Depression: 5th Stage of Grief

The roles men and women played in their baby's death can fill them with guilt, shame, self-condemnation, and self-pity. It is in this stage that harmful behavior such as excessive drug and alcohol use or suicidal tendencies are noticeable. Men tend to also have to deal with becoming more aggressive and abusive. In this stage, you may feel the need to punish yourself, which may show up in psychosomatic illnesses or you may become accident prone. Through these behaviors, you may attempt to ease the pain of guilt, but fail to do so. You began to blame yourself for not preventing the abortion; not learning the truth in time, not choosing life for the baby, and for not standing up for what was right. Men who chose abortion experience extreme guilt because he failed in his responsibility to his child and to his child's mother. In moving forward out of depression, you are no longer angry with yourself but have now accepted responsibility for what you have done. You now start to surround yourself with God's loving forgiveness.

Source: Forgiven and Set Free