"The clinic was a very cold place. We spoke to a counselor who asked us if we felt that we knew what we were doing. They told me it would be better if I left and came back to pick her up later. So I went out to get some air. I found out later that she'd had second thoughts and come out looking for me. But I wasn't there. So she went ahead with the abortion. That was the hardest thing because I wasn't there when she needed me."

Ryan Hunter was 24 when his girlfriend, Kathy, told him she was pregnant. At the time they were both students at a technical college and had been dating a few months. Although Hunter felt secure in the relationship, he didn't feel ready to be a parent, and he worried that if Kathy's parents found out about the pregnancy they might force her to stop seeing him.

"We chose the easy way out, but it didn't seem easy at the time," says Hunter. "We had many deep discussions. There were a lot of tears. Both of us were fully involved in the decision, and neither one of us pushed the other."

The Hunters hoped the abortion would bring an end to the crisis caused by the pregnancy. But instead of a sense of peace, they found it had brought a different kind of pain into their lives. Ryan was haunted by the fact that he had not been in the waiting room when Kathy had come out looking for him. Kathy remained emotionally fragile, occasionally tearing up when she saw pictures of babies and children. Although they remained together, they had a hard time communicating their feelings to each other.

"We never talked about it," recalls Hunter. "We would drive along the highway and I'd see one of those big prolife billboards and try to distract her so she wouldn't see it. I was trying to protect her. I didn't realize at that point that I'd been affected, too."

Ryan and Kathy married two years later, but the abortion continued to cast a shadow over their relationship, particularly around the issue of children. "We never talked about having kids. I think we both felt that we had sinned seriously and didn't deserve to be forgiven. There was always this idea in the back of my head that God would punish us by not allowing us to have children."

Delayed reaction
It is estimated that almost 40 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 45 have had at least one abortion. Rarely, though, does one hear the obvious corollary that a similar proportion of men have fathered a child who has been lost to abortion. Some of these men encouraged or pressured their partners to abort. Others strongly opposed the abortion. Many submerged their own feelings and took refuge in the idea that their role was to support their partners' decision.

There is increasing recognition that abortion can have an emotional impact on women that is serious and in some cases long-lasting. While there continues to be debate about the prevalence and intensity of psychological symptoms, a growing number of therapists recognize that abortion-like other forms of pregnancy loss-can have long-term emotional consequences.

What is less well known is that men, too, can suffer emotionally and spiritually as a result of abortion. "So often the man's reactions are delayed," says Randall Wyatt, a psychotherapist and director of the Crosswinds Counseling Center in Dublin, California. "He may think he is supposed to be supportive of the woman and may not offer his own opinions. So his feelings-whether they are relief, grief, anger, resentment, or shame-don't get processed, and that can come out later."

Wyatt's practice involves work with couples and post-traumatic stress counseling, and he has encountered abortion in both contexts. "I've never met a person who went through it who thought it was easy or who didn't have at least some sense of regret," he says. "But it's not always traumatizing. It depends on the person and their experience."

There is limited literature on the psychological impact of abortion on men. The most well-known study was conducted by sociologist Arthur Shostak and is featured in his 1984 book Men and Abortion: Lessons, Losses, and Loves (Praeger). Shostak interviewed 1,000 men who had accompanied their partners to an abortion clinic. He found that a large number of them had thoughts about the child, had dreamed about it, and anticipated misgivings after the abortion.

Some studies suggest men may actually be more likely to have an adverse psychological reaction to an abortion than women. A 1989 Los Angeles Times survey of men and women who had an abortion in their past found that two thirds of the men regretted the choice compared to one quarter of the women. A 1993 study by sociologists Eileen Nelson and Priscilla Coleman found that 33 percent of women and 52 percent of men reported a sense of regret following the abortion.

Finding forgiveness
Most post-abortion counseling programs have been designed, for obvious reasons, to meet the needs of women. The most well-known Catholic ministry of this type is Project Rachel, which was developed in 1984 by Vicki Thorn in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and has spread to a large number of dioceses around the United States. Although her program was aimed at women, Thorn found she was getting calls from men as well. "The pain of fathers is so incredibly desperate," she says.