The first of the Baby Boomers were in their early twenties when the Supreme Court passed the Roe V. Wade abortion decision to legalize abortion in 1973.

The Boomers, as they entered into their peak childbearing years, would go on to have the highest rates of abortion in the last 45 years.

Abortion crossed the 1.5 million a year mark for the first time in 1980 with 1,553,900 … and the high for the decade of 1,590,800 reported in 1988. … The U.S. abortion ratio reached its peak in 1984, with a figure of 364 abortions for every thousand live births.

Now, as Boomers are aging, Jocelyn Elise Crowley writes in The Week that “even though divorce rates across all age groups have stabilized, the number of gray divorces (i.e., divorce after age 50) has dramatically increased.

Currently, about one out of every four divorces is gray.

Crowley interviewed 40 men and 40 women and asked them why, at this point in their lives, they were divorcing.

The primary reasons that women shared for divorce were their partner’s infidelity, verbal abuse, and addictions to drugs, alcohol, and pornography.

Men’s reasons were different and focused on areas like their spouse’s money management (over-spending) and resentment over differences in parenting philosophy.

The Baby Elephant in the Room

There is one very important question that Jocelyn Crowley could have asked those women and men of the Boomer Generation facing gray divorce:

 Have you experienced a pregnancy loss (abortions, miscarriages) either prior to or during your marriage?  What was that experience like for you…for your partner? 

The Impact of Abortion on Relationships

In my book, Tears of the Fisherman, I share an interview with Mary and Joe about an abortion they had when Mary was in college, prior to their marriage.

Here’s an excerpt:

Mary: I told Joe I was pregnant, and that I would have to get an abortion. I was waiting desperately for him to say something, to tell me we’d manage somehow. It never happened.

Joe: I knew it was wrong, but I was silent. I never stood up for the baby. I prejudged her, and decided that her mind was made up. I was angry with her for choosing an abortion.

Mary: My feeling of anger at Joe was pushed down for so many years that I didn’t even recognize it. But it was there all the time. I took my anger out on him without ever recognizing where it came from.

Joe: There was a lack of trust in our relationship. I blamed her for the loss of the baby. I did things that purposely hurt her. I drank a lot, I gambled, I did a lot of things to escape into a private world where I wouldn’t feel pain.

While there can be many factors that contribute to marital problems, you can see in Mary and Joe’s case how this complicated experience of loss  led to problems in their relationship.

Fortunately, when the couple attended an abortion recovery program Rachel’s Vineyard, they were able to begin the process of emotional, spiritual and relational healing they so desperately needed:

Mary: My big breakthrough came when I was able to express my anger at Joe. He had never realized that the abortion had any connection to our behavior. We were able to forgive each other, and to have our baby forgive us.

Joe: I was able to express my anger toward myself at my total lack of courage. Once I released that, it’s easier to accept and take ownership for the acts that I did… I feel reborn. I’ve been accepted by God, my wife, and, most of all, by myself.

The Harvest is Plentiful

Each marriage and the individual and relationship history that couples share is unique. In some cases it will be better for individuals or spouses to attend separate Rachel’s Vineyard weekends or other abortion recovery program.

For others like Mary and Joe, making that journey together will be a powerful and rewarding option. When you contact your local site they can help you discern the best option.

Given the abortion rates among Baby Boomers, this is a vast mission field for the Church. Boomers are approaching a time in their lives when they become more aware of their own mortality.

They have experienced the loss of parents, the aging and separation of living children, and the challenge of careers. They are ripe for taking a step back and revisiting an area of their lives that, while buried for many years, has actually had a long-term, profound effect on their lives.

While there is pain in opening up this wound from the past, those that make the journey will tell you that the rewards that flow from the healing experience can bless all areas of your life.

This dark and often shame-filled place in your heart and soul can be the entryway for God to touch you intimately and powerfully.

It offers an opportunity to shed new light, awareness, and understanding of how abortion impacted your life, marriages, and parenting, as well as how it may have contributed to your relationship problems.

For churches, this is an abundant harvest just waiting to bear fruit.

The first step is in raising awareness.

If you are a clergy, pastor, or volunteer minister in your church, here are some ways you can reach out to the Boomers with abortion loss:

– Have a woman or man share their personal experience. He or she can give a brief presentation as part of your service or at a separate gathering. You can find a speaker in your area by contacting the Silent No More Awareness Campaign.

– Share videos and pamphlets with helpful information and resources about after abortion healing.

– Include some of our Inserts and short messages in your church bulletin

If you or someone you love is experiencing marriage and family challenges, and you suspect that abortion may be a part of their story, please have them visit our Shockwaves of Abortion website to learn more.

Because of the opioid epidemic, record numbers of children are coming into foster care:

Every 15 minutes a baby is born substance-exposed. Nearly 50,000 will enter care this year, more than ever before…

Author Darcy Olsen writes in National Review that now more than ever, the system is in serious need of reform:

The purpose of foster care is to provide temporary safety for children, but for thousands it has become a life sentence.

Like pre-born children in the womb, children in foster care are denied some of the “basic constitutional rights we cherish as Americans.”

In America, the criminally accused have a constitutional right to counsel and to the speedy disposition of their cases; these children don’t.

And the legal protections afforded these children are decidedly weaker than those given to their abusers.

As the judge in one of my severance hearings said, “I’d like to remind everyone in the courtroom that mom’s rights are constitutional, and baby’s rights are only statutory.”   

Darcy Olsen is a foster mother and founder and CEO of Generation Justice, which works to extend constitutional rights and protections to foster children.

Olsen shares:

I fostered “Emma” as a newborn. She is still a ward of the state as she nears her sixth birthday. Statistically, Emma is more likely to end up in prison than to be adopted.

Or consider a teenager I know. “John” entered state care in diapers. He was never returned home or adopted. He’s lived 16 years in the system — in 48 different homes.

Like the nearly 60 million preborn children who have died in the womb, children in foster care are often denied basic constitutional rights.

There are the lasting consequences for these children and for our society.

The author presents some promising developments in Arizona indicating that change to existing laws is possible – changes that protects vulnerable children.

Arizona’s has enacted new legislation that can be used as a model to guide lawmakers nationwide.

Please read Olsen’s full article in National Review:

America’s Flood of Opioid Orphans

By Kevin Burke, LSW

Susan Swander, a Rachel’s Vineyard team member in Oregon shares:

“Yes, Mother’s Day can be a hard day for women with abortion loss. But it can also be a day for those women to celebrate being mothers.”

How is it possible that a secret and shameful event from the past…can be a cause for celebration?

To understand this good news, we first need to explore the heart of the abortion wound.

So many of the symptoms women and men struggle with after abortion such as depression, anxiety, addictions, and relationship problems are rooted in the following:

– Abortion attacks the unique relationship between a mother and her unborn child

– A woman who has experienced abortion loss has within her heart, soul and body a powerful desire to reconnect in love as mother with her aborted child or children.

– Given her role in the child’s death, the circumstances of the pregnancy and trauma associated with the procedure, it can be very difficult to sort through the emotional aftermath and pain to find peace and reconciliation.

The Intimate Relationship of Mother and Child

Until that bond between parent and child is re-established in an abortion recovery program, women and men may develop substitute relationships with things like substances, work, and sex as a way to cope with repressed grief and the complicated feelings that often accompany the abortion experience.

Often these symptoms lead to the process of traumatic re-enactment resulting in repeat abortion procedures (close to 50% of all abortions are repeat procedures.)

Abortion is an especially sensitive wound for women given their unique role in pregnancy and childbirth. With conception, a mother’s body is quite aware that there is a very small child growing in the womb.

The female body is anything but “pro-choice.” From the beginning she begins the intimate process of nurturing and protecting the developing life that resides within her.   A woman’s body is clearly pro-baby and pro-life.

We know that pressure from the baby’s father, other family members, fears and anxieties about motherhood, and challenging circumstances can lead parents to see abortion as the only way to resolve an unplanned pregnancy.

Yet, even when a conscious decision to abort seems the only possible solution, (which of course it is not), and she experiences a sense of relief after the procedure, a mother is still deeply injured when she participates in severing that intimate relationship as the mother of her unborn child.

Thanks to the mercy of God and the physical resurrection of Jesus, our Christian faith gives mothers the sure hope that while there may have been a physical separation with the child (or children), she never stopped being the mother of her unique and precious child.

When parents go through an abortion recovery program, they come to understand and more importantly, intimately experience a new reality. The bond between parent and child, which was denied for many years, is now resurrected and firmly rooted in their maternal and paternal heart.

The spiritual relationship with their child in this life, and the hope of reunion in eternal life to come with the Lord, is a source of great consolation and peace.

Susan shares:

So many women who have had abortions never thought of themselves as mothers, if they didn’t have any living children, until after a healing program like Rachel’s Vineyard. And even someone like me who does have a living son, after doing my Rachel’s Vineyard retreats, Mother’s Day became a day for me to honor and celebrate my three aborted children & one miscarried. So, now I have five children that I rejoice in.”

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder…  (Matthew 15:19)

As the First World War raged on in Europe atheistic communism was poised to spread across Russia like a malevolent virus.  

Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ appeared to three Portuguese peasant children and shared in her apparition of July 13th 1917 :

The [First World War] is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI (1922-1939)…If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church…

Tragically men continued to offend God as they embraced  communist and later Nazi ideologies.   War, famine, persecution of the Church and unprecedented murder and destruction flowed from this satanic seduction of the human family.  

The Errors of Russia and the Abortion Holocaust

Many years later, we can see in the fall of the Soviet Union in March 1990 a fulfillment of Mary’s promise of a future conversion of Russia.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, the threat of nuclear annihilation was reduced considerably.

But do the errors of Russia only refer to the evil of atheistic communism?

Since the 1960’s the consumerism of the western world, partnered with the unfolding cultural and sexual revolutions, has led to the rise of practical atheism and pagan morality.

The deadliest fruit of these errors has dark roots in the former Soviet Union.

Geoffrey Strickland, J.D., J.C.L., who serves as the Rome Office Director for Priests for Life, shares about the roots of abortion in the former Soviet Union:

Russia was the first country ever to legalize abortion up to birth without restriction and also developed and promulgated technology to this end.[1] Russia and areas formerly controlled by the Soviet Union have the highest abortion rate in the world.[2]

 Further, those countries sharing in the political and ideological legacy of Russia at that time such as China, Cuba and others continue to carry on this violent imperative.[3]”

 “Thus “various nations” – the innumerable children of every race, creed and culture – have indeed been “annihilated” through the fundamental error of abortion and the faulty logic behind it, namely that a human child is not a human being.”

Over 1 billion unborn girls and boys have been aborted around the world in the last 100 years.

In China and India, sex selection abortions have killed 160 million unborn baby girls.  The imbalance of men to women is having unforeseen consequences for these societies.

My Immaculate Heart Will Triumph!

Such massive deception and death can leave us numb and tempted to despair.

But evil, death and despair will not have the last word.

The Mother of Jesus assured us that in the end, “My Immaculate Heart will Triumph!”

But Mary wants our prayers, rosaries and acts of sacrifice and reparation to play an important part in this great victory.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XIV comments on the conclusion of the famous Third secret of Fatima entrusted to visionary Lucia:

“The concluding part of the ‘secret’ … is a consoling vision, which seeks to open a history of blood and tears to the healing power of God. Beneath the arms of the cross angels gather up the blood of the martyrs, and with it they give life to the souls making their way to God

… As from Christ’s death, from his wounded side, the Church was born, so the death of the witnesses is fruitful for the future life of the Church…

The vision of the third part of the ‘secret,’ so distressing at first, concludes with an image of hope:

 No suffering is in vain, and it is a suffering Church, a Church of martyrs, which becomes a sign-post for man in his search for God.”

This message from Benedict XVI has special relevance and consolation to those parents involved in the abortion of their children, and the millions of preborn children who lost their lives in this holocaust, and are now with the Lord.

Thanks to the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus, there is the hope of repentance and restoration.

The blood of the innocent unborn children lost to abortion, and the tears of their parents, can be a fruitful source of conversion and new life for the Church.

As Benedict XVI wrote, no suffering is in vain when united to the cross of Christ.

[You can find an excellent and informative overview of the Fatima apparitions here at EWTN.]

On Tuesday, Internationally acclaimed Irish rock band U2 tweeted in support of relaxing Ireland’s  strict abortion laws.

It’s ironic that rock stars and entertainers often promote abortion as a progressive social justice cause.

What U2 and their lead singer Bono fail to understand, is how many rock legends were conceived in very challenging circumstances, and would likely have died in the womb  if conceived today.

In my article from The Stream, I look at 2 iconic rock stars that were thankfully conceived and born before abortion was legal in the United Kingdom:

 Imagine for a moment. It’s 1940. We’re in Great Britain. Tweak just one detail of history. Pretend that abortion is already legal.

We’re in a historical port town on the northwest shores of England. A woman named Julia discovers she is pregnant. The father, a merchant seaman named Alfred, abandons her during the pregnancy.

Julia is a creative and free-spirited woman. She’s unprepared for the responsibilities of motherhood. Alfred prefers to spend much of his life on the open seas. He is unwilling to support a family or parent his child.

In July 1940, in Julia’s sixth month of pregnancy, German bombers began their reign of terror. They attack the civilian population and strategic port cities of Great Britain.

Imagine if Britain had Planned Parenthood or Marie Stopes facilities that performed legal abortion procedures in 1940. And Julia came to one of their centers. What would the staff most likely have recommended?

Read the rest of the article here.