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Q. If a woman commits the sin of abortion, people say that she can be forgiven. But if the father of the baby wanted that child, and had absolutely no say in the child's fate, and afterwards wanted to commit suicide, would he be forgiven?

A. First and most important, do not kill yourself. This is not what you want to do. You want release from the crushing guilt and pain, and that can be had on this side of the grave.

Suicide, however, offers no such guarantee. When Sheldon Vanauken was devastated by the death of his wife, he played with the thought of going to "join her," as he recounts in his memoir, A Severe Mercy. His friend C. S. Lewis pulled him up short by asking, "How do you know you would go to the same place?" It's a chilling thought—sufficiently chilling, I hope.

I can hear a lot of bitterness in your question, and you have good grounds for it. The official "line" on abortion says that a man has no right to an opinion on whether the mother of his child chooses abortion. He's supposed to keep silent and let her decide for herself, even if his heart is breaking. Tragically, this silence sometimes increases the chance of abortion; it may be that all the woman is waiting for is an assurance that the man loves her and their child, and will bind himself to them in love. When she hears only "It's up to you," she feels abandoned.

But even in cases like yours, where the man urgently wants to save the child, he can be pushed aside. The expectation is that men want to play around and don't want responsibility for children, and that abortion suits their plans. Men like you, who feel such profound grief, are not only disempowered, they're invisible.

You need someone to listen to you personally as you completely ventilate this anger and grief. I would urge you to contact your local pregnancy care center (look under "Alternatives to Abortion" in the yellow pages); most centers have resources for post-abortion counseling. You may also benefit from books like Healing a Father's Heart: A Post-Abortion Bible Study for Men by Linda Cochrane and Men and Abortion: A Path to Healing by Catherine Coyle.

Finally, you can look to the example of King David. He had a son out of wedlock—a particularly shady event where he seduced another man's wife, and when she turned up pregnant, arranged for the man's murder. When the baby grew ill, David was stricken with remorse and prayed desperately, fasting for seven days and lying on the ground.

David's servants were afraid to tell him when the child died, seeing how distressed he had been: "He may do himself some harm," they said. But David heard them whispering. "Is the child dead?" he asked, and when they answered yes, David washed his face and went in to worship God. David explained to his puzzled servants that he had done all he could do. "Now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me" (2 Samuel 12:13-23).

Frederica Mathewes-Green is the author of The Illumined Heart (Paraclete Press).

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