{"id":1891,"date":"2007-09-24T22:01:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-24T22:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/reclaiming-fatherhood-men-and-abortion.html"},"modified":"2007-09-24T22:01:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-24T22:01:00","slug":"reclaiming-fatherhood-men-and-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/reclaiming-fatherhood-men-and-abortion.html","title":{"rendered":"Reclaiming fatherhood: men and abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>With all the attention that the Church focuses on abortion and its aftermath, here is one group often overlooked: the fathers. <\/p>\n

A California conference later this fall will seek to change that, according to this item<\/a> from the Catholic News Service: <\/p>\n

It took a long time for attorney Chris Aubert to miss his children — the ones he lost to abortion.<\/p>\n

But once he did — and it took the better part of a decade — he was ready to make his choice for life.<\/p>\n

Aubert is scheduled to speak at a “Reclaiming Fatherhood” conference Nov. 28-29 in San Francisco, funded by the Knights of Columbus and co-sponsored by the Knights and the Archdiocese of San Francisco.<\/p>\n

It is being organized by the Milwaukee-based Office of Post-Abortion Reconciliation and Healing, headed by Vicki Thorn, and according to the office, the event is the first to focus on the effects of abortion on men.<\/p>\n

The conference, according to Thorn, could help men dealing with the psychological trauma of post-abortion reality the way Project Rachel — the post-abortion healing ministry of the Catholic Church Thorn founded — has helped women who have undergone abortions deal with their own psychological scars.<\/p>\n

Aubert, in a telephone interview with Catholic News Service from The Woodlands, Texas, a Houston suburb, said that in 1985, when he first impregnated a woman who was ” a friend, but not really a girlfriend, I was not a one-woman man, let’s say, at the time, and I had no qualms about premarital sex or anything like that.”<\/p>\n

Nor did he have any qualms about her decision to have an abortion. “She got the abortion. I did not go. It was a complete and total nonevent for me,” he said. “My thinking was at the time this was just a collection of nonviable tissue cells, it’s perfectly legal, it’s her body — all the things today I find as laughably silly. I bought into it.” He never saw the woman again.<\/p>\n

Much the same was true in 1991, six years later, when he got his girlfriend pregnant. “I had just been civilly divorced outside the church and I was not ready to get married again. She was a Methodist, I was a ‘nothing.'” Nominally Jewish, Aubert said his bar mitzvah in 1970 was the last time he had stepped into a synagogue. “She had no quarrel with the abortion. I said, ‘Fine with me,'” he recalled.<\/p>\n

There was a difference, though, between the two abortions.<\/p>\n

“This time, however, I did go into the clinic with her. I went into the waiting room with her,” Aubert said. “Looking back, it was probably something very, very deep within me that said, ‘Something about this isn’t right.’ I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it if you asked me. … Something about the second one seems different.”<\/p>\n

Thorn told CNS in a Sept. 19 interview that research indicates men go through their own physical changes as they go through pregnancy with their mate. One is a lessening of testosterone. Men also bond more closely with their mate after childbirth and are willing to make sacrifices to solidify the family unit: “I’ll make that midnight run for diapers, and, honey, since I’m out, do you want any Starbucks?” Those changes, Thorn added, are short-circuited in an abortion.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s much more at the link — and more information about Reclaiming Fatherhood right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With all the attention that the Church focuses on abortion and its aftermath, here is one group often overlooked: the fathers. A California conference later this fall will seek to change that, according to this item from the Catholic News Service: It took a long time for attorney Chris Aubert to miss his children —…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nReclaiming fatherhood: men and abortion - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/reclaiming-fatherhood-men-and-abortion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reclaiming fatherhood: men and abortion - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With all the attention that the Church focuses on abortion and its aftermath, here is one group often overlooked: the fathers. A California conference later this fall will seek to change that, according to this item from the Catholic News Service: It took a long time for attorney Chris Aubert to miss his children —…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/reclaiming-fatherhood-men-and-abortion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-09-24T22:01:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/RvhtiLdyiFI\/AAAAAAAAA_s\/B-ujWLrCW28\/s320\/manpic7.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"deacon greg kandra\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Reclaiming fatherhood: men and abortion - The Deacon's Bench","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/reclaiming-fatherhood-men-and-abortion.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Reclaiming fatherhood: men and abortion - The Deacon's Bench","og_description":"With all the attention that the Church focuses on abortion and its aftermath, here is one group often overlooked: the fathers. A California conference later this fall will seek to change that, according to this item from the Catholic News Service: It took a long time for attorney Chris Aubert to miss his children —…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/reclaiming-fatherhood-men-and-abortion.html","og_site_name":"The Deacon's Bench","article_published_time":"2007-09-24T22:01:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/RvhtiLdyiFI\/AAAAAAAAA_s\/B-ujWLrCW28\/s320\/manpic7.jpg"}],"author":"deacon greg kandra","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/reclaiming-fatherhood-men-and-abortion.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/reclaiming-fatherhood-men-and-abortion.html","name":"Reclaiming fatherhood: men and abortion - The Deacon's Bench","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/reclaiming-fatherhood-men-and-abortion.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/reclaiming-fatherhood-men-and-abortion.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/RvhtiLdyiFI\/AAAAAAAAA_s\/B-ujWLrCW28\/s320\/manpic7.jpg","datePublished":"2007-09-24T22:01:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-09-24T22:01:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/052b8cd86cc713feaccdc8282b03cf10"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/reclaiming-fatherhood-men-and-abortion.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/reclaiming-fatherhood-men-and-abortion.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/reclaiming-fatherhood-men-and-abortion.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/RvhtiLdyiFI\/AAAAAAAAA_s\/B-ujWLrCW28\/s320\/manpic7.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/RvhtiLdyiFI\/AAAAAAAAA_s\/B-ujWLrCW28\/s320\/manpic7.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/reclaiming-fatherhood-men-and-abortion.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Reclaiming fatherhood: men and abortion"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/","name":"The Deacon's Bench","description":"Where a Roman Catholic Deacon Ponders the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/052b8cd86cc713feaccdc8282b03cf10","name":"deacon greg kandra","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a4e\/a4e07ce6fde3f10d4d9753243fd48d45x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a4e\/a4e07ce6fde3f10d4d9753243fd48d45x96.jpg","caption":"deacon greg kandra"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/deacon-greg-kandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/365"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}