MEN who experience sexual dysfunction, depression, guilt, shame or a range of other emotions after their partners have had abortions have very little support, according to one local counsellor who is trying to change this.

Christian counsellor Christina Milford, who argues that women aren't the only victims of abortions, is advocating the establishment of group counselling mechanisms across the island to provide support for such men.

Milford, who heads the Pregnancy Resource Centre in Montego Bay, and who counsels pregnant and post-abortive couples, said she has found that though males are often negatively affected by abortions, they don't express it because of society's expectation that men be macho.

Research suggests that some of the symptoms they experience - including guilt and shame, sexual dysfunction, depression, fear of relationships and increased risk-taking and suicidal behaviour - are similar to those experienced by women but the taboo surrounding, not just abortions but the act of reaching out for help, can make the experience more stressful for the man.

"[Men] are not given the opportunity to talk about what they are feeling and so they end up drinking, sleeping excessively, doing drugs, engaging in sexual promiscuity and they become angry," she told the Sunday Observer in a recent interview.

She said, however, that because grieving is an important part of the healing process, group counselling sessions akin to North America's Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) be set up here.

"The first thing we need to do is to highlight the fact that they [men] need to grieve. They need to get permission to grieve. If it is not expressed, it becomes internalised and can lead to health and mental health problems. Who knows why there are so many angry men in our society?"

And, according to the counsellor, the sessions could be expanded to address not just abortions but sexuality on a whole.

To get an idea of the effects of abortions on men in Jamaica, the Sunday Observer went in search of some whose partners had terminated pregnancies. What we found were mixed reactions.

Twenty-nine-year-old Kingstonian, Dwayne, could've had two children by now, but two of his ex-girlfriends had abortions, and both incidents, he said, caused him deep emotional pain.

"The first one made me angry," he told the Sunday Observer.

"I never wanted it to happen, but she told me she was doing it. I never had any choice in the matter. I was powerless to stop her [for] it was her body. So I got mad," Dwayne said.

After the procedure, however, Dwayne said he broke up with the girl because he simply "couldn't be intimate with that woman anymore".

His second experience was a few years later and although it hurt him, he said he understood why it had to happen.

"The young lady was from a Christian home, she was still going to school, she was not married, and it would strain the relationship she had with her parents. She wasn't mentally ready for all of that.

"I completely understood, but it made me depressed anyway. I didn't care much about what I was doing, and it came out in my work and in my social life. I was short-tempered, I got angry when I shouldn't have, my sleeping habits changed, I started spending more time by myself.

It was a similar story for 19-year-old Wayne, from Montego Bay, who got his 28-year-old girlfriend pregnant when he was only 17. He said he wanted the baby but that circumstances in the woman's life prevented it.

"I always wondered whether it would come back to haunt me," he confessed. "I've had sleepless nights thinking about the fact that she took a life, and wondering whether I'll have another child."

Sylvester, on the other hand, told the Sunday Observer that he felt no remorse about an abortion his girlfriend had about three years ago. In fact, he was the one who persuaded her to have the procedure done, he said.

"It was in the final year of college. I wasn't ready for a child, financially or emotionally. She wanted to keep it but I persuaded her to have the abortion.

She cried, was very upset and very emotional, but I'm very persuasive."

After the abortion, Sylvester said he felt he had made a wise 'financial move'.

"I felt richer [when I thought of] all the money I would save by not having had the child. I felt it was the right thing to do considering that I was on my way into the real world," said he.

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World