The Woman at the Tomb

Jessica Lockhart's story of abortion honours every aspect of the learnings from Rachel's Vineyard ministry. This autobiography of a woman's struggle with physical, social, mental and spiritual health around an abortion experience offers a personal, articulate and passionate picture of factors that require appreciation for an understanding of the complex reality endured by people suffering post abortion stress.

Pastoral carers will benefit from reading this account as it offers not only insight into the pain experienced and why it is ongoing, but also very useful examples of healing approaches by priests and pastoral carers who made a real difference to Jessica's life. It gives voice to how she was accompanied on the long road to healing and hope often denied those seeking pastoral care in the church by thoughtless or clinical responses to complex and deep spiritual wounds.

Fr Peter Maher, The Swag

Every Catholic should read this book, and maybe a feminist or two too. Jess is not the first Catholic woman I've known to experience the choice as devastating. One of the things I struggle with is the way in which the notion of abortion as sin underpins the book, and yet this is surely the thing that makes exercising this choice so difficult for Catholic women. However, if sin and redemption are at the heart of this book, so too is the much simpler message: for god's sake, give women a break. Being a mother is really blood hard. Mmore than anything, I want Jess's book to be read by Catholics, to open a conversation that is about real women and real lives and real choices in a way that offers hope of a church transformed.

thoroughlypostmodernmummy