It was the end of the day and my last client had just left. As a therapist, I’m accustomed to hearing people’s pain, loss, sadness, and anger. It’s a part of the territory when you answer God’s call to help His children find healing. But this day, my heart was heavy.

For what seemed like the thousandth time, a young post-abortive woman left my office. What made this even sadder was that she, like most of the post-abortive women I see, was a Christian woman who had grown up in a Christian home.

This was not a new burden for me. Having grown up in a pastor’s home, and having been married to a pastor for 25 years, I knew that Christian people make decisions according to their own wisdom instead of God’s. Yet, in women’s decisions to get abortions, there was an interesting theme that surfaced in the decision-making process: their mothers.

As I studied the pieces of this painful puzzle, I discovered three elements that influenced the daughter’s decision to get an abortion: selfishness, shame and fear.

Selfishness
The number-one reason most of the women had abortions was their mothers' belief that having this baby would ruin their lives. They were told over and over again that they would never have the life they had dreamed of, that they would be “stuck” for the rest of their lives.

Most of the young women reported that their mothers told them "they only wanted what was in their best interest," and they couldn’t stand by and watch them throw their lives away. Little did they realize that when the daughter went through with the abortion she was not only throwing an innocent life away, but losing a part of herself as well.

Many of the post-abortive women told me their mothers had made it very clear to them that they would not be around to help them raise this child. Already shaky from the news of the pregnancy, the mothers’ threats of abandonment in their child’s time of greatest need spurred the decision to abort.

Realizing that Mom was not "there for them" made them feel betrayed and deceived. Many times, this abandonment by a caregiver is projected onto a God who is "supposed to love no matter what." The feelings of abandonment by a previously loving mother and a "supposedly" loving God create the anger that comes out in therapy sessions.

Often the mothers of these post-abortive daughters shed tears once they recognize how their own selfishness was at work. Hindsight has shown many that their own dreams for their daughter got in the way of helping her make the right decision. Many of those mothers have never had grandchildren, and they realize that their loss can be traced back to their own lack of faith and courage.

Shame
A second great driving force behind the mother’s push for the abortion is shame. Guilt is feeling bad about what you have done, and shame is feeling bad about who you are. When a person experiences shame, it becomes a powerful force that overshadows every other internal characteristic. It is an extremely damaging and painful emotion.

A mother can experience a sense of failure when her daughter finds herself in an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. This is especially true for Christian women. This feeling manifests itself as shame in the mother's heart. She looks at the pregnancy as a personal affront from the daughter, and there now will be a public display of her failure to teach her daughter morality.
She sees the issue as being about her instead of being about her daughter. Thus the push to abort is driven by her own need to redeem her sense of self, to rid herself of the shame she feels about her inadequacies as a mother.

Shame causes division in the mother/daughter relationship. The mother’s shame gets in the way of forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope. Shame is the air that blows up the “It can’t be happening to me” balloon. It says, “This family is above this.”

After shame sets in, the subsequent sin of pride follows close behind. Unable to accept the consequences of their daughter's moral behavior, many families begin to "cover-up." This is especially true for a minister’s family.

Lies have been told and churches have been changed because of the shame and wounded pride surrounding an unplanned pregnancy. Also, the body of Christ often brings public humiliation upon the daughter of a minister in this situation. How sad is that?

Fear
Many decisions to terminate a pregnancy have been made out of fear. Fear of rejection is one of the greatest fears people can experience. They’ll do just about anything to avoid it. I can’t tell you how many times I've heard a woman say to me, “I didn’t want the abortion, and I knew it was wrong. But I went through with it anyway because I just couldn’t bear the thought of my mother holding it against me all of my life.”

These post-abortive women honestly believed if they got rid of the baby, they would regain their mother’s blessing. The tragedy that comes to many is that their mothers never forget their “mistake” and are quick to question their judgment in all the other areas of their life from then on. Trust rarely returns between them. Sadly, if the blessing was lost, she probably never had it in the first place.

The daughters also feared that their Christian friends and church would reject them. Most reported that they had watched how Christians treated people who had made poor choices, and they didn’t want to go through that experience.

Rejection starts early in a girl's life, and it begins in subtle ways. Most of the time, mothers don’t even know they’re doing it. In my heart of hearts, I believe most mothers want to be good mothers, but many are clueless as to the power they hold in developing their daughter’s sense of self and sense of God.

Many a Christian mother has spent her whole life in the Church and in Bible studies. They’ve acquired tremendous knowledge about spiritual truths, but many have failed to grasp the reality of the message Christ intended.

Catherine Hickem, LCSW, is a pastor's wife, mother of two teenagers, and founder of Kingdom Princess Ministries, a mother/daughter program.