Deadline

by Randy Alcorn

  The article was billed as twelve men speaking candidly on the price they paid because of abortion. Some agreed to the decision to abort, some didn’t. Some, like the first man, pushed his will on his girlfriend:

  “It’s her body, but I had her brainwashed. I made all the decisions. Once it was over, we never talked about it again. We kept our mouths shut. She did have some real prophetic words, though. She said, ‘Wagner, you’re going to regret this all your life.’ I told her, ‘No, no.’ But inside me something would spark and cling to that. She was right. I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forgive myself.”

  Most of the men talked about the disastrous effects on the relationship with their girlfriend or wife. One lamented,

  “Abortion is presented to you as something that is easy to do. It doesn’t take very long. It doesn’t cost very much money nowadays, for a middle-class person. You say, ‘Well, it’s okay.’ But it wasn’t okay. It left a scar, and that scar had to be treated tenderly and worked on in order for us to get on with our lives. I don’t think abortion is easy for anybody. The people who say it’s easy either don’t want to face the pain of it or haven’t been through it, because it’s really a tough experience.”

  Jake squirmed uncomfortably, but he was hooked. He read next the words of a married man:

  “We tried to figure out why we weren’t getting along so well. It occurred to one of us that it was a year since the abortion. That was the first time we realized that we felt we had killed something we had made together and that it would have been alive and might have been our child. We talked and shared how disturbed about it we both had been. We hadn’t known that we were angry and upset and hadn’t been willing to face the facts.”

  Jake thought about walking out of this psychiatrist’s office that had brought him face to face with something in his past, a monster in his soul that he’d managed to push back and hide from the light of reality. But there was one more man left, and he felt compelled to read his story:

  “I’ve had a heck of a time dealing with it, actually. To this day I still think about it. I’ll go to bed and I’ll think about it and say to myself, ‘Man, what a terrible thing to do. What a cop-out. You don’t trade human life for material niceties.’ Which is what I was doing, because I was hoping for a better future, more goods I could buy.

  “I don’t have a good rationalization for it either. I’ve come to believe more and more that the baby in the womb is just that—a human life. I wish I didn’t. I wish I could make myself believe differently, but I can’t. It would make it easier to deal with mentally. When you have the opposite view and you go through with the abortion anyway, well, that’s worse than anything.

  “So, you see, I’m kind of stuck. She did it for me. I feel like I murdered somebody. I wish I could do it over again, if I could just go back in time and relive those years. If she’d had the child, even if we’d got married and everything, it wouldn’t have been that bad. I’ve seen other people do it. Reality’s such a pain sometimes, you know?”

  Jake sat quietly in the chair, glad no one else was in the waiting room, no one’s eyes to keep his own from meeting. Reality’s such a pain sometimes, you know?

  Five minutes later a well-dressed professional stepped out of his office and warmly extended a hand.

  “Mr. Woods? Welcome! Harvey Scanlon. Jim Barnes called and told me about your situation. I rarely have stand-in patients, but I’m flexible! Jim told me to give you his time for whatever you had on your mind. Come in.”

  It didn’t take a psychiatrist to see how preoccupied Jake was. “Are you all right, Mr. Woods?”

  “Uh, yeah, sure. I…was just reading a disturbing article.”

  “Oh? Which one?”

  “Esquire.” I’m here for information, Doctor. Don’t get so nosy.

  “Men and abortion?”

  “Yeah.”

  The doctor nodded knowingly, with what Jake presumed was self-congratulation.

  “It’s amazing how many men have a nerve touched with that one. But think about it. With over thirty million abortions, there have to be maybe fifteen or twenty million men who have lost their children in the last twenty-two years. That doesn’t even count fathers and brothers and other sons of the aborted women. In the last five years I’ve discovered how many men have been traumatized by abortion, and I’m just scratching the surface. Our fatherly instincts go much deeper than we suspect. I’m afraid the old expression ‘an abortion is between a woman and her doctor’ is a myth.”

  “A myth? How do you mean?”

  “Well, a few people are left out of the formula, don’t you think? I suppose the most obvious person is the baby. But we’ve also totally ignored the baby’s father. As men we have deep loyalties to our women and to any children we father. When those loyalties are encouraged and maintained we’re at our best. But when those loyalties are violated or ignored we’re at our worst. Over a million fathers each year either demand abortion, decide on it, or turn the other way while it happens. Others object to it but are powerless to stop it. The psychological effects are profound in any case—except perhaps in the man who is totally irresponsible, who has no conscience at all. For the rest of us, it’s profoundly negative. It’s complicity in violating and killing the very women and children we were designed to protect.”

  Jake wasn’t sure what he was expecting in the doctor, but this wasn’t it.

  “Forgive me, Dr. Scanlon, but I’m of the persuasion abortion is just another elective surgery on a woman’s body, like a tonsillectomy or a root canal. It’s up to her, no one else.”

  “Haven’t given it much thought, have you?”

  “Pardon me?” Who does this guy think he is?

  “Mr. Woods, no offense intended, but anyone who minimizes abortion as you did is simply ignorant of the facts, biological and psychological. I don’t mean to get us off on the wrong foot. You’re the one who came to me, and I’ll be glad to answer your questions. I’m not trying to take a political position on abortion, or even a moral one. I’m not an activist like my friend Dr. Barnes. I’m just a professional who deals with the realities intense traumas bring into people’s lives. But as a professional I can tell you without reservation that when you say abortion is like a root canal or an appendectomy, you just couldn’t be more wrong.”

  Jake stared at him blankly. If this was a battle of wits, he was feeling badly unarmed.

  “Have you ever heard of Women Exploited by Abortion?”

  Jake shook his head.

  “It’s an organization with over thirty thousand members in more than one hundred chapters across the United States, with affiliate groups in at least nine other countries. I’m familiar with a half dozen other post-abortion support and recovery groups, but I’ve never come across support groups for those who’ve had tonsillectomies and root canals. Why? Abortion takes a toll that normal surgeries don’t. People don’t suffer a sense of loss at tonsils they no longer have. People do suffer a sense of loss at a child they no longer have. If they don’t come to terms with that loss, Mr. Woods, it will haunt them, interfere with their relationships, desensitize them. It’ll do all kinds of destructive things that people like myself have to show them in a mirror to help bring them healing.”

  Jake flipped open his notebook. The doctor waited silently, dropping the uncomfortable subject.

  “Doctor, did Dr. Barnes tell you what I’m after—any possible suspects in the killing of my friend Dr. Lowell?”

  “Yes, tragic situation. As I understand it, it’s possible the doctor’s involvement in abortions was connected to the murder?”

  “Maybe. We can’t be certain. We know that emotions run very high with this issue.” For some reason, Jake avoided saying the word “abortion.”

  “Precisely, Mr. Woods. Considerably higher, say, than with root canals and tonsillectomies?”

  “Touché, Doctor. Obviously, you know your field better than I do.”

  “I know it from several angles. One from t
he women, who tend to react one way. One from the men, who react another. I counsel and lead support groups for both. But in the last three years there’s been a third group. Doctors and nurses who do abortions. There are five of them that have come to me for counseling, from three different clinics. Dr. Barnes was the first.”

  “No kidding. Five?”

  “Yes. My reputation is as a therapist, not a prolifer. They think they can trust me, and they’re right.”

  Dr. Scanlon looked down at a yellow legal pad, where he’d scratched some notes.

  “Mr. Woods, there’s a lot of ground to cover. If you don’t mind, I’d like to give you a thumbnail sketch of how abortion affects people, and the potential for violent response against a doctor.”

  “Sure. I’m all ears.”

  “Let’s begin with the women. Those who’ve had abortions are nine times more likely to attempt suicide than women in the general population. Many women are incapacitated by grief following their abortions. Some are very angry at the doctor. Given the right kind of woman—I guess I should say the wrong kind—there’s no doubt in my mind she’d be capable of violence against the man she’s convinced deceived her and took her money to kill her baby. It’s like somebody blowing away a drug dealer because he got them or their friend or their sister hooked. Or like the women who’ve killed men who molested their children. I’ve learned not to underestimate what a woman will do because somebody has wronged her child.”

  “You really think a woman who was given an abortion, say by Dr. Lowell, might be capable of killing him?”

  “It’s possible, certainly. It would be rare of course, but the sheer numbers of women getting abortions has to be considered. Suppose only one in a million would do an act of violence against a doctor. That would account for thirty such acts of violence in the last twenty years. In fact, I’ve personally counseled with two different women who had a revenge fixation, one on a doctor and one on a Planned Parenthood counselor.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Sure. They believe they were lied to, deliberately deceived and used. Their lives seemed ruined, and the thought of that doctor or counselor just going right on with their lives was infuriating. Obviously, I can’t divulge much more due to doctor-patient confidentiality, but I assure you we’re talking very serious situations.”

  “But Doc—Dr. Lowell—he stopped doing abortions several years ago when he became chief of surgery at Lifeline. If someone was going to kill him for doing abortions, wouldn’t they have done it sooner?”

  “Maybe, but not necessarily. There’s a denial following abortion that can go on for years. If people don’t get the help they need, a profound psychological deterioration can take place. It may culminate in a realization of what the abortion really was. Then there’s a tremendous sense of guilt, and sometimes anger. Over time that anger can become severe bitterness. Some people, most people, internalize all this and seem content just to destroy themselves. But some externalize it and want to destroy others, psychologically or even physically. Did you know studies show parents who have abortions are much more likely to abuse their other children?”

  Jake shook his head.

  “And it makes sense when you think about it. If it was okay to kill this child up to the day of his birth, what’s so bad about just slapping around the same child a few months or a few years later?”

  Jake swallowed hard. “Doctor, can we get back to the traumatic stress syndrome, or wherever you were going?”

  “Certainly. People are much more familiar with post-traumatic stress syndrome for Vietnam vets than they are for the same syndrome experienced by aborted women, even though the numbers of women are far greater. But when you start talking about anything that could make abortion appear bad or dangerous, the media just won’t cover it. So people don’t know about it.”

  Jake didn’t want to hear the media blamed for one more thing, but he didn’t know how to argue with the doctor, so he let it go.

  “Let me give you some background. In the early eighties I started working with a lot of Vietnam vets, guys with post-traumatic stress disorder. I felt for them because I served in Nam. Maybe that’s why you’re one of my favorite columnists. I always enjoy it when you talk about Nam.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So we both understand what it was like to lose friends, to wonder why they came home in a box and we came home on a plane. I don’t know if you ever killed someone?”

  Jake nodded.

  “At close range?”

  “One.”

  “Me too. One. But one was all it took, wasn’t it?”

  Jake nodded again.

  “So, I counseled these guys, did some group interaction, accomplished some very positive things for them and for myself. I researched, read, consulted everywhere on post-traumatic stress disorder. It was like that eye-opening thing alcoholics discover in AA—a world that relates to you, that explains inexplicable behavior, that shows you’re not alone. This was ten years ago. When meeting with one of the guys, I found he seemed to have gotten over Vietnam. Now he was strung out on something else, but with exactly the same symptoms. It finally surfaced. He’d gotten his girlfriend pregnant and paid for her abortion. He was angry at the doctor and violently angry at himself. He felt like you’d feel if you’d beaten up a little kid, as if he’d killed his own son or daughter. It was frightening. At the time I was pro-choice. To be honest, I’d never thought it through.”

  Jake stared at the floor.

  “I’d had some women suffering the same thing, but it was that guy who pushed me to make the obvious link to post-traumatic stress disorder. That led to some research, some referrals, and eventually to what’s developed into a specialty, of sorts. Even the American Psychiatric Association, which is very prochoice, officially recognizes abortion can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. It can be triggered by all sorts of little things, even the sound of a vacuum cleaner.”

  “A vacuum cleaner?”

  “It sounds like the vacuum machine used for suction abortions. It’s like a Vietnam vet hearing a loud noise and all of a sudden he’s under the table.”

  “I understand.” Jake had hit the deck twice after Vietnam, once ten years later at an amusement park. He remembered trying to explain his reaction to little Carly as he wiped the dust off his shirt.

  “Think about it, Mr. Woods. One and a half million abortions are performed in this country every year. Suppose only 1 percent were seriously traumatized. It’s much higher, but if it was only 1 percent, that would be fifteen thousand women a year.”

  Jake’s thoughts drifted to Janet. He thought about her emotional distress, her near breakdown. At the time, he was bothered by her weakness, ashamed of it. The doctors had never figured out the cause. For the first time he wondered if…

  “Women rake themselves over the coals for this. They need forgiveness, Jake. Desperately. But so many of them don’t know where to find it. That’s where I can help them as a Christian in a way that all the psychology and medicine in the world can never help them. They need the grace of God. They need the forgiveness of Christ. I can’t give it to them, but I can point them to him.”

  The message Jake had once just associated with Finney and Sue now seemed to be coming at him wherever he went. And part of his past he’d stuffed deep inside pursued him relentlessly.

  “Bottom line? An enraged woman is certainly capable of retaliating against the doctor she believes violated her.”

  Scanlon paused. “But to be honest, I think the more likely candidate is a man.”

  “Why?”

  “You read the Esquire interviews?”

  Jake nodded.

  “What those interviews don’t talk about is the violence thing. It gets back to something I said before. Men are very physical in their desire to protect, and in their desire to avenge injustice, especially injustice against women and children under their care. If a sister or mother or daughter or son is raped or killed, there’s a profound compulsion
to take revenge. Maybe part of it is needing to compensate for his own failure to protect. Look at the men’s movement.”

  “What about it?”

  “You’ve got all these guys feeling like they want to get in touch with their masculinity. They’re tired of acting like emasculated wimps. I’m afraid we could be on the verge of a violent backlash of men against these doctors and clinics. Who knows? What happened to your friend could be that very thing.”

  Jake sat silently, his mind drifting from Doc’s death to Janet, to himself, to a cold winter day at a clinic almost thirty years ago. Sensing his inward journey, Dr. Scanlon was silent.

  “One last thing, doctor,” Jake said. “You talked about clinic workers having problems.”

  “There’s often a veneer of hardness on abortionists. Beneath the veneer, though, they suffer guilt, which manifests itself in destructive behavior. Studies and interviews show abortionists and abortion clinic employees have extremely high rates of nightmares, alcoholism, drug abuse, and family problems leading to divorce. Dr. Barnes has been through it personally, and I’ve seen it in the abortionists I’ve counseled. I’d like to tell you more, but because of the relatively small numbers of them in this city, I’m afraid I could violate confidentiality. Besides, it’s almost 4:00.”

  “Already?”

  “Time flies when you’re havin’ fun, huh?” Dr. Scanlon laughed.

  “Listen, Jake. At 4:00 I’ve got a therapy group in our conference room. It’s five men dealing with, guess what? Post-abortion stress syndrome. We know each other well, been together three months. My guess is they’d welcome you to visit the group, maybe ask them some questions.”

  “No, I really couldn’t…”

  “Why not? You can get some tremendous insights from them. Might be really helpful.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “Please. I have an ulterior motive, Jake. Other than the Esquire feature and a few others, I’ve never seen anyone deal with the effect of abortion on men. I know you’re focused on an investigation now, but my hope is, if you see this thing up close you’ll write a column on it, bring it into the public eye.”