In 1983, Carol Kling was 23, pregnant and scared.
More than 20 years later, Kling, now 45, conducts retreats for Rachel's Vineyard, a ministry of the Catholic Church for women and men suffering from spiritual and emotional pain as the result of an abortion.
Kling has been conducting Rachel's Vineyard retreats since 2000, two each year in South Dakota and one a year in North Dakota. Each time, she relives the pain of her own abortion. She said she puts herself through it to help others feel that they are not alone.
Kling, who lives in Lemmon, S.D., will lead a Rachel's Vineyard retreat in Bismarck April 8-10 in coordination with the Bismarck Catholic Diocese. This is the Bismarck Diocese's third retreat; the diocese tries to plan one per year, said Joyce McDowall, director of the Office of Family Ministry for the diocese.
While attendance has been small, the effects are large, McDowall said. “What happens afterward is wonderful, the changing, the freeing of themselves.”
Young and scared
Fear, Kling said, was the driving force in her life at the time she had an abortion. “I was overtaken by fear … in a new city with just a boyfriend and I,” she said. At the time she feared her boyfriend would abandon her. Though eventually they did marry and stayed together for 10 years, at the time, “everything circled around fear,” she said. She believes she could have turned to her family, but didn't.
“I knew they would be supportive,” she said, have her come home and be “their little girl.” But Kling didn't want that — she wanted to be on her own and make her own decisions. “I felt pressured and I didn't feel confident enough in myself to fight off the pressure. I felt backed into a corner,” she said.
When she called an abortion clinic in Oklahoma City, she said she got no advice except to ask how far along she was. When she said 11 weeks, she was told she needed to make a decision by the next day. Women are told that since abortion is legal, it's not a big deal, but many walk around wondering why they feel angry, why they have recurring dreams, said Shelly Stone of Thief River Falls, Minn., director of a crisis pregnancy center and coordinator of Rachel's Vineyard retreats for the Fargo Catholic Diocese.
Some women who have had abortions never conceptualize the child, so they've never grieved it, she said. Even in miscarriages, it's important to grieve the child, Stone said — give them a name, the dignity of their life and then let them go.
Are you sure?
Kling said she was already dressed in a surgical robe in a room with a bunch of other girls in robes, when a nurse offered the closest thing to counseling she got — “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked Kling.
“I don't even remember if I said anything, or maybe shrugged,” she said, as the nurse handed her some kind of a pill.
She still doesn't know what it was — Valium, maybe. She remembers only painful, strong cramping, a doctor who would not make eye contact with her and a nurse who seemed to be trying to distract her, hold her down or shield the doctor's face.
“From the moment it happened,” Kling said, “that vacuum sound sucked much more out of me than an embryo. It ripped part of my soul out. I do not remember another thing until being home in bed.”
Afterward, she stayed in bed for several days, crying. As a nearby heater automatically turned on and off, its vacuum-like hum replayed that operating room sound again and again, she said.
The abortion wasn't spoken of again until a few years ago, after she found healing, Kling said. She then called her former husband and learned he had suffered as much as she did, she said.
“When we decided to have kids, it took four years to get pregnant,” Kling said. They had a little girl, her only child. Two years later, she conceived again but had a tubal pregnancy.
Deep in denial
It took a long time for Kling to recover her memories of the abortion, she said. She had left the church, but as she got older and her daughter grew, she wanted to go back. Kling did try to return to Mass. But every time, to her embarrassment, she would start sobbing. “I couldn't figure out what was going on,” she said. “So far into denial, I had totally forgotten it happened.”
Finally, a concerned friend invited her to a prayer group. It was there a huge light bulb went off. “I knew I had to deal with this,” she said.
She went to the priest for advice. “After he cried with me,” she said, he offered counsel — “to take something tangible to a place that would be very special to me and to God and have my own private memorial for my children.”
At that place, Kling lay on the grass and cried. The wind was blowing about 40 miles an hour that day, but Kling couldn't feel the cold. Exhausted from weeping, she took the roses she had brought and threw them in the air.
“God,” she asked, “take my babies.”
As the roses blew, they formed a cross in the air, and falling, they lay at the bottom of a hill, still in the shape of a cross, she said.
The next time she went to Mass, she cried tears of joy, she said.
“I knew finally that I was forgiven. The thing about an abortion is you don't know how to accept God's forgiveness,” Kling said. “You think you're not capable of being forgiven.
“That's the beauty of this retreat, to teach you how to forgive yourself,” she said.
The first thing people receive from the retreat is knowing they're not alone, she said. “It's such a secret. It's hard to imagine someone else feeling as bad as they do.
“God took away all my shame and guilt, which was huge. I want other people to know they're not alone,” she said.
Far from God
The retreat is based on living scripture, Kling said. Before someone comes on the retreat, they feel very far removed from God, she said. As they walk meditatively through Bible stories, they imagine Christ speaking to them, she said. “They ask Christ to heal their wounds. They verbalize their own hurt. Sometimes it's the first time in many years they feel worthy enough to be in the presence of Christ,” she said.
Kling always looks forward to Sunday morning after a retreat. “No matter what they feel Saturday night, transformation happens,” she said.
(Karen Herzog is a writer for the Bismarck Tribune, where this article was first published. This article courtesy of Rachel’s Vineyard. Rachel’s Vineyard weekend retreats for emotional and spiritual healing after abortion are held internationally. Rachel’s Vineyard welcomes women, men, couples, grandparents, and abortion providers. Retreats are held in both Catholic and Interdenominational settings. Rachel's Vineyard Ministries is a resource for clinical training, education, and healing models. The national toll-free hotline is (877) HOPE-4-ME.)
