May 1981, 20 years old, married and pregnant with my second child. Let me go back a couple years, I got married at 18 years old, not for love (although I did love him in my own needy way) but to get out of Mom and Dads house. I moved in with “him” we planned on getting married on New Years Eve, but oops, I was pregnant. We had to push up the date a month. Finally, I had a family that loved me, so I thought. It was then that the abuse started, he would drink, I would get hit. Just a few months short of after my son’s one year birthday I was pregnant again. My husband and I had just got back together, I had left him just weeks earlier and went to a shelter for abused women. Yes, he was hitting me frequently, but one day when I knew he was going to be gone for the entire day into the evening, black eyes and all I got up the nerve to finally call my parents and tell them what had been happening to me. My dad came and drove me and my nine month old little boy to the shelter. I finally felt free, although short lived. It only took a couple of days for my dark reality to set in. I had not finished my college education; I had no means of financial or emotional support. The shelters rules were "six weeks and you had to be out on your own". Therefore, in my battered and controlled mind I felt like I had no other choice but to go back to the only "home" I had. Less than 2 months later I was pregnant. When I told my husband he was less than thrilled. "We already have one", "He takes up enough of your time" We can't afford another kid", "I don't want to share your attention with anyone else". Bla, Bla, Bla. So there it is, in May 1981 I had my first abortion.
I remember the unemotional way this "simple surgical procedure that only took 15-20 minutes to complete" was explained to me. There was no real counseling, no facts, no compassion, not much information given at all, and I was much too timid and naive to think about asking for any. I remember horrible pain, the cramping, and the unsympathetic way about the entire staff. The nurse kept patting me on the knee as my feet were up in the stir-ups, telling me it would be over soon. The recovery room bedded about six - eight women, all in tears. Nobody came to comfort any of them. No counsel offered we were just left there to "recuperate". After the recuperation time passed, they came to release you. Just like that, it was over, [so you are told]. Six and one half years later we divorced.
March 1988, just divorced struggling to make ends meet, working one full time job and two part time jobs and still I was having a difficult time. When I divorced my husband, I was left with many unpaid bills. My husband had a knack for sitting around the house and not doing anything including working. So as the story goes, I started looking for that emotional support and approval anyway I could get it. Needless to say, I found myself pregnant once again, this time I was an unmarried mother of two, (My husband and I had a daughter 1 1/2 years after my first abortion). Coming from the "proper family" that I did there was only one word for a girl in the situation I was in. This was unforgivable, unyhought-of, and just did not happen to "decent girls". Ashamed and embarrassed, again without means of emotional or financial support and still very naive, I had my second abortion. The thing that was very different about this one was and still is, I do not remember anything about it. I remember the ride to the office and the waiting room (vaguely).
I never spoke of my abortions to anyone except to the wonderful man I married in 1989. Even though I finally had a man that truly loved me I spent the next several years depressed, destructive, filled with guilt, suicidal, and borderline obsessive compulsive. In 1990, I gave birth to my first of two premature little boys. I carried my first one 33 weeks and then my water broke, (weak uterine walls) spent just shy of two weeks in the hospital before giving birth to a 5.5 lb baby boy. In 1992 I gave birth to my second premature child., born at 31 weeks this time he is the one that spent the time in the hospital, 29 day to be exact. Most of that time was spent in an incubator, with monitors and tubes. It was the most difficult time in my life. I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Thank God for my husband and my Pastor. Moreover, through the grace of God and much prayer, my baby boy made it, and is very well today, and I finally found the strength to face my past. Shortly after I got involved in Pro-life ministries (that is a testimony all in its own) and became educated in life issues. The rest as they say is history.
Thank you God for the love and mercy you have shown me, for choosing me to do your works and most of all for your Son Jesus Christ who died for my sins.
I am truly thankful and truly blessed!
Anne