Finding the Right Path: Can I Reconcile an Abortion with My Conscience?

The Conscience as a Compass for the Right Decision

• For many women in a pregnancy conflict, the question arises: Can I reconcile an abortion with my conscience? Or also: Would I regret an abortion?
• Perhaps you're consciously perceiving your current situation as a conflict of conscience. There are so many reasons that speak in favour of an abortion. And yet you may feel that you couldn't bring yourself to have an abortion.
• Alongside all the circumstances, it can be helpful for a good decision to involve your conscience. Here you'll find tips on how you can get to the bottom of your conscience and, based on that, take the right path for you – so that in the long term as well, your decision is right for you.
  

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What Is Conscience?

Everyone knows it and has felt it in one way or another: the conscience. It can be an inner compass for our actions and is often perceived as an inner voice.

Having a "good conscience" means that one has followed one's own voice of conscience. This is often experienced as peaceful. A "bad conscience", in turn, can indicate that one was actually aware of a right path or had an inkling of it, but didn't take it for various reasons. One's own inner self is then usually perceived as restless. Not infrequently, feelings of guilt, sadness, or a feeling of shame can arise afterwards.

A Bad Conscience – Because of Society?
Perhaps you've already heard the statement that with a bad conscience, social conventions play a role, or that a bad conscience can even be talked into someone from the outside.
The view that conscience doesn't express itself from within a person but is, so to speak, dictated from the outside, originally comes from the Viennese psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. According to this, conscience corresponds to what one has been told by parents, teachers, the state, the church, etc.¹
Social influences can play a role – but that doesn't mean that conscience can't also speak from within oneself.
In the area of pregnancy conflict, Pro Femina's counselling experience shows that, for example, feelings of guilt after an abortion can be deep and genuine, quite without it being talked into someone from the outside.
This experience also corresponds to how Viktor E. Frankl, a psychiatrist from Vienna, sees conscience: Conscience exists in every person even before all morality, education, and conditioning. It's somewhat like the voice of one's best friend, to whom one is really important and who therefore also tells one the truth and not just what one might like to hear. Conscience is the wisdom of the heart. Accordingly, every person also has a certain freedom of choice and is not solely determined by society.²

Will I Regret an Abortion?

Perhaps you're currently wrestling with the right decision and are very worried that you could regret an abortion.

The fact that you can allow these questions and thoughts and pursue them – possibly despite fear and time pressure – testifies to great inner strength! This inner intuition and the honest engagement with it are signs of a sensitive and perceptive person. It's also a sign of prudence and foresight when you search for a path that will make you feel good in the long term as well.

Having the worry even before an abortion that one could regret it can already be an indication that an abortion wouldn't be the right path for one.
Regretting something afterwards signals that one's own deep values have been violated – indeed, in some cases, even one's own core of who one wants to be and is as a person. So you may certainly take yourself seriously and listen carefully to what your innermost self is telling you.

Here's the self-test: 🛤 Can an abortion have psychological or physical consequences for me?

Perhaps you've already had the experience of an abortion and it's weighing on you. Time and again, women report in counselling that they couldn't cope with another abortion and therefore don't want to take this path again.
But even without this experience, it may be that you know yourself as a rather sensitive and perceptive person and therefore want to protect yourself particularly.

All of these are serious arguments. We'd like to encourage you to trust yourself and your assessment.

• Here you'll find testimonials of how other women have experienced an abortion: Experiences with Abortion

How Can I Find Out What My Conscience Says About a Possible Abortion?

It's not always possible to recognise directly what one's conscience is saying. Fears about certain life circumstances or even voices from outside can be very loud, so that the quiet voice of one's own heart is initially drowned out.

🌊 This is comparable to a river during a storm, where the water is so churned up that one can no longer see anything. The water must first become calm so that one can recognise the deep ground again. Likewise, all the voices, impulses and feelings within you must first settle before you make an important decision.
What's important, therefore, is enough time and peace to hear the voice of conscience – for example, during a walk or even a longer break, if you notice that this can do you good.

Eight Possibilities That Your Conscience Is Speaking Out Against an Abortion

Based on counselling experience, we have compiled here some situations that may indicate that your conscience is currently making itself heard. It may be that you recognise yourself in one or even several of these points.

I've Actually Made the Decision Against the Abortion, but Still Don't See the Way Forward With the Child and Keep Becoming Uncertain Again

Standing by Myself and My Path

It may be that at one moment you received the clear and certain conviction that your heart speaks against an abortion – whatever the circumstances. Women repeatedly report a decisive moment during the decision-making process that sometimes comes about quite spontaneously, sometimes through an external impulse.

Even if the decision has actually been made, it may be that you're still uncertain. This is completely normal: Hearing the voice of conscience doesn't mean that one can also immediately feel on an emotional level what one has recognised as right.

However, it may also be that the resolution that you don't want an abortion doesn't automatically mean that everything has now been clarified and you can be calm. Because the actual worries have probably not yet been cleared up or solutions are still lacking as to how various things can work with the child.

Even if you've made a decision, problems from outside can cause pressure, the opinions of other people can unsettle you, or quite simply your own fear can arise about how things can now continue on this path on which – figuratively speaking – so many stones are lying.

How You Can Consolidate Your Decision:

• 🏁 Many things are easier with a goal in sight! By all means keep reminding yourself of the beautiful and good things that go hand in hand with your decision. This can motivate you to persevere courageously and bravely even in the still difficult time. What positive images are there within you? For example, remaining true to yourself? Or one day being a proud mother?
• 🗼 In moments of doubt, it can help to remember why one decided on a path. For example, you can write a saying or a motto on your hand or pin it to the mirror. Or ask a person in your environment to be your support in moments of doubt. Perhaps there's also a special place where you can retreat and which can be a lighthouse in the storm for you?
• 🛟 It can help to prepare an emergency plan for critical moments. These can be situations where you know that the pressure is particularly high: for example, when conflicts with your partner or other people bring you into doubt. A sensitive moment can also be the moment before the abortion deadline expires, because the decision then appears even more final. If you prepare yourself in advance, you can deal with it better – and afterwards pat yourself on the shoulder that each of these moments has made you even stronger because you stood firm.
• 🫶 Seek out support and companions for the journey! You don't have to shoulder and master everything alone now. Who could stand by your side, encourage you and also help you in quite practical ways?

Is an Abortion Compatible With My Faith?

If you yourself are religious and now find yourself in a difficult situation because you're (unplanned) pregnant, it may be that the subject of abortion occupies you in quite a different way.

How faith shapes one and then ultimately also what image of God one has can be very different – also depending on religion or denomination. It may be that you now experience your faith as a valuable support because it has often given you guidance. But it may also be that it challenges you anew in the difficult situation and you're asking yourself many questions.
It's obviously about very profound questions of meaning and you may also be searching for how God sees an abortion, whether abortion is a sin and whether God forgives an abortion.

These are all legitimate questions and it speaks very much for you that you're engaging with them.
In this case, it can be helpful to turn to a pastoral counsellor (for example, in a congregation). You're worth experiencing help and support and not remaining alone in this inner conflict!
Especially if you actually believe that your God has a personal interest in you and you're valuable to him, then this can perhaps help you to look at your worries and your situation lovingly, without, for example, reproaching yourself about how the situation has now come about.

Some women perceive – also independently of religiosity – a natural reverence for unborn life within themselves. They express that they don't want to decide over life and death.
Some women are also relieved by the thought of simply letting life take its course and not actively intervening in the pregnancy themselves. The attitude that there may not even be a necessity for a decision, but rather to hand everything "upwards", so to speak, and to make the best of it can be a relief.

I've Already Had an Abortion and Regret It. What Can I Do?

The counselling experience of Profemina shows that it happens again and again that women regret their abortion and find it difficult to process.

Some women feel remorse directly after the abortion, some only years later. Sometimes a particular event or a particular life situation can "trigger" the memory. Many women describe that dates such as the anniversary of the abortion, the actual due date or when people in their environment have children who are as old as their own would have been, trigger memories.

Other life events can also play a role in the abortion being reflected upon again from different perspectives. For example, a later arising desire for children, a separation, pregnancies of women in one's close environment, illnesses or deaths in the family.
Women who regret their decision in hindsight often feel a deep pain and grief. This can be accompanied by anger, either towards oneself, one's partner or one's environment. Especially when they possibly didn't stand by one supportively or even actively spoke in favour of the abortion.

Self-help groups with women who are in a similar situation can also be helpful.

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