Positivity: Project Rachel to tackle extreme abortion rates in Eastern Europe
Dec 19, 2009 / 02:18 pm
Project Rachel is working to expand its ministry into Romania and Ukraine, where women report having had between 13 and 30 abortions. Speaking with CNA in Rome, Vicki Thorn, Executive Director of Project Rachel, described how the priestly vocation is fundamental to discovering and offering new opportunities for post-abortion healing.
Vicki Thorn is a veteran in the field of post-abortion healing, having been involved in the ministry for 25 years. Recently she has been traveling to Europe to address the issue of abortion in eastern European nations, especially Romania and the Ukraine.
“Eastern Europe has had huge numbers of abortions, in part because of communism, (but it’s due to) all kinds of things. Doctors and priests see that this is a big issue because people are coming forward and they’re talking. The doctors are saying that there are women with 13 to 30 abortions,” she told CNA.
“I don’t even know what you do with that. I’ve done this for 25 years, and I’m like, whew, I don’t even know how we come at this question.”
“In Russia the average woman according to their statistics has had nine abortions, but my own experience of talking to the physicians in Romania and Ukraine is that we’re talking 13 to 30.”
Thorn said that there was a doctor in Romania who told her of a woman that had solicited 70 abortions. “Do you think that’s possible?” the doctor had asked Thorn.
“Maybe what she’s saying is the ‘70 times 7′ in the Bible,” she replied to him, “perhaps she was saying, ‘I’ve had so many abortions, you wouldn’t believe it.’”
“So, this is a psychological issue. We’re looking at countries with huge depression factors in women, alcoholism, fertility questions follow this, and it’s the priests who see this in the beginning.
“When the bishops called for a post abortion healing ministry in the States, right after abortion was legalized, in their first pastoral plan, it was because they were confessors and they knew the problem. Nobody else knew it, it took me seven years to find experts, but the bishops knew because they were priests who had heard confessions.”
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