In today's New York Times, Some Abortion Foes Forgo Politics for Quiet Talk.

This piece, by reporter John Leland, largely focuses on a post-abortion healing group sponsored through the Southeast Christian Church, which is Kentucky's largest evangelical congregation. The group has eight members, and (I'm a bit concerned to say) only meets for five weeks. Hard to get a lot of serious healing underway in five sessions....in my experience.

The article does bounce back and forth a bit between the stories of women in the post-abortion healing group, and pregnant women who are visiting an affiliated crisis pregnancy center.

It looks like the reporter was allowed to observe goings-on at the CPC for two days, and he does a generally respectful job writing about what he saw.

All-in-all, a positive development.

Update:

Other bloggers have reacted to this piece.

Bad Feminist writes:

I now believe that women considering abortion have the right to see an ultrasound if they so choose.

Thanks! Thrilling to think that a feminist can believe that a woman who is considering an abortion has the right to see an ultrasound. Although, as she says, she's a bad feminist.

And

To women who strongly believe that they have lost babies through the abortion process, I imagine that well-meaning feminists who tell them that they have no reason to grieve—that their “babies” were actually just clumps of cells—are the consolation equivalent of digging their hearts out with a Dixie cup.

Better.

And

Estimates of the number of so-called pregnancy crisis centers range from 2300 to 3500 in the U.S., compared to 1800 abortion providers. These numbers are frightening. Feminists need to invest more time and resources into building an infrastructure that can wage war on this front.

Frightening? War?

This LiveJournalist is upset:

The disturbing part is their "post-abortion therapy" group. Billed as a way to help women recover from abortion-related depression, it seemed designed to find any seed of unease and nourish it to a full-fledged fixation.

If post-abortion groups weren't helping women get better, they wouldn't be thriving.

Jill at Feministe calls it A Different Anti-Choice Strategy:

It starts out focusing on “post-abortion recovery” groups which, honestly, I don’t have quite as much a problem with. The fact is that some women do feel depressed after abortion, and we have to acknowledge that. If these women seek out religious healing, then that’s their business.

Indeed it is. It's funny to me that reproductive rights activists would view the business of a lot of mostly middle-aged Christian women volunteering vast swathes of their time to sit in rooms and hear traumatized women speak of their abortions as part of "a strategy".

Get Religion has a typically balanced and informative piece.

Orthodoxy Today writes about Counseling women after the damage.