Grief is often hidden when it is perceived as inappropriate or socially stigmatized. For example, post-abortion grief may remain unexpressed by both women and men. Women often encounter disempowerment and the dismissal of emotional pain resulting from abortion (Rowe, 2023). In a previous post, I noted studies where grief was one of many common experiences among men whose partners have an induced abortion. Moreover, the human capacity to imagine—to create images stored in memory as the reality of a child—both prior to and after the abortion, may later haunt the individual as grief over lost opportunities or dreams (for example, see Mayo, 2020).
This piece was originally published by Psychology Today