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The emotional and spiritual pain that women experience after abortion is something that abortion-advocates want to keep buried. Women are told that they will simply “get over it”.

Well, they don’t. Ever.

Yet, many post-abortive women arise from the ashes of their shattering choice and find ways to communicate their deep wells of pain, loss, and grief. Their only desire is to spare their sisters from making the same mistake. In this they find healing and peace.

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The following poem by Amanda Lewanski is making the rounds in social media. Ghost in the House, written in 2000, sensitively reveals the brokenness of a post-abortive woman who experiences a beautiful relationship with her aborted child grow “more real”, but only through the lives of her subsequent children.

The poem gives voice to the reality experienced by many post-abortive women, namely that a child lost through abortion can never ever be forgotten.

The poem is a haunting warning to anyone who might council a woman to abort with the words, “You will get over it in time.”

A sense of hope surges through the poem’s last stanza. The woman’s relationship with her aborted baby may have been damaged, but it is not lost.

If you, dear reader, have had an abortion and are experiencing depression, feelings of unworthiness, feeling guilt, anger, shame or sorrow in relation to your abortion, using drugs or alcohol in order to cope, having abortion related nightmares, dreams or flashbacks, healing is real and it is available.


Ghost in the House

by Amanda Lewanski, ©2000

Come, child. It's evening. Come to me
And sit with me once more.
Let's rock here while the others sleep.
Let's see-your sister's four;
The baby is three months today;
Your little brother's two,
And I have not decided if I'll tell them about you.

And you, you would be eight this year.
I do not know your name.
The color of your eyes, or hair,
Or where, or how, to blame.
The fear was all, the fear of change,
For I saw change as loss.
Against my dreams, my plans, my life
You seemed so small a cost,
Not knowing how your presence
Altered how I felt and thought,
Not knowing how you changed me
In the mix the hormones brought.
And you were not a child to me
But sickness, pain, and fear-
But oh, I know, I know you now,
Now that these three are here!
Your scent, your weight within my arms,
Your head upon my breast-
I did not know these things when I decided what was best.

And I am lost and so confused
And don't know how to feel,
For you, who were an illness,
Every year become more real;
Your sister and your brothers,
They proclaim you as they grow.
They make it harder still to face
The coldest truth I know:
That knowing-feeling-only
What I knew and felt back then,
I cannot say I would not make
This saddest choice again.
Oh! My little lost unknown,
My first and neverborn,
Forgive the ignorance that sent you
To the dark, unmourned!

And no, it isn't every day
I find your shadow here;
Most times I'm far too busy
For reflection or for tears,
But sometimes, when the children sleep
And I have time alone,
I sit down in the dark, and rock,
And bring my baby home.