{"id":12576,"date":"2025-12-16T07:28:50","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T07:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=12576"},"modified":"2025-12-16T07:28:50","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T07:28:50","slug":"to-men-grieving-their-abortions-this-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=12576","title":{"rendered":"To men grieving their abortions this Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"


By Nyles Pinckney<\/span><\/span>, Op-ed contributor Sunday, December 14, 2025<\/span>Unsplash\/Jakob Owens<\/span><\/p>\n

Christmas is known as the season of happiness and family. But last month, the American Psychology Association\u00a0reported\u00a0that almost half of Americans will struggle with emotional and mental health challenges, including grief.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been there and have been battling with these emotions since my abortion experience in 2019. I was playing college football, and I had a young son, so I was learning to be a good dad while also being a student athlete.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I didn’t speak up when my girlfriend asked if we should go through with having an abortion because I didn’t think I had a right to. Soon after, while I could take hit after hit on the field, I started noticing I was unpredictably angry and sad. I hid my emotions even from myself by hitting the gym or watching extra game film.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My teammates thought I\u2019d hit another gear in my preparation, but I was masking my pain.<\/p>\n

One in five men in the U.S. has been involved in an abortion, but contrary to the story we often tell ourselves, it does impact us. One study commissioned by Support After Abortion, where I lead men\u2019s healing, found that\u00a071%\u00a0of men reported negative emotional changes afterward. These sometimes long-lasting psychological impacts were\u00a0independently analyzed\u00a0in a\u00a0Psychology Today<\/em>\u00a0column on how women and men grieve after abortion experiences.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Abortion also impacts faith. I was raised in a Christian household, where abortion wasn\u2019t the center of the conversation \u2014 but it was not what a \u201cgood Christian\u201d was supposed to do. Like many women and men who contact Support After Abortion seeking help, I worried that God would judge me harshly and wondered if praying about what happened was even okay.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Feeling isolated from myself, God, and my girlfriend created a spiral. My relationship with my girlfriend quietly fell apart. Like many men, I coped in unhealthy ways. I isolated myself from my teammates, coaches, friends, and others. In social situations, I drank for “liquid courage” to seem normal. To run from my feelings, I stayed late at our facility looking for anything to occupy my mind \u2014 lifting, film, treatment \u2014 so no one could see how much I was hurting. Football became my mask and distraction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Off the field, I escaped the season\u2019s sadness by keeping busy while others celebrated. Coaches questioned why I stayed late after our Christmas practice. They didn\u2019t know I was just trying to stay ahead of the pain.<\/p>\n

I remember feeling so alone that I broke down during practice, cried, and, in front of all my teammates and coaches, said that I quit. I was about to give up my dream of playing college football because I couldn\u2019t handle the weight of my abortion experience.<\/p>\n

As I poured out my bottled-up feelings, my coach didn\u2019t tell me to man up or push through. He showed compassion. And he brought in a counselor for the players, so we had someone to talk to about our struggles, and encouraged us to lean on our brothers and teammates.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when I realized I needed to break the cycle of silence and the facade of \u201cI\u2019m overly strong, I\u2019m Superman.\u201d At the end of the day, we\u2019re regular people with emotions, and we should be able to express them.<\/p>\n

My journey of change started when I first learned I wasn\u2019t alone. Healing taught me to slow down and pay attention instead of powering through. I learned to journal to work through my thoughts of the day, especially when I felt like isolating. I also learned that God isn\u2019t nearly as harsh towards me as I am to myself.<\/p>\n

When the urge to disappear hits, I try something different. Instead of numbing the pain, I just step outside and take a breath.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I call my mom and just listen. Other times, I reach out to my dad or tell my current girlfriend, \u201cGive me a second,\u201d and step away before the anxiety swallows me. I\u2019ve learned to let the emotions rise and fall instead of fighting them.\u00a0I leaned into God and accepted His Grace along my journey.<\/p>\n

For years, I skipped Halloween because seeing small children having fun with their families or shopping for costumes sent me into a spiral, reminding me of the memories I\u2019d missed. But this year, I was able to help with my son’s Halloween costume and events. When anxiety crept in, instead of shutting down, I stepped outside, took a breath, regrouped, and returned with a clearer head.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The holidays are still a work in progress. Seeing families picking out a tree, shopping for gifts, or even walking past the children\u2019s section at a store can trigger those feelings. Only now, I have the tools, language, and support to deal with them. I no longer carry this alone.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still healing, and a big part of that is because it\u2019s become my job to speak to men just like me \u2014 athletes, fathers, professionals. Men who supported the abortion, men who opposed it, and men who didn\u2019t know until later. Men from every belief system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What many share is silence because no one ever told them it\u2019s okay to grieve. Nobody told them that God is always there for them.<\/p>\n

Support After Abortion is trying to change that. We have new resources, like Finding Solid Ground, a compassion-based\u00a0healing book\u00a0that combines down-to-earth conversations with faith. It will be the heart of virtual men\u2019s meetings in January. Most importantly, though, we have understanding and compassion, because while the holidays still aren\u2019t easy for me, I\u2019m not carrying my burdens alone. And this holiday season, I don\u2019t want other men to, either.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nyles Pinckney is Men\u2019s Healing Coordinator at Support After Abortion. He is a former collegiate football player. Men can contact Nyles for no-judgment support to begin their healing journey at\u00a0Nyles@supportafterabortion.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nyles Pinckney, Op-ed contributor Sunday, December 14, 2025Unsplash\/Jakob Owens Christmas is known as the season of happiness and family. But last month, the American Psychology Association\u00a0reported\u00a0that almost half of Americans will struggle with emotional and mental health challenges, including grief. I\u2019ve been there and have been battling with these emotions since my abortion experience<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[2283,813,2121,2574],"class_list":["post-12576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-christian-living","tag-abortions","tag-christmas","tag-grieving","tag-men"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}