even when you do start recognizing negative emotions, who are you gonna talk to about it, right?

Women involved in post-abortion programs typically report that it takes an average of 8 to 10 years before they begin to confront and deal with their abortion problems.

At that point I have to tell you, you know, with me personally and with the ladies I have talked to, I went to the foot of Jesus and I confessed that sin and I knew the Lord had forgiven me, but I was miserable.

I had not forgiven myself and I had all these unresolved emotions and grief that I didn't know at that time was a part of it.

So I can see why it would be hard to confront and deal with these post-abortion problems, emotions.

Delayed reaction to abortion is another 1 of the major reasons why abortion trauma is so poorly understood by both society and the mental health profession.

And longitudinal studies, 50 to 60 percent of women who've had an abortion conceal their abortion from interviewers.

You guys, I remember, this is a fact, I would go to my doctor for just the routine doctor's visit.

And when they would hand me a clipboard with a new piece of paper on it that said you have to fill out a new history, I wanted to leave because I always hated this section about how many times you're pregnant.

Just that little thing, because I didn't want to lie, but I sure didn't want to tell anybody about what I had been through.

It may seem like a small thing, but when it comes to confronting what's in here and what you're hiding, it was a big thing.

60% of women who initially consent to short-term studies changed their mind and refused to be interviewed.

3. Our Calling, Our Duty

Dear kind Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this privilege.

Lord, may we never ever take it for granted.

And we pray for your presence, the presence of your Holy Spirit, the anointing of your Holy Spirit, Lord.

We pray for your protection because we know the devil does not want this subject talked about, so we pray for your blood that you will cover us here and put an angel, a hedge of angels all around us.

And I pray in a special way that you will anoint Antoinette's tongue and you'll give her words warm from glory, Lord.

Acts 2618 says, I am sending you to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.

So that we can be a vessel through which the captive is set free.

We share what is true so that through us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, those who are dying can breathe new life.

Our Savior raises the dead to life, not just for eternity, but here, now, in these moments.

If we do not know what is true, or if despite knowing what is true, we waver, we gloss over it, or we fail to raise the standard, how are those who are dying going to be brought to new life?

I once read a line from a book and it said, would you have her hang on her cross forever?

The magnitude of that question was striking to me.

Would you have her hang on her cross forever?

There is a fundamental truth that unites every single 1 of us.

Someone is going to hang on your cross, and you only have 2 choices, you or your Redeemer.

Either we will yield our lives in humility to the Lord accepting his sacrifice or we ourselves will hang on our own cross and we will spend the rest of our time on this earth paying penance and scraping and grasping as we desperately try to make it right.

Folks, we can't pay that debt And neither can the post-abortive woman, neither can the post-abortive man, neither can those who have been affected by the tragedy of abortion.

Our sins separate us just as profoundly as their sin separates them.

And what we must not fail to understand is that none of us will ever find peace and forgiveness and freedom apart from the cross.

If we excuse sin anywhere, if we refuse to call it by its rightful name, if we trivialize it, then we, you and I, stand as a barrier to redemption for the very people who so desperately need it.

Do you need to be forgiven for something that isn't sin?

If we do not point a post-abortive woman to the light, if we don't point a post-abortive man to the light, Where are they going to go?

So the question is, will we embrace our calling as individuals and as a church to be instruments through which the captive is set free?

Some of you may have been here earlier today to listen to Diane's story, which is just phenomenal.

She herself, who is post-abortive, and has come through incredible trial and struggle to be whole and vibrant and free, literally set free by the redeeming hand of the Lord.

The tragedy and devastation, as I mentioned earlier today, is not unique necessarily to Diane's story.

For a woman who has had an abortion, there is a tremendous amount of guilt and shame and condemnation also associated with that decision.

For instance, in talking, talking and ministering to women, being at ASI and GYC over the last couple of years, we've encountered many, many women who are post-abortive.

And in sharing their stories, they've shared things like, you know, the enemy tells me that the reason that my children don't believe in the Lord is because I had an abortion.

I want the weight of that condemnation just to sink into you for a minute.

The reason your children don't believe in the Lord is because you had an abortion.

There is nothing that enables her to make that right.

There's no way for her to turn back the clock.

There's no way for her to set things in motion the way they should have been.

So she's faced with a condemnation that she literally cannot overcome.

And consider the implication of that condemnation for her.

The implication isn't just that, you know what, the Lord is not for you.

The implication is that the Lord is not for you and that the Lord is set against you." What is she going to do?

Well, she's not going to turn to the Lord.

She's not going to turn to the 1 who she also believes condemns her.

Well, as Diane has shared, and I will reference Diane's story a lot, and it is available on GYC's website, and I highly, highly, highly encourage you to read it.

The power of the Lord literally bounces off of the page.

As we've learned, research shows, Diane in her own experience, women who have shared with us, there's a lot of self-loathing, a lot of self-hatred involved.

She might develop a drug addiction or an alcohol addiction.

And she's constantly seeking to purge, to cleanse, to achieve some sort of catharsis that sets her free.

She's chasing after idols and lovers, looking to be made whole.

And the question that faces us is, who is going to tell her the truth?

Who is going to tell her the life-giving, grace-filled truth that she has been redeemed?

Well, that's you, that's me, that's us as individuals, we as a church, we have a calling.

We literally have a calling on our lives to be the conduit, the vessel through which the captive is set free.

And if we will do this, if we will take up our calling, if we will embrace this calling from the Lord, we will watch as daughters, as sisters, as wives, as fathers, as husbands, as sons, families, communities are restored.

My hope is that our answer as individuals sitting, as a church, as a collective, that our answer would be a resounding yes.

The first step though in reaching a post-abortive woman where she is, we have to understand she's living with a pain that is staggering.

Consider the condemnation that I just shared with you.

How do you survive under the weight of that apart from the Lord?

She's not just mourning the loss of a clump of cells, like these skin cells I'm rubbing off of my finger.

She's mourning the loss of a human being.

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Series

Abortion and the Redemptive Grace Revolution

6. The Glory of Redemptive Grace

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Life After an Abortion: part 1

47m

Life After an Abortion: part 2

42m

3. Our Calling, Our Duty

39m

5. The Gospel and Our Intrinsic Value

43m

6. The Glory of Redemptive Grace

44m

Sound Doctrine