Have You Had an Abortion? Vicki Thorn Lived to Help You

O ne of the greatest friends to women died suddenly just after Easter Sunday. Vicki Thorn was the founder of Project Rachel, a post-abortion-healing ministry. “She was a voice for us when we were not able to speak yet,” Theresa Bonapartis, who had an abortion and now works with women who have had one. “She heard us when others did not want to listen and definitely opened the door of healing in the church.” Project Rachel and other ministries, including Bonapartis’s Lumina, are internationally available now, but that’s because Thorn started the essential work.

Thorn’s heart for women who have had abortions began when she was in high school, before Roe v. Wade. Abortion was not legal, but it was available. As a senior, she befriended a junior who had had an abortion — and that wasn’t her only pregnancy. She chose adoption. She was in tremendous pain. “I can live with the adoption” she often told Thorn. “I can’t live with the abortion.” Years later, Thorn told me her “words are etched in my heart.” That early friendship was clearly formative.

Project Rachel, founded in 1984, takes its name from the Old Testament. When Rachel mourns for her children, God tells her she doesn’t need to continue, as her cries have been heard. And He says: “There is hope for your future.” That is the message of not only Project Rachel but Vicki Thorn’s life. She was honored by the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at Notre Dame last year around this time. In a video testimony, she shared that frequently she would be introduced at an event and a woman she didn’t know, whose wounds from abortion had been healed thanks to the Project Rachel model, would come up to her and ask to hug her.

I asked Thorn in 2015 what was the most important thing she has learned about women in crisis pregnancies. “They are terrified,” she told me. “They are without support in many cases. They have been led to believe that a pregnancy out of wedlock is the worst thing that can happen.” Thorn was a woman of faith, but she also knew the science.

We need to understand that the brain between ages eleven and 19 is in a state of reconstruction, and the higher-functioning part is not working well. The decision comes from the fear center of the brain — self-preservation is running the show. Also, if a person has been stressed while young, moral development may not come online when expected.

She added, from her decades of experience, “Many of them were spiritually aborted themselves.” They often have no idea what amazing things they are capable of naturally, and with God’s grace.

“It is critical to understand that the abortion debate is not a moral and philosophical issue, but a heart issue,” Thorn emphasized to me in another exchange. “We all know someone, but perhaps not who it is, that has had an abortion or been touched by one.”

A woman who has had an abortion, Thorn would emphasize, is a mother:

She is a mother who has lost her child in a traumatic and unnatural way. Women carry cells from every child they ever conceive, for the rest of their lives. Biologically she is a mother! The pain of abortion may come up immediately or many years later when a trigger happens. Many times, they are caught off guard when the pain comes to the forefront, because it was supposed to have solved a problem. Abortion changes its meaning over a lifetime, and what solved a problem at one point may later be the only child conceived.

While every woman who has had an abortion may not come to full-on regret it, over time there is a new awareness, Thorn observed.

Thorn was one of the most approachable people in the world — exactly as a Christian should be. From afar, you would not get a judge-y vibe from her, but a loving welcome. Her life’s work — which included in no small way being a wife and mother — was to love. She put love into an issue where there is so much pain and so much anger and yelling. “No one has been argued into the pro-life movement,” she would say, “but many have been loved in.” As we face the potential end of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court, this kind of love needs to rise to the surface and become ubiquitous. Where there are people of faith, wounded people need to see love. The wounds of abortion are everywhere, albeit largely hidden. You knew Vicki was pro-life, but people didn’t see that as an argument or a sermon or a judgment. Her position was love. It’s possible and it’s necessary.

If women would give Vicki hugs here on earth in gratitude for the post-abortion-healing ministry she founded, imagine the celebration in Heaven in thanksgiving for her love. The end of her life is sudden and jarring, but her time was used extraordinarily well. May we continue her work.

Hopeafterabortion.com, postabortionhelp.org, sistersoflife.org, abortionchangesyou.com — Project Rachel is that first one and is the first one in that list, and not alone anymore. You or someone you know may benefit from one of those links. (That last one is secular.) And know that this is the pro-life movement. It’s much more than political debates suggest. It’s full of love, thanks to leaders with heart, like Vicki Thorn.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.