Sanctity of Human Life Sunday & Post-Abortive People

Part Two

3.)  What is the benefit of seeking “recovery” from a past abortion if you have accepted the forgiveness of Christ for your sins?

What I described yesterday, in answer to question 2, was how I felt after I’d accepted Christ’s forgiveness for my sins.  I was going to church and bible studies and small groups and volunteering and raising babies and doing my darnedest to be the good Christian girl.  I knew my sins where forgiven, in fact it was the abortion that led me to seek out the grace of Christ; I just didn’t know that I needed to recover from my abortion. 

The Officer and I call folks like us, the forgiven but not yet healed post-abortives, the walking wounded.  We’re the people who are serving our butts off because we’re so thankful that Jesus would go to the cross for our sin; but we’re doing it all with a sucking chest wound.  Mostly, we think we’re fine, that this is as good as life as a Christ-follower gets for people like us.    

It took a lot of prayer – of the God, there’s got to be more of You for me variety – and a lot of scripture reading (Please, please, please don’t beat post-abortive folks up with Ps. 139!  It’s true and it’s marvelous in its description of God’s loving care; but please remember that it’s NOT meant to condemn those who chose abortion.  God loves the post-abortive just as much as He loves the aborted!).  And one very brave and supportive church leadership team to offer an abortion recovery study before I could see that I actually needed to go back and heal from this devastation experience.   

For me, I had to first admit that I needed help, that I wasn’t over this event that took place nine years in my past.  And then I had to delve back into my past and sift through years of coping mechanisms and hiding strategies to find the original wound itself.  I had to face truth – that I’d lost a daughter – and work through the grief that followed.  I had to trade all my self-loathing and condemnation and anger and misery and loneliness and shame for the grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ.  And I had to accept His love of me, as well as His divine ability to make me a new creation, completely redeemed and worthy through Him to be called a daughter of the King of King, co-heir with Christ.

Thus, while forgiveness is the necessary first step, abortion recovery is a process.  It is one that changes you from the inside out, as you allow Jesus into the darkest corners of your heart to deal with all your painful memories and destructive coping patterns.  It’s a way to becoming more sanctified in Christ.  And it’s the only way to heal the brokenness inside of you.          

4.) What does it mean to be “healed” from abortion?[1]

Like any recovery, it’s a fluid and organic process that’s different for everyone.  There are helpful steps that facilitate this progression; but like all recovery, everyone moves through these at his or her own pace, circling back around to ones that come up again from time to time.  It takes the support of loved ones and the only true source of grace and healing: Jesus Christ.    

                Abortion is my scarlet letter.  But like Hester Prim, how I wear it has changed.

    

Before recovery I wore it shackled to my heart so that no one could see.  When I found healing and freedom through Jesus, I embroidered gold around it and wore it on my chest so that any and all who have this wound in their past could find this healing and freedom as well.  It’s not something I brag or flash about.  But it is something that God can use in me to be a minister of reconciliation for others.      

            I will never not be post-abortive. 

It’s a part of the story of God’s grace in my life.  And God uses it to His glory all the time, in ways big and small.  But God the Father, His Son Jesus, nor the Holy Spirit have ever identified me as: Jen, post-abortive, now redeemed and healed.  God has always called me Jen, His beloved.  

And I think that’s what “healing” looks like: being able to use what Christ has saved you from to bring the healing of Jesus to others, so that God is honored and glorified in your life.  And knowing who you are in Christ.  

Join us tomorrow for questions 5 & 6, or on Saturday for closing remarks in the mini-series "Sanctity of Human Life Sunday & Post-Abortive People."  Or look back at questions 1 & 2.  

   

If you have experienced an abortion in your past, please know that you can reach out -- there are so many genuine and loving people who want to help you through your pain.  The links below are to ministries that I am personally acquainted with and trust.  Or you can contact me.  I am willing to answer any questions, offer what help I can, and pray with you -- confidentially.  Because you, dearest one, are loved by the Maker of the Stars.  

Surrendering the Secret (Nationally for women and couples)

Rachel's Vineyard (Nationally for women and men, Catholic)

ARIN (Nationally for women, men, and couples)

Life Choices Pregnancy Center (in Colorado)

Me: Jen Baros, jenbaros@gmail.com |or| @jenkbaros on twitter

---

[1] For a more detailed version of my story, see “The Supreme Court and My Secret.”  For a brief version of the Officer’s and my journey, see Pat Layton’s book A Surrendered Life, pages 136-138.  

Sanctity of Human Life Sunday & Post-Abortive People

Part One

Rachel Held-Evans has a popular segment on her very popular blog called “Ask A…”  During these posts, she has individuals, with differing experiences, answer questions from her readers.[1]  I appreciate the candor and transparency these dialogues create.  And I appreciate that we live in a culture for which personal, experiential narrative is paramount.  We want to know, to understand, to feel one another’s stories. 

Though Ms. Held-Evans has not yet contacted me regarding my experience as a woman in the Church who’s experienced an abortion, in spite of expounding a fair amount on the topic of abortion in general, I’ve decided to answer some questions I’ve been asked in the past, that are similar to those generally asked by her readers.[2]  I do this on the heels of Sanctity of Human Life Sunday with the hope that some who lead churches, some who are in churches, and some who are outside the Church can begin to understand what it’s like to be a Christ-follower who’s had an abortion. 

1.        What do you want pastors to know about post-abortive people in their congregations?

Primarily, I’d like pastors to know that there are post-abortive women and men in their congregations. In speaking to church leaders, and future church leaders, the general consensus is that people who have abortions don’t go to their churches; that is an outside issue.  To help current and future pastors, as well as their lay leaders, understand the dynamic of the post-abortive population, I begin with some statistics.  These numbers come from the Guttenmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood.  And they help dispel the NIMBY {not in my backyard} aura surrounding people who’ve had abortions.

·         1 in 4 American women between the ages of 15 and 30 have had at least one abortion.  This also means that 1 in 4 men have also participated (whether volitionally or not) in at least one abortion.  That’s 25% of the population.

·         Of these post-abortive women, 79% report attending church, either Catholic or Protestant. 

·         Of the women who have had an abortion, 50% have had multiple abortions, and a majority of these are with different fathers.  This means that more than 1 in 4 men are affected by abortion.[3]   

These numbers serve the purpose of illuminating the fact that women who have had abortions are not staying away from churches; rather, a majority of us are hiding within her walls.  And mostly we are not the ones running from pew to parking lot, covering our faces lest we be recognized; though some might be.  We are the women who sign up and attend every Bible study, the man who shakes your hand on the way in, youth leaders, children of the church staff, men and women’s ministry leaders, and worship leaders.  We are seminary students, missionaries, and pastor’s spouses.  Because we are, just like everyone else, broken sinners in desperate need of a Savior. 

I also reference these demographics because at least once a year pastors are expected to preach on abortion.  Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.  And that’s only if it’s not an election year, in which congregants are urged to examine the issues of the political clime.  Or each time pastors are expected to guide their flocks in upright living and God-honoring behaviors. 

I want pastors to remember that the words they speak from the front of the church go directly to the hearts of their congregants.  Spouting theologically inept and cruel fallacies similar to the idea that there is a “special place in hell for abortionists” does no one any good.  You can’t back this statement up with scripture, so it’s irresponsible to begin with.  Yes, abortion is the willful ending of a human life, making it murder.  Yes, it is a sin.  Yes it grieves God; I believe very, very deeply.  But it is not an unforgivable sin.  Abortion does not render anyone unredeemable.  Insinuating so mocks the resurrection and belittles the grace of God. 

I also want pastors to remember that they are speaking to individuals who are hiding this secret deep within their person.  They are in your congregation looking for the face of Jesus.  They are desperate for His healing, whether they are fully able to admit this to themselves or not.  Thus post-abortive people need to hear Colossians 1:21-22, 1 Corinthians 6:9-12, and Ephesians 2:1-3 just as much as anyone else.  Just as much and as often as you, pastor, do yourself. 

Remembering that at the foot of the cross we are all the same, sinners in desperate need of a Savior, softens sharp words.  It opens the fist pounding on the lectern, making one able to embrace the broken and hurting among our company.  It lifts our eyes from just the words of scripture, making us able to see a person for whom scripture was penned.  It opens our hearts and minds to what the Savior has done for us, and what He has tasked us to do thereafter: be ministers of reconciliation.   

I want pastors to know that post-abortive women and men are in your congregations.  That we’re hurting and in need of Jesus, just like everybody else in those pews.  And we need you to show us, to teach us, to be for us the grace and mercy and love of Jesus Christ.            

2.       What’s it like to go to church as a Christian who’s had an abortion?

Before recovery, mostly your life is about hiding.  And striving.  And fear.  And feelings of worthlessness.  And loathing.  And masks.  And loneliness.  And more guilt and condemnation and shame than is allowed to be expressed in polite society.   

                A Fear and Loathing in Church Pews of sorts.

A post-abortive Christian is hiding from the truth that she/he has had an abortion.  I didn’t want anyone to know.  Secrecy is the reason I had an abortion in the first place.  And every day thereafter, I did what I could to keep people from finding out this truth.  Though the Officer and I (my then-boyfriend, now-husband) were both actively involved in the abortion, he and I couldn’t even speak the word to each other for almost a decade.  We avoided the topic in political conversations.  We did everything we could to keep up the appearance that for all intents and purposes, we were a Non-Abortive couple.  We wore masks; we couldn’t really be ourselves in church or bible studies or small groups or even as leaders.  Because we were afraid of what would happen if anyone found our dark secret out.   

It’s lonely because you can’t ever be truly vulnerable with anyone.  Because to do so would mean exposing your darkest deed to them.  And the very premise of abortion is that no one can know about it.  So I spend years carrying around this immense burden, but couldn’t speak about it to anyone.  Not even to my husband, who’d participated in the abortion with me.  It feels like you’re on an island, watching all your friends and family on a very near shore, enjoying themselves.  They’re waving you over, but you’ve got this anchor chained to your ankle and you know if you set one foot in the water, you’ll drown.  So you stay where you are, smile and wave back, and act like you’re having as good a time as they are.  All the while, making sure they don’t catch a glimpse of your chain and anchor. 

The striving.  Oh, the striving.  The wanting to be good-enough.  That’s probably another reason I had an abortion.  Not wanting to disappoint people, or myself.  Trying to keep up the outward appearance of good-enough, Christian-enough; and all the while, knowing deep down that I would never, ever live up to this ideal because of what I’d done in the past.  But I would keep trying; relying more on self than anyone ever should.  Believing the lie that if I could just try hard enough and live a good enough life, I might be worthy of the grace of Jesus.  Not that I could earn it, but eventually I might make it to a “normal” level of sinful – and be like everyone else – and then Jesus could forgive me.  Because I really doubted that His grace could reach far enough down for someone like me. 

Of course, I couldn’t ever be good-enough {no one can}.  So I loathed myself, my choice.  And I felt completely worthless; a deep and abiding worthlessness that isn’t self-pitying, it’s self-condemning.  I placed every single person around me on a higher pedestal – they’re holier and more righteous than me.  They deserve the love and blessings of the Lord.  I was just lucky to squeeze into heaven by the skin of my teeth.  That’s what I thought grace looked like for someone like me: I’m tolerated by Jesus because He’s committed to being the One forsaken for my sin.  I got eternity and salvation on a technicality.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but it’s a prideful perversion, this I’m too bad for Jesus’ grace.  I shamed and condemned myself more than any of the angriest anti-abortion activists ever could have.  And I did it so well and so often that it became my internal dialogue. 

So I’d keep trying harder each day, to be the Christian woman I should be.  So that maybe I could be worthy of a little more of God’s love than I could be, as a post-abortive woman. 

It’s a dark and lonely cycle that will devour your very life.               

Join us tomorrow for questions 3 & 4, again on Friday for questions 5 & 6, and on Saturday for closing remarks, in this mini-series: Sanctity of Human Life Sunday & Post-Abortive People.  

If you have experienced an abortion in your past, please know that you can reach out -- there are so many genuine and loving people who want to help you through your pain.  The links below are to ministries that I am personally acquainted with and trust.  Or you can contact me.  I am willing to answer any questions, offer what help I can, and pray with you -- confidentially.  Because you, dearest one, are loved by the Maker of the Stars.  

Surrendering the Secret (Nationally for women and couples)
Rachel's Vineyard (Nationally for women and men, Catholic)
ARIN (Nationally for women, men, and couples)
Life Choices Pregnancy Center (in Colorado)
Me: Jen Baros, jenbaros@gmail.com |or| @jenkbaros on twitter

---

[1] You can find the list of Ms. Held-Evans’ “Ask A…” series here. 

[2] The questions in this article are similar to those in Ms. Held-Evan’s “Ask A Recovering Alcoholic,” though each has been asked of me or my husband personally in various settings.  http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/ask-a-recovering-alcopholic-response-heather-kopp.  Accessed 1/20/14 at 09:50MST.
[3] “Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States.”  Guttmacher Institute. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html  Accessed 1/21/14 11:46MST

3 Ways to be Pro-Life & Anti-Misogynistic, Concurrently

But first, a satire titled:

Three premises to exempt men from the abortion debate.

1.        1.)  BECAUSE INTELLECTUAL ABILITIES ARE DETERMINED BY GENDER, demand that only the gender affected by certain topics may use their GENDER-SPECIFIC INTELLECT to come to a reasoned and logical conclusion.    

2.        2.) Argue against the science behind human development.  Throw out all the embryology textbooks, as well as the entire Human Genome Project.  Also, bury any and all evidence from Planned Parenthood’s campaign to legalize Birth Control – like THIS PLANNED PARENTHOOD BROCHURE FROM 1964.    

3.       3.)  Recognize that human life is the resultant of ANY volitional, loving RELATIONSHIP, so that any two partners may express their love for one another in a way that produces offspring.  As Sir Elton John crooned, “all you need is love.” 

Now for reason to step in, because satire feels condescending; and truth is far more desirable than falsehoods. 

In the spirit of full-disclosure, I am a feminist.  Granted, this is not a popular label amongst the evangelicals with whom I most frequently converse (did you catch that?  Yes, I’m also a Christian – another disclosure).  Yet I was raised and remain to this day a dyed-in-the-wool feminist.  In fact, it is my faith in Jesus that concretely grounds my whole-hearted belief that women have been endowed with the same existential qualities and should therefore be afforded the same ontological rights as their male counter parts. 

I am also post-abortive.  That means that I’ve had an abortion.  Yet, I’m Pro-Life.  Hypocritical?  No.  In truth, it is because I’ve had an abortion that I am Pro-Life.    

None of the above labels, nor any of my life experiences, exclude me from logically considering the issue of abortion.  To wit, I offer the following counter-points to the satirical premises above that seek to preclude men from engaging in the abortion debate.   

1.)  If we feminist are going to demand that gender has NO determinate effect on intellect or reasoning ability, in order to maintain our intellectual credibility, we have to hold this stance in the abortion debate as well.  We must honor and heed our convictions: gender has no bearing on one’s ability to reason.  Therefore, men may utilize their intellectual faculties and reasoning abilities when examining the issue of abortion. 

2.) We have to examine the science behind human development.  Seriously.  Pick up an embryology textbook.  Admit that the nation’s largest abortion broker, Planned Parenthood, defined abortion as a procedure that “kills the life of a baby after it has begun,” to encourage the palatability of birth control in the 1960’s.  Realize that even cognizant Pro-Abortion philosophers recognize that individual human life begins at insemination. 

“A human fetus after all is simply a human being at a very early stage of his or her development.”

-- David Boonin, A Defense of Abortion[1] 

Therefore, arguing on behalf of the life of another member of the species, Homo sapiens, is not a gender-specific endeavor.  Thus, males are able to argue against anything that ends the life of another human, be that lethal injection, guns, or abortions.  Because at any stage of our development, we are all still human.    

3.) We have to recognize that in order to produce human offspring, sperm from a male is one of two requisite ingredients for a human child.  Thus, every embryo has two parties responsible for its existence.  One Female.  One Male.  Ergo, males DO have an inherent responsibility in reference to the resulting human life.  This irrefutable truth means that ABORTION IS A MAN’S ISSUE, TOO. 

These premises indicate that every human may engage in the debate regarding abortion.  It is illogical and irresponsible, and frankly makes us look like hysterical alarmists, for women to scream “Get Out of My Uterus” to men who are respectfully and thoughtfully arguing either for or against abortion. 

And looking like hysterical alarmists is detrimental to the feminist movement they are claiming to promote.     

---

[1] David Boonin, A Defense of Abortion .  Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, p. 20  

The Supreme Court and my secret

I did something last week that I never imagined I would do.  I added my name to an amicus brief* for the United States Supreme Court.  Concerning what was once the secret I thought I would take with me to the grave.

As we continue after Easter to ruminate on the obedience, the suffering, and the glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, I know that no high court, nor ruling party, nor nation, nor people can force evil from this broken and fallen world.  There is nothing that can accomplish this.

               Nothing but the blood of Jesus.  

I know this, because...

I was just shy of 19.  He was 21.  We were at university together, inseparable and certain of life as only brand new adults can be.  And we were in love. 

We had known each other less than a year and were pretending to not be boyfriend and girlfriend so we could both work for the summer as orientation leaders.  We were assigned to rooms just across the hall from each other.  One day I found myself sitting alone in the girls’ suite bathroom, watching the pregnancy test.  It was positive.   

I only gave him a breath or two to let it sink in.  I wanted a response, the response.  I wanted him to tell me we’d get married, we’d make it all work somehow.  But in those two eternity-encasing beats, he couldn’t absorb it all, just looked at the floor, hearing the crushing weight of all his family’s dreams falling down around him.  Knocked breathless by the disappointment he assumed would become his identity.  He didn’t look up. 

I gave him two breaths.  And when his silence had stretched on for days in my ears, I began the panicked flailing of the drowning.  I held out the yellow pages, open to the ad I’d been staring at for hours as I’d been trying to think of how to tell him.  This was the only clinic I would go to.  I made demands.  He would drive me to and from.  He would pay for half.   He wouldn’t tell anyone.  Ever.   

On a bright, warm day under the June sun, I had an abortion.  I swallowed the pills and slunk away; the acid guilt and shame and hate burning me from the inside out. 

One tiny life flown to heaven; two more on the rapid descent into hell. 

In the days that followed, the weeks and months that just kept coming and wouldn’t stop even though I couldn’t breathe, he pulled away.  He started to run.  And I began to drown myself – it was a very, very slow liquid attempt at expiry.  Though all I wanted was to stop feeling.  To forget.  To erase what had been done. 

Superficially, my self-inflicted destruction cost me a full-ride scholarship, a leadership position in my sorority, and good standing at the school that only a year before I’d been desperate to get into.  But what I actually lost the in process was far more valuable and even more difficult to recover.  I lost my self – who had I become?  I lost all the certainty of youth – the world was a dark place, more finite than I had ever realized; I was part of and party to that evil.  I lost friends because I had to hide my pain away from them, acting as if all was fine so we wouldn’t be found out.  And I lost the Officer.  I only reminded him of what we’d done.  Thus he ran, as far away as he could. 

To his credit, in a last-ditch effort to save me from myself before he left, the Officer kept dragging me to church.  I thought I was condemned to hell anyway, so I would show up smelling like the hangover I was nursing.  Sitting in the sanctuary only made me feel vile, and used up.  I knew if anyone could see who I really was they would turn, with pitchforks and torches, to drive me out of their holy place.  We even went on Mother’s Day.  We sat in the very back of the huge auditorium, as we always did; the pastor lauded mothers as the ushers handed out flowers and I studied the floor.  Then from the pulpit came blessings for the young women of childbearing age; the usher handed me a flower.  A solitary, red rose.  My lungs forgot how to pull air in.  I shook the entire ride home.  Neither the Officer nor I looked at one another.       

And then he was gone.  No phone calls, only sparse letters, and some photos of a boy in camo.  All the while, I kept sinking.  When he was away from me, the Officer turned.  He set his face toward the Light.  He wrote home about God and His love and the Father’s plan for our lives.  I didn't doubt God's love for the Officer, I doubted His ability to leave me unpunished.
 

 

Time withered as it will, distancing us from the abortion, so that eventually a white dress, a bow tie, and the smell of stargazer lilies preceded our flight to the top of the world; and we learned how to be in love, in the snow and the dark.  Even there, the Officer kept dragging me to church.  I was his wife, still drowning, though less so with him to desperately clutch; but still frightened of how and when God would exact His vengeance. 

For murder cannot go un-punished; the ground cries out with blood. 

Again, I sat in the back of a church, both listening and hiding.  She was rail thin, with hair that was too Texas and boots too lower-48 to draw me in.  Until she opened her mouth.  Ten abortions.  I sat up.  She wove her story with grace, nimbly treading over words that I didn’t know they allowed on altars.  Ten.  If God could forgive ten, maybe He would forgive one.  When the altar call came, I bowed my head and pressed my eyelids together so hard it felt that the rainbow explosions were what kept the tears in.

Please, I begged, please.  Forgive me.  

What I hadn’t realized, in all that time I spent in the backs of all those churches, was that the ground did cry out for blood, that vengeance was God’s to exact.  But that He already had. 

God took His rightful, just, and holy vengeance for my abortion out on His Only Son.  The blood that satisfied my debit had been spilt over 2,000 years ago.  The Only Son of the Living God already gave His life in my stead.  He was simply waiting for me to accept His payment on my behalf.   

The mill-stone which pressed me to this earth was raised off my shoulders in that balcony, as soon as the desperate plea was formed in my mind.  Suddenly, I remembered how to breathe.  My eyes opened to new brightness, and my heart felt light again, for the first time in years.  There was singing, there was study and prayer; there was a peace in my spirit that hadn’t existed before.  I went to church as a member of the body of Christ, not just an outsider trying to appease the Officer.  I wasn’t running anymore.  I had stopped drowning, I started healing, and I began to swim. 

Some years later, I read Psalm 139.  I wasn’t Bible scholar enough back then to know to avoid that piece of the book; so when it cropped up for a women’s study, I didn’t expect it to knock the wind out of me.  I still have the Bible I first read it in.  The page is stained with my tears and the note – for at that point, I was comfortable putting my words alongside God’s – that said, “He knew.  But He loved me anyway.”  The simple truth that my daughter was being knit together by the Divine in my womb even as I made the choice to end her life.  God knew.  And true that His love for her is great; His love for me was always just as great, as it is for all of His children – those who are smack in the middle of sinning, as well as those who are being sinned against.  Those He calls His own through their relationship with His Son; and those whom He desires should not perish away from Him.  God the Father sent His Son to seek the lost and to save the sinners – of which each person on the planet can number themselves. 

Jesus came to save me.  Jesus came to save you.       

As a redeemed child of God, I am so thankful that there are people in the body of Christ who are talking about abortion – not just holding angry signs outside of clinics.  People who know that, yes abortion should be stopped; but also that the One in Four Women between the ages of 15 and 30** who have made this choice can be saved, can be healed, can be restored.  That we all, post-abortive or non, desperately need the blood of Jesus to take away our sins.  If we accept it,

there is nothing the blood of Jesus doesn’t cover. 

Nothing.                     

This vital truth must proceed another that is just as necessary to proclaim, for the gospel has to take prevalence over everything else.  But following it, I must say, with the certainty of experience, that the intentional ending of a human life through the means we call “abortion” is wrong.  Dearest reader, the pills and the procedures have to stop.  The physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual devastation crippling our mothers, our sisters, our friends, and ourselves must cease.  As rational people who are allowed the privilege of guiding the law of our nation, we cannot continue to delude ourselves into thinking that this is a women’s rights issue; or that abortions are somehow inseparable from women’s health care.  We cannot keep swallowing the lies that make women sums of their parts, so that a uterus or vagina is somehow equated with the paramount of ontological woman-ness.  We have to stop choking down the idea that in order to be liberated from antiquated gender roles, women have been afforded some fundamental right to put another human to death.  It is time to use our reasoning and to critically examine the claims of a multi-billion dollar industry that wants us to think that abortion is a right instead of a money-generating product.   

As a nation, but even more so as a people who know that Every. Single. Life. is uniquely and beautifully created by God, we must end abortion.           

 

For the love of God, for the sake of Jesus Christ, for the cry of the Holy Spirit.     

 

If you have experienced an abortion in your past, please know that you are not alone; and there is hope and healing available.  You can private message me on Twitter (@jenKbaros), on Facebook (Jennifer Smith Baros), through my website (Aletheia Ministries), or by personal e-mail (barospack@gmail.com).  Any contact I receive is completely confidential. 

 

*For more about what an amicus brief is, go here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/supct/rule_37 or here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amicus_curiae         

** Statistic reported by the Guttmacher Institute on their “In Brief: Fact Sheet” at http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html, accessed 4/1/13,  9:22 pm.