Abortion -- not JUST a woman's issue -- Fathers Suffer Too!

Here is one man's story of how abortion affected his life (used with permission) and how he found redemption in Christ:

A Father’s Post-Abortion Testimony

by Larry G.

As I grew up Catholic, I began to find that the Church did not teach the Bible, but the sacraments. As a teenager, I wandered from the faith I learned there. Also, I found myself very burdened by criticism from family and friends; I never felt like I was good enough and felt depressed a lot. I started experiencing the sandy foundation of compromise. I found happiness in working. For once, I received something for my efforts. On one occasion I made an ignorant plea for salvation, for I was in despair but not aware of what I was actually asking for, though. I do not count this as my salvation story; I only point out that I came from a broken world of compromise, where I didn’t know how to seek my own salvation.

In college, I felt empty and sought to find things that would fill it. It ended up leading me to repeated attempts at relationships (sex) and drinking alcohol, and all I found was a greater degree of rejection and one major bad decision (read below).

After college, I determined to find a church and get serious about God. As I was mulling over going back to church (I was not going to go back to Catholicism), my roommate received a flyer for a non-denominational church. I went to that church, and it was through their teachings of truth that I came to know my Lord and Savior.

But that is the short story. Here are the details.

In the midst of college, I had one major relationship, and all the worldly things came with it. During that relationship, she became pregnant. I had compromised so many areas of my life, I had no backbone to influence her to not abort the baby. In January of 1991 we aborted the baby. Ultimately, that relationship ended just before I graduated college in June of 1992. At the time, I thought I needed a break from dating, yet I met another woman. She was everything I thought I was looking for, except she wasn’t for sex. I hadn’t learned my lesson. After a month or so of trying to win her to the idea of sex, she relented and said yes. I was starting to learn that I had some issues, like self-pity, that I couldn‘t reconcile. Because of my issues, and their effect on her, this woman decided to leave. She was moving to Tennessee to go to school.

After she left, I found a flyer for a church.

But we had become pregnant, though we didn‘t know it when she left. After she left I decided I needed a new start and to find a church I could join, and I went to the church that had sent the flyer. I was touched by the messages. But three weeks into her move, she flew back for what was supposedly family time. Before she went back, though, she came over to my place and took a pregnancy test. It came back positive.

Now I knew God was doing something in my heart because I knew not to compromise this child. There was no retreat, only resolve to make the right choice. I had a different problem here, though, because this woman was firmly for having the baby, BUT against having me around! Well, the Lord shut the door on her schooling, and she returned home. We had a very difficult time at first, and after one very difficult meeting with her, I started to pray.

I knew I had made a mess of things. I knew God was bigger than I had learned of as a child, and I knew I needed his help and love. One teaching that I had heard from this new church, I kept remembering. It was on Psalm 18:2, “The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust: my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.” I wanted to believe I had a deliverer, and the idea of a tower for protection seemed like water to a thirsty man. So, I went home, cleared some things from the floor and prayed for salvation. I poured my heart out, not in feeling sorry for myself, but in humble acceptance that I was a sinner and that I needed a Savior. I had visions and a heart of praise for God that I had never known before. And I saw how God used everything I had gone through to lead me to Him.

I didn’t tell this woman for almost a week about my decision, because she was doubting me on everything, and I thought it not wise to share such wonderful news until her heart changed. See, she had accepted Christ a few years earlier, only to find herself compromising her own Christian beliefs shortly before she met me. After a few days passed, she saw a change in me and came out and asked. I told her, and she cried. She thought for sure I wasn’t going to change and that she was planning to make our relationship only about the baby, but now she was more confused than ever.

We had that baby, Joseph, who is now 14, and she did marry me. We have grown a lot in Christ, and I want to continue to make decisions based on God's word, wash my wife in the Word, and to teach and inspire my children of the Lord throughout my life.

…for only by his grace are we saved.

Larry G.