Pro-life author and journalist Peter Hitchens participated in a BBC series called “Banged Up” last year, during which time he was locked in a prison with ex-prisoners. Sitting in a cell with an ex-convict named Tom Roberts, the two men struck up a conversation that began with a rather innocent question.
Roberts asked Hitchens if he had any brothers or sisters.
“I had one brother,” said Hitchens. “I would have had two other siblings, but my mother had two abortions. So they were, I rather guess, the sisters I wish I’d had. I do really wish I’d had sisters.”
Roberts asked, “Why is that?”
Hitchens clenched his hands, “I just would have liked to have that in my childhood.”
Roberts replied, “I get that. I’ve got sisters, and you’ve made me feel very grateful.”
Hitchens has been an outspoken advocate for preborn children, but this was the first time he brought his argument in favor of life to such a personal level, said Jonathon Van Maren in a post for The European Conservative. Van Maren noted that Hitchens’ brother, Christopher, was an atheist; he died in 2011 but was also opposed to abortion.
In an essay for Vanity Fair, the late Christopher Hitchens once wrote, “I was in my early teens when my mother told me that a predecessor fetus and a successor fetus had been surgically removed, thus making me an older brother rather than a forgotten whoosh.” He also admitted that two of his own children had died by abortion.
“At least once I found myself in a clinic while ‘products of conception’ were efficiently vacuumed away,” he wrote. “I can distinctly remember thinking, on the last such occasion, that under no persuasion of any kind would I ever allow myself to be present at such a moment again.” Later in life, his wife became pregnant at an inopportune time and considered an abortion. But Christopher asked her not to abort. “I urged her not to get one, and ultimately, she decided not to, and didn’t. But I wouldn’t have, even if I could, gone beyond an effort to persuade her,” he said.
Peter Hitchens is not alone in his grief over his lost siblings. Other adults who learned they had lost siblings to abortion have also shared their grief.
READ: She lost four siblings to abortion. Now she’s pro-life.
Penelope learned at age 16 that her mother had an abortion. “Knowing I wasn’t inconvenient enough to end up the way my sister was, and the fact my mother felt she needed to do what she did out of vulnerability, pressure, and panic makes me feel guilt in that I was spared and that I couldn’t help her choose life at the time,” Penelope explained.
Leah, whose half-sibling was aborted, said, “I’ve always felt like someone was missing from my life. I used to not even talk about what happened and I struggled for a while quietly. […] I will always wonder the course life would have taken had my sibling been afforded the gift of life, but I have faith I’ll meet him or her one day, and when that day comes, I want to be able to say I fought for the children who needed a voice a helped protect other families from the pain mine has gone through.”
Chloe explained how she reacted to learning of her twin siblings who were lost to abortion.“I felt heartbroken, and at times, I feel guilty,” she said. “I struggled with depression before I found out, and after finding out about the abortion I constantly questioned my worthiness of being on this planet. I always felt (and still feel) like there’s an important part of my life missing.”
Another sibling survivor explained the pain they felt after learning of their mother’s abortion. “We let it drop and I forgot about it,” they wrote. “But I had not really forgotten. I didn’t think about it consciously for years.” But years later, “Suddenly I found myself thinking about my little brother! I became disoriented and lost control of the car for a moment as I burst into tears having lost him. I was astounded by my reaction, but I couldn’t shake the sadness and longing to have known him.”
Van Maren noted that Peter Hitchens once made a remark on living through a time of legalized abortion, poignantly stating, “Those who wonder what they would have done had they lived a time of some terrible injustice now know the answer. We do live in such a time. And we do nothing.”
Editor’s Note: Read more here about a ministry for those who have lost siblings to abortion.
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