Kelsey Grammer: ‘The Abortion of My Son Eats Away at My Soul’

It’s been almost fifty years since Karen Elisa Grammer, the sister of actor Kelsey Grammer, was raped and murdered here in Colorado Springs.

At the time, Karen was an 18-year-old waitress working at a local Red Lobster restaurant.

Kelsey Grammer has spoken at length about the horror, especially when the convicted murderer comes up for parole. At a 2009 hearing, the Cheers and Frasier star was blunt when describing the incarcerated individual.

This is a butcher. This is a monster. Is it possible for him to live on the outside without returning to his old ways? She was abducted by a group of animals, raped by them, savaged by them and then finally butchered by them … She was my best friend and the best person I knew … I loved my sister Karen. I miss her. I miss her in my bones. I was her big brother. I was supposed to protect her – I could not. I was supposed to save her. I’ve never gotten over it. It very nearly destroyed me.

The actor has more to share about his lasting love for Karen, his personal pain in grieving her loss and his difficult life journey stemming from several tragedies – including the 1968 murder of his father.

But Grammer also pulls back the curtain on his own regrets that stick with him to this day.

His new memoir, Karen: A Brother Remembers, delves into those key chapters of his life with his sister, but also his heartbreaking involvement in two separate abortions.

“I know that many people do not have a problem with abortion, and though I have supported it in the past, the abortion of my son eats away at my soul,” writes Grammer.

Kelsey was 19 years old when his girlfriend announced she was pregnant and expressed plans to get an abortion. Although he says he was willing to parent the child, he also says, “I did not plead with her to save his life.”

Curiously, Grammer explains he didn’t try to persuade his girlfriend, because he believed “a woman has a right to do what she wants with her own body.” The actor then adds, “I still do. But it’s hard for me. Still is.”

So ingrained are abortion’s lies and talking points that an actor who has been tortured by the memory of the killing of his son still doesn’t seem quite ready to note that while a woman may have license over her own body, the child inside her is a separate and vulnerable person in need of protection.

Grammer then speaks with moral clarity.

“I volunteered to have my son’s body vacuumed out of his mother’s. I regret it … The doctor, or so-called doctors, who have executed generations of children in this manner — I have no idea how they call themselves doctors. Something about the ‘first, do no harm’ thing. But I offer no controversy.”

The actor, who famously played the finicky Frasier Crane, also shares the painful story of he and his wife, Kayte, who was carrying twins, being faced with a life-or-death predicament.

One of the baby’s amniotic fluid sac had ruptured. “Doctors advised us his continued growth without the safety of his amniotic fluid would surely kill him and probably take Faith (their preborn daughter) too,” Kelsey recalled. “It did not repair.”

He writes, “We killed our son so Faith might live. We wept as we watched his heart stop. It is the greatest pain I have ever known. Kayte’s scream was enough to make a man mourn a lifetime.”

Abortion advocates are more often women than men, but the lifetime of regret and pain that follows abortion touches both mothers and fathers.

Kelsey Grammer’s candid and wrought writing is difficult to read, but perhaps his vulnerability will help change the mind of men and even women and convince them to think again before going through with an abortion.

Image from Getty.