A book by Michaelene Fredenburg

The book Changed, by Michaelene Fredenburg, strikes your heart in a way that’s similar to Jesus asking the woman at the well for water.  It opens things up.  It provides a pathway for conversing about abortion trauma with those not ready to discuss it from the Christian worldview.  Like a head-on car crash, abortion changes you.  Some are ready to discuss this life-changer from a biblical perspective.  Many need to start with their own hurt.  Changed helps you discuss this truth in therapeutic rather than theological terms. 

Alcoholics Anonymous developed a similar approach. Many ministries teach abstinence from the perspectives of Changed and AA, depending on the situation and opportunities available to them.  Scott Klusendorff, a pro-life apologist, and others have taught us how to make the case for life with those for whom the Scriptures are not the starting point. Changed does the very same thing.

Michaelene’s Changed is unique among abortion recovery books.  Other books go straight to the living water of Scripture.  Changed allows more room for you to start with H2O and the common ground of thirst for healing to open a new pathway.  

In that sense, Changed could be seen as incomplete where other books on abortion recovery are self limiting.  Changed is incomplete in that it does not directly reference the Bible or Christ. Most other abortion-recovery books are self limiting to Christian-only audiences because they explicitly introduce the spiritual, Christ-centered nature of healing. But for the secularist, nominal Christian, and those of other faiths, Changed will be a good place, even a safe place, to begin. 

Like the free-flowing, inexhaustible, living water that Christ offered to the woman at the well, those who don’t know this common grace of God may be helped through the teachings of Changed. The grace-filled cure offered in Changed could set them on a journey towards Christ the Healer.

Changed is part and parcel of the integrated outreach of “Abortion Changes You,” a program of Life Perspectives. They combine an interactive website (AbortionChangesYou.com), the book Changed and a new leader’s guide for Changed called Grief & Abortion: Creating a Safe Place to Heal. For more information visit AbortionChangesYouResources.com.

Book review by Rev. John Ensor, Heartbeat International Executive Director of Global Initiatives