Christianity Today

As a Baptist church youth leader, Jerry Little had long preached about the evils of abortion. He and his wife, Debbie, repeatedly opened their home to young, unwed mothers-to-be.

But in 1993, his daughter, Candy, 18, revealed her own pregnancy. Shocked, Little convinced himself that his daughter's case was different and that only an abortion could resolve the issue.

Candy, however, didn't want an abortion.

Little drove his daughter 120 miles from their Amarillo, Texas, home to Lubbock for a clandestine abortion. Once inside the facility, Candy became so distraught that the abortionist refused to do the procedure.

But Little persisted, talking her into the procedure. Two days later, Little and his daughter returned. Although Candy continued to cry uncontrollably, this time the abortionist took Little's money.

When Candy returned to the waiting room, she gazed vacantly in her father's direction and said, "Let's go." He immediately knew their relationship would never be the same, but he tried to push that knowledge aside. For the next two years, the Little family nearly disintegrated while keeping the abortion a secret. The guilt and blame nearly overwhelmed Little, who felt he had nowhere to turn.

Although pregnancy care centers began providing post-abortion syndrome counseling for women soon after Roe v. Wade became law, spiritual and psychological healing for men remains rare. Warren L. Williams has counseled 250 post-abortive men in the past 25 years as founder of Fathers & Brothers Ministries International in Boulder, Colorado. Williams estimates that only 4,000 American men in the past decade have gone through any kind of study about how abortion has affected them.

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