I do not know William Gensert or anything about him. I just know that several friends forwarded me a link to a story he posted on The American Thinker headlined, “Living with Abortion.”
Just as there is no “typical” post-abortion story from the woman’s perspective, the accounts of men involved in abortions also follow no set script. For example, in Gensert’s case, he laments that he paid for two abortions for young women–-he was not the father of either baby–and is still wounded by the decision of his then-fiancé (with whom he was “desperately in love”) to abort their child.
Gensert tells us flat out, “I know my hands are not clean.” Later he provides what was no doubt a key reason he didn’t fight harder to save his own child:
I loved her and didn’t want to lose her. In addition, I suspected that if things didn’t work out for us, she would have used the child to drag me through the courts for the rest of my life.
However in the very next sentence Gensert confesses (that would be the right word, I believe): “I was a coward.”
There are many reasons men open up about a secret many would prefer to keep buried deep, far away from consciousness. It could be something very difficult to miss, unless you want to: the CMP videos, for example.
Other times the guilt and the remorse and wish-it-could-have-been-otherwise finally surface when women who’ve aborted “celebrate” the death of their children. Gensert specifically mentions the Twitter hashtag #shoutyourabortion where women come to tout the life-changing impact of their abortions. (Nothing, of course, about the life-ending impact on the baby.)
But still other times, men finally can no long stand living a lie. By coercing a woman to abort, or failing to be supportive when she reaches out, or simply not trying “hard enough,” they have failed the woman in their lives and their child.
And when that happens, when they look at the man in the mirror, they can no longer deny the truth: they have fallen desperately short of being the man they have aspired to be.
Full story at LifeNews.
May all post-abortive mothers and fathers know the forgiveness and healing of Jesus. And, may their stories help deter others from choosing the way of death.
As with other sins, moral cowardice is a significant contributing factor. Lord, have mercy on us all and give us holy courage.
William Gensert’s story, on the American Thinker blue link, “Living with Abortion” says it all.
We should never compound one sin with another, especially a worse one.