In loving memory of my son Jamie

Abortion was one of those things I thought could never happen to me. In fact, I really didn’t even have an opinion about it. I had heard about the medical “breakthroughs” that were being made with the use of fetal tissue, so it didn’t seem like such a bad thing. But it came as a big surprise when I had to face the issue personally. First, I was surprised by my response to it, and second, at the profound impact it would have on my life.

I was pretty much a happy kid while growing up. I lived most of my childhood in the Pennsylvania countryside, and although I didn’t have many friends to play with, I did have 2 younger brothers to pal around with. We enjoyed outdoor activities like camping, fishing and swimming. In school, I pretty much kept to myself. I was even voted shyest in my graduating class. I didn’t participate in any sports because I wasn’t any good at them; however, I found I was most comfortable performing on stage. But my true passion was the armed forces. I was actively involved in the Civil Air Patrol and signed up for the Air Force when I was only in eleventh grade.

I left for boot camp right after finishing high school in 1989. I loved the physical and mental challenges, worked hard and graduated with honors. I volunteered as a student leader during my technical training and couldn’t wait to get to my permanent assignment. My military career was off to a great start.

My permanent station was at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington D.C. I quickly made new friends and discovered the joys of partying. All through high school I never even had a single drink, so I broke loose and partied hard. One night I met a girl and had my first sexual encounter. We ended up dating for a couple years.

During Desert Storm, many of my friends went to Kuwait. My girlfriend also broke up with me for some other guy, which crushed my self-esteem. Life got boring, so I spent a lot of my time just sitting around drinking. I also became promiscuous and would sleep with anyone that would show interest. I started oversleeping a lot and getting into trouble for being late for work. I no longer enjoyed my job and had lost myself in alcohol and sexual addiction.

I left the Air Force in 1993, moved back to my home town and got a job in retail. I soon ran into Andrea, a childhood friend whom I hadn’t seen in years. She had just moved back from New York and had a 5-month old daughter named Kelly. We started hanging out together and our relationship quickly became sexual. I bonded well with Kelly and before long, Andrea and I decided to get an apartment together.

I didn’t take long for me to realize I enjoyed family life, so I asked Andrea to marry me, to which she agreed. We didn’t make much money, but I worked hard to support her and Kelly and was getting frequent promotions. Then one day I came home from work and Andrea told me she was pregnant. I was thrilled! Kelly was almost 3 years old and now she’d have a baby brother or sister. I told everyone in my family and at work that I was going to be a daddy.

At first, Andrea seemed happy about the pregnancy. But after a few weeks, things started to change. She was saying things like “I’m not sure if we’re ready for another child” and “we can’t afford to have a baby right now”. I tried to assure her that we’d be fine. I offered to get a second job so I could better support her and the kids. But her doubts and fears increased and finally she told me she was considering abortion. Suddenly, I was terrified. I had never given much thought about abortion and hadn’t even considered the possibility of aborting our own child. For me, that just wasn’t an option. I was excited about being a father and didn’t want to lose this child.

Our discussions turned into arguments. Our arguments turned into fights. It was impossible to have a civilized conversation about it. We were on opposite ends of the spectrum. Every time I tried to plead with her to keep our child, she would tell me it wasn’t my decision… that it was her body and her choice. I even offered that if she just had the baby, then I would raise it on my own. I became so desperate that I went to a lawyer to see if I could stop her. Unfortunately, he told me there was no legal action I could take. As a father, I had no rights until the child was born. I thought it was ironic that a man could go to jail for not paying child support, but could do nothing to protect his unborn children. The only hope I had was that Andrea couldn’t afford to get an abortion and I wasn’t about to pay for it.

It was on February 25th, 1995 that my life changed forever. Andrea had gone to the clinic and had the abortion while I was at work. Her sister, Cathy, had paid for the procedure and was the one who told me that it was done. The last thing I remember after hearing the news was lying on the pavement of a parking lot at a bar crying and screaming. I have no recollection of how I got home or how many days passed before I moved back in with my parents.

The next several months were just a blur. Andrea and I didn’t talk for a long time, and when we did, the conversations were heated. But somehow we worked things out and I moved back in with her. But things would never be the same. I started having anger issues, had trouble staying focused on my job, and would often break down and cry from depression. Andrea also seemed depressed at times and started exhibiting reckless behaviors. Eventually our relationship deteriorated to an irreparable point and she moved out.

My depression was getting worse and I was angry all the time at everything and everyone. I was drinking heavily and started using drugs. I was also having trouble sleeping at night and my job performance began to suffer. I was stricken with panic attacks that would trigger for no apparent reason. I decided to get help before I lost all control and began to see a psychiatrist. He identified the fact that my problems stemmed from the abortion, diagnosed me with severe depression and border-line psychosis, and prescribed medications for depression, anxiety and sleeplessness. At his recommendation, I also took a 3-month leave of absence from work and entered a hospital treatment program.

All the medications seemed to just cloud my head instead of making me feel better, so I continued using illegal drugs and alcohol on top of the medications. In the hospital, I was surrounded by people with severe emotional problems all day long, which didn’t seem to help. During my counseling sessions and group therapies, we talked about my emotions and how to control them, but never targeted the source of my problems… the abortion. No one seemed to understand or know how to help me deal with my loss. Since I wasn’t working, I was quickly running out of money. I pawned everything I owned just to buy my medications and support my drug habits. I also found myself in and out of relationships and broke a few hearts along the way.

Finally, I reached a point where I felt there was no hope. I figured no one would ever understand; that I must be crazy for even feeling a sense of loss and that I would never get better. Life was no longer worth living. So I sat at my dining room table with the last bottle of sleeping pills I had. “This will be easy” I thought to myself. I would just swallow all these pills, lay down, fall asleep and never wake up.

I poured the pills into my hand and as I raised them to put them in my mouth, I was suddenly overcome by a feeling of intense warmth over my entire body and complete peace. My mouth was open and my hand was only a few inches away, yet there I sat, frozen, staring at the wall. All of a sudden, with an earthquake-like shudder, the pills flew out of my hand and I collapsed to the floor sobbing like a child. For the next 45 minutes or so, I laid there on the floor crying, trying to figure out what had just happened. Then, in a moment, I felt compelled to grab the phone book. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I flipped it open and right there on the first page I came to was an ad with large print asking if I was “Looking for a new home?” It was an ad for a church.

We never went to church while I was growing up. When I was younger, I had believed in God. But the older I got, the less faith I had. At this point of my life, I actually considered myself to be an atheist. “How could there be a loving God with this world as messed up as it is?” I asked myself. I used all the problems in my life to rationalize that we were alone in this world. But it was at this lowest moment in my life that I realized I had been wrong. To this day I believe God reached down and comforted me at a time when I needed Him most, even though I wasn’t looking for Him. It reminds me of the Footprints in the Sand poem.

So, I called the church and made an appointment to meet with the pastor. When we met, I told him my story and, for the first time, he was someone who understood my loss and the pain I was going through. He also identified that I exhibited codependent behaviors with my drug and alcohol addictions and my reckless relationships. He put me in touch with a codependency 12-step support group and encouraged me to start attending church services. So began my path to healing and my journey in faith.

I started going to church services every Sunday and absorbed everything I could about God’s love, mercy and grace. I also worked very hard at completing my 12 steps. I didn’t like the way the medications made me feel, so without my psychiatrist’s permission, I took myself off the meds. I also quit using drugs and was able to cut back my drinking to a responsible level. I came across a book in the book store called “Men and Abortion: A Path to Healing” by Dr. Catherine Coyle. Here was someone who knew exactly what I had been through and I discovered that I wasn’t alone. There were other men, just like me, who had walked this path before, which was very helpful to my healing. I got a new job and was earning an income again. I also started volunteering at a crisis pregnancy center just doing odd-and-end jobs. My new hobby was country line dancing where I met Nancy, the woman who would become my wife.

As time went by and I put my life back together, the focus on recovering from my abortion experience was put on the back burner. Nancy and I moved to Phoenix to start over, hoping to forget about my past problems altogether. I got a good job making more money than ever before, but it meant working a lot of hours. We found a church where we got married a year later, but eventually stopped attending because I was working almost every weekend. Overall, I thought life was good, but some problems started to surface.

I started feeling depressed again, my anxiety level was high, I was tired all the time, and I would get angry over the smallest things. I also noticed that February was always a difficult month for me, as it was the anniversary of the abortion. I didn’t want to deal with my abortion experience anymore, so I denied the truth that I hadn’t finished healing from it. I was just too busy to bother. All I cared about was working harder, hoping to keep myself occupied.

Then, just as my life had changed before, it was about to change again. My wife and I decided to go see a movie, which we didn’t do very often. The movie we saw was Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”. Who would have thought a movie could be so powerful and draw so much emotion? Sure I knew the story of how Christ gave his life for us, but to actually see it portrayed so realistically… well, words can’t describe it. We left the theatre in complete silence and the next week was an emotional rollercoaster for me. I came to realize how much I needed Christ in my life and that I had to finish my healing. So we found a new church, I gave my life to Christ, was baptized, and started focusing on any unresolved issues I still had.

It was on the 10th anniversary of the abortion that I sensed a calling to begin ministering to others. I felt I had fully healed, so I answered that calling by creating the organization Fatherhood Forever Foundation. I wanted other men to find the help and understanding they need much easier than it was for me, so I began collecting resources from across the country that work with men and created the Men’s Recovery Network. As I promoted the organization, I found myself getting acquainted with some wonderful people working in pro-life ministry and post-abortion recovery.

Two of those people I met when I spoke at a college youth pro-life rally. They were Rachel’s Vineyard weekend retreat counselors and encouraged me to attend a retreat for the experience, to which I agreed. I saw it as a chance to explore one of the organizations I linked to in the Men’s Recovery Network and to see if it were something I would be interested in helping with. Little did I realize what I was really getting myself in to.

When I arrived at the retreat, I put on a big smile and acted as though I had no concerns about what would happen during the weekend. I’ll admit I was a bit nervous, but couldn’t put my finger on the reason why. I was relieved to discover I wasn’t the only guy that would be attending. The retreat location was absolutely beautiful and I was soon at ease with the whole idea of spending the weekend there. That is until the retreat officially started.

Within minutes of starting, I found myself putting up barriers. I became stone-faced and sat with my arms crossed in defiance; attempting to resist any emotion the staff might be trying to pull from me. “I’m already healed”, I thought to myself. “There’s nothing they can do or say to make me think otherwise.” My pride got the best of me to the point that I felt compelled to express my “discomfort” with one of the staff members during a break. Her simple words of comfort and understanding quickly put me at ease. When I went to bed that night, I told myself that although I was going to be strong, I would at least be more open tomorrow.

And then tomorrow arrived. So much for strong. I came to realize that I still had a great deal of unresolved anger toward the mother of my child, who I thought I had forgiven, and guilt for not being able to prevent the abortion. But my emotional breaking point was when I discovered I still had sorrow and despair buried deep within my heart. I hadn’t cried that hard since the day I lost my child. I cried not only for the loss of my child, but for having fooled myself into believing I was healed. I was angry and ashamed with myself.

It was at my lowest point of the weekend that nothing short of a miracle occurred. I was suddenly overcome with a sense of peace that I had only experienced once before in my life. I embraced these emotions and let all my pain and anger go. For the first time ever, I was able to see clearly and know that I had reason to be happy rather than mourn. I was able to put to rest all those thoughts and feelings that were holding me back from being the person I was meant to be. My eyes were fully opened.

Since the retreat, I’ve had new revelations and convictions that have paved the way for a brighter future. I’ve discovered truths I had been blind to in the past which have raised me up in faith and hope. I no longer mourn the loss of my son, who I gave the name Jamie, but rather I rejoice in what I have gained… a deeper relationship with Christ and my son, and knowledge of the truth that one day I will be reunited with them in eternity.

By Jason Baier -- July 2006

Jason Baier is the Founder of the Fatherhood Forever Foundation. His testimony has been published in the book: "Redeeming a Father's Heart"! The Fatherhood Forever Foundation specializes in issues related to men and abortion. Their website is: www.fatherhoodforever.org.

"Redeeming a Father's Heart" was authored by: Kevin Burke LSW, David Wemhoff, Marvin Stockwell. It can be purchased from Amazon.com by clicking here: Redeeming a Father's Heart