Any abortion is an experience between worlds.

We as womb-holders possess that space between life and death, creation and destruction that makes all creation possible. No matter what your process has been in deciding to abort, the experience is nothing short of an initiation. To be given the gift of life, even unexpectedly, and to offer one’s blood back to Goddess is an act of sacrifice. No one wants to experience abortion in their life, but it happens regularly to women all over the world. Abortion is a rather common experience, and by having on yourself, you are joining an invisible sisterhood that spans back to the beginning of humanity in which women have made the difficult decision to have an abortion for a myriad of reasons within infinite contexts.

The reasons you have come to your abortion today are incredibly personal and may only make total sense to you. The way you feel about this pregnancy may be different from others you have had, or this may be your first pregnancy. The choice may have been clear and easy to make because having a baby at this time does not make sense. You may have labored over your choice going back and forth between future scenarios, imagining life with baby, and life without—life with baby unbelievably beautiful, but also potentially extremely hard. This may have been a wanted pregnancy, but there is some reason that you feel abortion, is ultimately the correct decision. The desire to carry a pregnancy to term is just as pure as the desire to not have a child currently. Both decisions are holy in the sense that you are mothering—you are making the best choice for you and your child currently.

An Opportunity to Deeply Heal

While some women regret their choice after abortion, some do not. It depends on how well you prepare for your abortion, and how readily your focus is on healing. This course is meant to prepare you not only for the physical act of abortion but also for the spiritual aspects of preparation and healing afterward. Reproduction disproportionately impacts womb-holders. It is us who bear the consequence of sexual activity, in the act of pregnancy. Whether you choose to carry a pregnancy to full term—or abort, this process exists totally in your womb space, and in your body. This aspect can never fully be understood by our partners—those who got us pregnant, and we cannot expect it to be.

An Invitation to Transform

This experience was chosen for us, and it is an invitation for transformation. What parts of your life are you not living totally and fully? What do you hope to achieve with your creative energy since you are not going to use it in growing a baby? What will you do with your new lease on life?

All abortions hold this promise, but self-managed abortions, where you are taking the pills and handling the process on your own is a deeply spiritual and potentially empowering process. The container created for your abortion and working into these spaces of life and death can be conducted as a ceremony. The invitation in this course is to go deeply into yourself, into the pregnancy, and into spirit to expel the pregnancy and rebuild yourself all at the same time.

Sacred Blood

Blood has been considered a highly spiritual property for millennia. The reason that menstruation is taboo in so many cultures is the ways in which the feminine principle of creation is weaved into this special blood. Some may say that the patriarchy is rather afraid of this power, and so menstruation has been driven underground, something to be ashamed of, something to be hidden. Blood-letting rites exist across cultures in which skin is cut to release blood as a sacrifice and offering to God or to the spirits. We see a similar manifestation in Catholicism with the drinking of the wine symbolic of the “blood of Christ”. In this way, as you release the blood of your pregnancy back to the Earth, I hope you can see it as a sacrifice to Creator, in gratitude for the gift, but also in reverence of the miracle of the process of reproduction, and your recognition that now is not the right time.

Pregnancy as Energy

Energy cannot be destroyed, it only changes forms. It can only be transformed, alchemized, and repurposed. The energy of a baby may choose to go to another pregnancy to be birthed into the world, or it will wait for you to be ready and come back to you. Traditional African religions believe that the spirits of miscarriages and abortions hang around the mother until they can be born, or until they can be released. It is up to you to really feel into what resonates with you and your belief systems, and how you sense or feel the spirit of the pregnancy.

Some pregnancies do not yet have a soul or consciousness, and abortion or miscarriage will take place with little to no impact on one’s energy field. Other times, when a soul is present—especially a strong soul, this process may take a little bit of work on your part to fully explain to the spirit why this is not time and help it to move energetically to a different space.

Another way to think of this: a baby soul came into your body knowing full well that abortion may be your choice. It could have chosen any mother, but it chose a mother who is not fully ready to carry it to full term. In this way, we could think of the baby spirit as co-creating the abortion. It understands that now may not be its time. Some say that baby spirits may come again to reunite with the parents later, and many women remark that they feel the similar energy of a subsequent pregnancy as a past abortion.

The question of the soul has always been a bit touchy within pro-choice movements. It is the foundational block for the anti-choice argument, and since Roe v Wade was passed in the USA in the 1970s, the abortion gridlock has centered around spirituality versus science. We believe that the truth is much more nuanced than this. It is not one or the other, but somewhere in between. We believe that one of the biggest reasons that people often believe that “abortion is traumatic” is because people that have abortions have very few channels of healing.

The scars are invisible and often borne only by the person who aborted herself. Miscarriage and abortions are more common results of pregnancy than live birth. In this way, the experience of passing a pregnancy that is not to full term is the most common experience of the womb.

Like miscarriage, society does not have concrete ways of handling failed pregnancies. There is a dichotomy here, between the “good” woman that has children, and the “bad” woman that has no children—the ones that kill their babies or were careless in pregnancy to cause their miscarriage. The problem is the level of shame, taboo, and self-hate lobbied on the person having an abortion—mainly by themselves. Outside society tells us so much of how we SHOULD feel about abortion, and those perspectives bleed into our own personal perspectives and frameworks. When we have our own abortions, our experience is coupled with views of the outside world, plus the complexities of our own personal context.

I know these ideas may be vastly different than what you learned in Bible school or Madrassa. If they do not resonate with you, that is perfectly fine. There are infinite ways to look at reproduction, birth, and abortion, this is just another perspective. I have spent a good portion of my life thinking about abortion and the meanings we attach or do not attach to the process. This is what I have personally come through in my own spiritual and professional path, and what I have been called on to share in this course.

How to Use the Spiritual Themes in this Course

Take with you what resonates, and feel free to discard the rest. The way you experience your sacred abortion is personal, and this SGA offering is simply a guide. 

You may participate in the ceremonies and exercises to the level of your comfort. You can skip around and complete parts as you wish, or not at all. SGA is here for you to support you in YOUR path. But remember, it is YOUR path. The invitation is to architect your own sacred abortion; however, you see fit. 

REFLECTION

• After reading this section, how do YOU want to set up a sacred space to support your abortion? What are your first thoughts? 
• How would you describe the emotional process of your abortion? Have you felt connected to yourself and your own spirituality?