Her post-abortive pain fueled a healing ministry

   It was the early 1970s – just before Roe v. Wade – and Theresa Bonopartis, then 18, discovered she was pregnant.
    She and her boyfriend decided to get married, but when she blurted out the news to her parents, their reaction was immediate and visceral.
    “My dad kicked me out of the house and told me to forget I was his daughter,” Bonopartis recalled.
    In New York, where Bonopartis lived, women legally could have an abortion, but she wanted her child. She was sure that her parents, practicing Catholics, would understand that at the very least.
    While Bonopartis roomed with a friend, her father sent her several messages urging her to abort her unborn child, even offering to pay for it. At that point, Bonopartis capitulated.
    Now four months pregnant, Bonopartis walked into the abortion clinic. She was injected with saline and went through 12 hours of labor. Her son’s mortal remains, tiny and complete, fit in what looked like a large mayonnaise jar – marked “3A.”
    “I actually saw my son,” Bonopartis said.
    The victimization did not stop with her abortion. Bonopartis’ father refused to speak to her for years. She was alienated from her family, including her mother, who was silent and compliant to her husband’s wishes during the drama that was tearing the family apart.
    “It wasn’t until a few years later that I started talking to them again, but the abortion was like the monster in the room,” Bonopartis said. “Nobody talked about it. Everybody pretended that it didn’t happen, but you know that it’s there.”
    Bonopartis believes the emotional and psychological impacts of her abortion contributed to more poor decisions.
    “I was away from the church for years,” she said. “I married an alcoholic and a drug abuser because I didn’t think I deserved anything better, and we had two children. I ended up leaving him after a period of time because I didn’t want my children to grow up that way.”
    When  Bonopartis’ son turned 7, he began preparing for his First Communion. Bonopartis brought him dutifully for religious instruction but never darkened the door of the church herself.
    Then, one day, her son brought home a note from his CCD class. The note required parents to come to a class on confession.
    “I felt like if I walked into a church, the walls were going to crash down on me,”  Bonopartis said. “There was this big flame on my back saying, ‘She killed her baby.’ I felt unforgivable. I felt that abortion was the unforgivable sin. I was so filled with fear and shame and guilt that I really didn’t want to have anything to do with God.”
     Bonopartis remembers sitting with the group of parents, not daring to open her mouth. Then Father Larry Paolicelli, the parish priest, began his talk.
    “I was terrified, but there I was with this priest, and he started talking about the sacrament of reconciliation, and he started talking about God’s mercy and God’s forgiveness,” Bonopartis said. “And, of course, he started talking about the sins that God would forgive you for, like alcoholism and adultery. And then, all of a sudden, he said, ‘God can forgive the sin of abortion.’ I was sitting there, and I was thinking to myself, ‘Did I just hear this guy right?’ I left there that night with the first hope I had in 15 years.”
    In that instant – in the priest’s offer of forgiveness – God altered the course of her life. The next day, she called Father Paolicelli and asked for an appointment. He unwrapped the hidden gift of God’s infinite mercy, and he taught her the Catholic faith. He became her spiritual director for six years.
    “In the beginning, it was scary because I felt such darkness,”  Bonopartis said. “It was a struggle to heal. Even once I did have a personal relationship with God, I needed to learn the psychological impacts of my abortion, and it took a long time before I found a therapist who was able to help me with that part of it.”
     Bonopartis began working for the Family Life Office of the Archdiocese of New York, and frequently she would have a few unguarded moments in the hallway with Cardinal John O’Connor and urge him to consider having the local church offer spiritual healing for post-abortive women – as well as men and siblings.
    Cardinal O’Connor established the Sisters of Life, who in addition to the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, take an additional vow to defend human life. Starting with eight women, the community now has nearly 100, and Bonopartis has worked with them and other priests to establish the Entering Canaan Post-Abortion Ministry.
    The ministry hosts days of prayer and healing and weekend retreats for all those impacted by abortion. Bonopartis was in the archdiocese last week to allow women to come forward for healing.
    “There are very few women who had an abortion who really wanted to have an abortion,”  Bonopartis said. “Even if they say it was their idea, there was some kind of pressure behind it, some reason why they felt like they had to do it. A lot of women go into denial because they don’t know there is a place to go for help. So that’s their way of surviving – by forgetting about it.”
     With the encouragement of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Bonopartis holds workshops for priests to model ways in which they can broach such a difficult subject in a homily. She thinks the issue is not raised more often in churches these days because the priest feels uncomfortable about hurting people’s feelings.
    “They know there are post-abortive people out there,” Bonopartis said. “We have to talk about how wrong abortion is, but we also have to let people know that if they had one, that God can forgive them. Healing is available. No sin is unforgivable. In fact, God’s mercy can cover any sin. Forgiveness isn’t about us and what we’ve done; it’s about God and what he’s done for us on the cross.”
    After years of struggles, Bonopartis reconciled with her family – even her father. She had prayed a novena for her father’s conversion from unforgiveness for many years.
    “When my dad was on his death bed, the last thing he talked about was my aborted baby and how he was going to hug him when he got to heaven,” Bonopartis said. “Then he went to confession. It really was an amazing experience of the mercy of God.”
    For more information on post-abortion healing, contact the Woman’s New Life Center at 831-3117. Bonopartis can be reached at lumina@postabortion help.org or (877) 586-4621.
    Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at pfinney@clarionherald.org.