Maria Espinoza’s abortion did not help her heal after she was sexually abused as a teenager. Instead, aborting her unborn son only made her life worse.
Speaking with the Detroit Catholic this month, Espinoza said she spent many years suffering pain and regret from her abortion before she finally found healing and forgiveness through God.
Now, she helps run post-abortion healing retreats in Detroit, Michigan to help other mothers and fathers heal and grieve for their unborn babies.
“Because when an abortion has taken place, it affects people really at every stage in their life,” Espinoza told the Detroit Catholic through a translator. “But there is hope, and God has a way to bring people healing. It doesn’t have to be just buried or set aside.”
Espinoza, who speaks Spanish, said she grew up in Zacatecas, Mexico, in a Catholic home. After being sexually abused and becoming pregnant, however, she said she was told that having an abortion was ok because she was an abuse victim.
“I was not well informed about what decisions I had, and I was pressured into having an abortion,” she told the Catholic newspaper.
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Too late, Espinoza realized that aborting her unborn child only made her life worse. She cried a lot and refused to talk with anyone about what had happened.
“After I had the abortion, I really went into shock and couldn’t think about it or talk about it,” she said.
Years afterward, she said she learned that immigrant women frequently are bombarded with pro-abortion resources.
“A high percentage of women in the process of immigrating experience sexual abuse, so when they find themselves pregnant and in the United States, there is just so much information about the availability of abortion,” she said. “When they find themselves in these difficult circumstances, then it’s just very easy to think that is what they should do.”
Eventually, Espinoza met and married her husband, and they had three children. After the family moved to Detroit, she said she attended a church retreat that radically changed her life. When a woman shared how she had been healed after being sexually abused, Espinoza realized that she could find that same healing through God, according to the report.
“It was really that moment, and that was when I felt so strongly the mercy of God,” Espinoza said. “It was a moment of grace that I can hardly even explain. I felt very consoled by God, and it just led to a lot of tears.”
That happened in 2015. A short time later, a priest told her about Rachel’s Vineyard, a post-abortion healing retreat for men and women; and she attended that, too, according to the report.
“It was like being returned to life, being able to breathe again, being able to accept, being able to restore the relationship with the child that I lost,” she said.
Espinoza said she named her aborted son Ricardo Gomez Espinoza. Today, she helps lead post-abortion retreats in Detroit where 50 to 60 people every year discover the same healing and forgiveness that she found.
“I know there are still so many people out there who are living with this pain and this sense of guilt deeply buried,” Espinoza told the newspaper. “I feel called to share this news that God heals and He restores, and even with people who are suffering from the effects of having an abortion, that a new life is possible.”
Espinoza is not alone. Many men and women in the pro-life movement are mothers and fathers of aborted babies. Their pro-life work is motivated by the personal knowledge of the destruction and pain of abortion, the loss of their unborn child, and the hope that they can provide to struggling mothers so that they never have to feel that aborting their child is a solution to their problems.
