Project Hope in Venezuela

Last week the Venezuelan Bishops’ Conference hosted the second Pastoral Training Workshop on Post-Abortion Syndrome and Healing. It was aimed at priests, deacons, seminarians, family ministry workers, psychologists, therapists, family counselors and others who care for abortion’s other victims: women who have decided not to abort and, above all, those who have aborted, to help them heal their deep wounds and invite them to become defenders of life. For the occasion, Elizabeth Bunster and Adriana Avendaño came from Chile, where they have spent 12 years working on this project with the special support of priests, psychologists, doctors and others.

Fortunately, the National Department of Family and Childhood of the Venezuelan Bishops’ Conference now makes Project Hope available to anyone interested. Promoted by CELAM (the Latin American Bishops’ Council), it is a program of accompaniment for women and men who suffer from post-abortion syndrome after losing a child before birth, especially through induced abortion.

The care is given by professionals with an attitude of welcome, understanding and trustworthiness, backed by the pastoral support of priests or ministers according to the person’s faith. Its aim is to help the person through a process of acceptance and reconciliation, and to embrace their grief over the loss of their child.

Project Hope is inspired by Project Rachel in the United States, founded by Vicki Thorn in Milwaukee in 1985 and spread to every diocese in the country by Dan Zeidler, president of the Family Life Council and U.S. representative of the Latin American Alliance for the Family (ALAFA). In Chile it was born in 1999, started by a group of lay professionals advised and accompanied by priests of the Schoenstatt Apostolic Movement.

But what is post-abortion syndrome? It is a condition in which abortion destroys the natural bond between parents and their child and leaves the mother and father feeling that something is missing. It is a conflict that arises in a woman between her role as a mother and the part she played in ending the life of her unborn child. It is a denial of the grief and mourning a woman needs to acknowledge and express for her aborted child. It weakens the mother both physically and emotionally and can diminish her functioning and well-being as an individual, in society and within her family. And it is a conflict that other family members also experience, each in their own role, after the abortion.

Post-abortion syndrome can affect men and women who have lost a child through abortion, as well as children and grandparents who have lost a brother, sister or grandchild that way.

Some of its symptoms may be: denial, anger and guilt; inability to relate to others; despair or depression; child abuse; inability to forgive oneself or others; recurring nightmares; broken relationships; denial of grief over the aborted child; and the grief over the lost child felt by parents, grandparents, children, other relatives and others.

The specialists who visited Venezuela explained, in substance, that as they work with each person they uncover the particular reasons behind the case: what the person longed for and how the decision to abort came about. That is when people realize they chose abortion out of loneliness, under pressure from others, or for lack of concrete help to face motherhood. All of this, they said, should lead us to examine ourselves as a society, to become more supportive, and to say yes to life by standing by the woman and her unborn child.

We congratulate the CEV’s National Department of Family and Childhood for bringing this much-needed project to Venezuela. Anyone interested in the subject, and any woman or man who needs help, can contact that department of the Venezuelan Bishops’ Conference.