By Susan Brinkmann
CS&T Correspondent
He was the “the guy,” tooling around town in a silver Mustang,
picking up and putting down women at will. When one of those women got
pregnant, he told himself, “No problem. Just get an abortion.”
That’s exactly what Jonathon Flora did more than two decades before
he would become an award-winning Disney producer.
“Being ‘the guy,’ I had the advantage of being able
to separate myself from another critical reality. You see, I wasn’t
the one that would have to go through the actual abortion procedure,”
Flora writes in a gripping new book compiled in part by Kevin Burke, associate
director of the international post-abortion healing ministry, Rachel’s
Vineyard.
“I would never be haunted by the faces of those in the abortion
clinic, the impersonal shallow words spoken, the smells, the colors of
the room, the sounds. … I simply had to drive my girlfriend to the
clinic, write the check, and pick her up afterward. And that’s exactly
what I did.”
But as life went on, Flora realized it wasn’t nearly that simple.
Deep down, he knew he had murdered his own child, but he suppressed all
that, ignored it, for almost two decades. Ever so slowly, it began to
eat away at his soul, driving him into drugs, drinking, and non-committal
sex until, one day, he agreed to meet with a beautiful woman in a church.
She never showed up, but God did.
The healing and transformation of Jonathon Flora, who would go on to produce
the film, “A Distant Thunder” about partial birth abortion,
is one of 10 testimonies of men who suffered from their involvement in
an abortion. These stories are recounted in a ground-breaking new book
titled, “Redeeming a Father's Heart.”
Compiled by Burke, David Wemhoff and Marvin Stockwell, the book shines
a bright light on a dark secret that has remained under wraps for much
too long — men’s abortion pain.
“Men grieve as deeply as women from abortion,” said Burke,
who lives in King of Prussia with his wife, Theresa, the founder of Rachel’s
Vineyard, and their five children.
Now working full-time in the ministry, which offers weekend retreats around
the world for post-abortive men and women, Burke has seen first-hand just
how deeply men can be affected by abortion.
“I’ve seen some powerful tears fall, but men have the capacity
to really bury the pain, to compartmentalize it, to put it off in a corner,
and get on with other areas of their life, such as the work area,”
Burke said. “They'll really throw themselves into their work, but
they’re going to act out on that loss in some way. It may affect
their ability to bond in future relationships and really be present in
their marriage and family life.”
The men who are most at risk for this kind of reaction aren’t the
playboy types like Flora, but those who did not want the abortion, but
were unable to stop it, Burke said.
The book also contains a powerful testimony from a man who changed his
mind after his fiancé went in for the procedure, and rushed into
the operating room to try to stop it.
The man writes: “As I entered the room, Janet screamed out, ‘John,
what are you doing?’ The doctor looked at me and smiled. “John,
we are just finishing up, everything went fine.’ I looked at Janet;
she was white as a ghost and crying. Our baby had just been killed. I
was unable to stop it. I even paid for it to happen! It was a living nightmare.
I stormed out of the building knocking over some chairs and a trash can
in my rage. We drove home in silence, both in shock.”
“That image formed a traumatic imprint on his brain,” said
Burke, who worked with the man, who does not give his name in the book.
“That’s something he sat awake at night and just could not
get out of his head — that image of not being able to stop the procedure."
Men like this need intervention right away, Burke said. “If not,
they’re going to act out on that powerlessness and rage. They’re
going to act out on others or on themselves. They’ll act out either
by doing drugs and alcohol and [or with] other self-destructive behaviors
to the point of killing themselves."
Burke’s book includes testimonies from men like James McNeil, who
married a post-abortive woman.
“This is a huge area that most folks don’t even think about,
but yet impacts marriage in a serious way,” Burke said.
The impetus to compile the book was the lack of research available in
the area of men’s abortion pain.
“There are other books out there that talk about the symptoms, but
I was seeing themes in my work at Rachel’s Vineyard that I didn’t
see reflected in the literature,” Burke said.
“I thought the best way to present these themes was for men to share
their own stories. When a man says, ‘This is my experience; this
is how it hurt me,’ for him to have the humility to take responsibility
for his role in it, or to be vulnerable to say how deeply he’s been
hurt, ... that’s the most important aspect of this book. Each of
these stories reflects how, through humility, they were able to open themselves
up to healing. Then look what God did in their lives.”
The book can also help to educate lay people, professionals, clergy —
anyone who works with men about this subject.
“By reading these stories, they can be sensitive to men who might
come into their life and be able to ask that question: ‘Is there
a pregnancy loss in your past?’ You would be shocked by how many
people are never asked that question in the course of their marital counseling
[by] their medical professionals [or] priests.”
Women can also find healing in this book, Burke says. “So many times
women have been abandoned in the abortion process. Women experience another
level of healing when they hear a man share his regret, his grief.”
It can also be helpful for women who married men who have an abortion
in their past to better understand how it might be impacting their husband’s
behavior.
Most important of all, it gives men a roadmap to healing. “I know
men never want to ask for directions,” he says, “but these
men can give others an idea from their life journey on how to find reconciliation
and healing.”
Redeeming a Father’s Heart: Men Share Powerful Stories of Abortion
Loss and Recovery; Kevin Burke; Author House; pp 96; $12.95. This book
can be ordered directly from the publisher by calling Author House at
888-519-5121 or visiting www.authorhouse.com/BookStore.
Contact Susan Brinkmann at fiat723@aol.com or (215) 965-4615.
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