I really knew nothing about abortion.
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I hadn’t even heard the word until after high school. It was never mentioned by my parents or in the context of a church setting. As I child, I went to a Catholic church, but, I believe that it was thought to be a non-issue prior to the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973.
By that time, I had been married for a year, my first child was born, and my high school sweetheart had become an obsessive monster that thought nothing of using physical force to close my mouth at any given moment. I lived in fear, cowered at his presence, but didn’t have the courage to leave. By January 1976, my second son was 9 months, and I was 10 weeks pregnant. It never occurred to me that abortion was an option until I saw on TV a protest in Washington D.C. marking the day of the 1973 decision. My husband had come home swinging the night before. The previous pregnancy hadn’t stopped him from hitting me. Why should I think this one would? Thoughts formulated in my mind. Abortion was an option. If the Supreme Court made it legal, it must be okay. Besides, there was really no baby yet, only a blob of tissue.
Abortion seemed like the only logical solution to save another child from the hostility and violence that took place regularly in our little two-bedroom apartment. I called Planned Parenthood and made the appointment that would change my life.
With no preconceived notion that I might be doing something “wrong” or “against my religion,” I went into the clinic without much apprehension, trusting the doctor, and believing this was the best decision for all involved. But I left the clinic in a daze. I was numb. I felt like I was on the outside, looking in. I watched myself walk to my brother’s car, open the door, and get in. I don’t remember a word being spoken. He dropped me off at my in-laws’ home, where my husband and children were eating dinner. Nothing was said there either. The silence from the adults was deafening. Even though the chatter of my sons broke the sound barrier, I was emotionally detached.
That day, January 23, 1976, led me down a path of self-destructive behaviors and indifference toward life. I was just going through the motions. I fed and bathed the kids as needed, did the laundry at my parents’ home, and made the shopping lists for my husband, who wouldn’t even allow me to go to a grocery store.
I became a “born again Christian,” believing I had need for God’s forgiveness for a multitude of sins that didn’t include abortion. Adultery, stealing, lying, and drug abuse were at least venial if not mortal sins. Any hope of heaven had been quickly replaced with the certainty of hell when I began living a lifestyle that did not conform to the morals I was raised with. Then someone told me that my slate could be wiped clean with the simple acceptance of Christ as my Savior. I jumped at it.
But deep inside, something still was not right. There was an unidentified nagging, a melancholy feeling that brimmed just below the surface of my emotions. Oh, I put on a good act as a good Christian and good mother. I even found the courage to leave the abusive marriage and move 1,400 miles away, where I began a new life as a single parent. I taught my sons to ride bikes, play ball, fish, and camp. On the outside, I was the picture of a self-assured, liberated woman. On the inside, I was crumbling, but I didn’t know why.
I began a relationship with an older, married man who pursued me with encouraging, flattering compliments that made me feel like I was special and worth loving. Two years and two abortions later, I learned that his love for me was not what I had dreamed. But how could it be from a married man? How incredibly naïve and foolish I had been. I was sinking lower emotionally than ever, increasing the drug use and still trying to put on a good act for everyone. It was taking its toll on me. I decided to pull myself up by the ol’ bootstraps, quit the drugs, and quit men. I needed no one, wanted no one. I hardened my heart to any possible vulnerability.
Until I met Bill. Four years later, we married, and I had two more sons. It was the late ‘80s, and the first George Bush talked about volunteers as points of light. I wanted my life to count for something more than just being a mom and wife. I wanted to volunteer where there was a need. Red Cross would be nice, I thought. A friend mentioned a crisis pregnancy center (CPC), where women who didn’t want abortions could get help.
I had never heard of such a place. But that word—abortion—stuck in my throat, making me nauseous. By now, I had heard that it was “wrong” in the eyes of the church. But I still had my opinion that it’s a woman’s choice. Why was this even an issue for me? Old feelings began to resurface, feelings of anguish. But at what, I did not know. I stuffed the feelings down but decided to volunteer at the CPC. After all, women who chose to carry their babies in the worst of situations deserved help.
At the first volunteer training class, I learned two things I had not known—about the beginning of fetal development and abortion techniques. It was like I had been hit by a truck. The heart beats at 18–21 days; the central nervous system is in place at six weeks. The anguish, the hollowness, the feeling of being on the outside looking in overwhelmed me. I had to get out of there. Dear God, what had I done to my innocent child who had been ripped from the safety of his mother’s womb? Three times! When the meeting ended, I ran from the building, hopped in the car, and drove around in circles, not knowing where I was going or what I was doing. Finally, I went home and pretended everything was just fine.
I went back to the second night of training, and when the question was asked if anyone had undergone an abortion, I “confessed” to only one. I couldn’t think past that one. I couldn’t get my arms around the undeniable truth that I had ended the lives of three children. My own children.
I wanted to die. But I had four children at home. I had to be there for them.
I couldn’t take my own life, but I did know how to ease the pain. The drugs would numb the pain. Smoking pot was especially effectual for me. I visited an old friend where I knew I could “score.”
That began another performance of self-sufficient wife, mother, and volunteer to the rest of the world. In the shadows of deceit, I smoked pot at every opportunity. For 18 months, I carried on my shoulders the weight of two separate lives, with the people in both knowing nothing about the other.
I was coming unglued, unhinged, and ready to snap. Nightmares plagued what little sleep I got. Delivering dead babies, babies with limbs missing or holes in their torsos. The sound of crying babies seemed to be everywhere, even when there were none around. I felt like I was going mad. I tried to discuss it with a friend and my husband. Both were unsympathetic, telling me it was over and done with; get over it, move past it. I couldn’t. The horror of my nightmares filled my days as well.
Then one day while volunteering at the CPC, a coworker made a comment that sent me over the edge. She couldn’t have known the effect her statement would have on me. I quietly left the room, went to the director’s office and announced that I was quitting. I could not stand to hear the word abortion one more time.
The director said, “That’s just what the enemy wants. He doesn’t want any good thing to come from this.”
“I don’t care what he wants,” I responded. “I’m out of here.”
She picked up a book and asked me to read it before making a definite decision. I agreed to that much. The book, Will I Cry Tomorrow?, chronicled one woman’s journey from abortion to healing. The author’s description of feelings, emotions, and behaviors mirrored my own. Then she described what she called an “inner-healing” process that brought her release from her feelings of guilt, shame, and genuine loss.
Finally, there was someone who understood how I felt. And finally, I understood that unexplained longing inside of me, that haunting melancholic feeling that I couldn’t put my finger on. I had suffered a genuine loss. The instincts of a mother to protect and nurture her young had been stripped away from me. Even though it was by my own choice, at my own hand, it was still a loss. And I had every right to grieve for the children I had lost.
Light bulbs were going on in my head. Abortion is the reason why all these years I struggled with feelings of inadequacy, interpersonal relationships, self-destructive behaviors, nightmares, and depression at specific times of the year. Abortion is the reason for the empty feelings of watching life through someone else’s eyes. Contrary to what I had been told, what I believed would be true, abortion really did hurt me. And abortion hurt my babies.
I wanted the healing that the author of that book had received. I wanted to be free of the emotional chains that bound me and kept me from being a whole and complete person. I had tried going to church, volunteering, working twice as hard at home with my kids but all the penance and all the positive thoughts and good deeds did not bring me peace. I didn’t think it would work for me, but I was ready to try.
The inner-healing process that I had read about in Will I Cry Tomorrow? involved going back to where the trauma started, but this time I was to visualize Jesus being there. For me, that was the first abortion. Two women, one psychologist and one MSW, were there to help me through the process. One woman actually quietly prayed throughout the session. The other asked me questions. Where are you? What do you see, hear, or smell? Do you remember the doctor? Was there a nurse?
All these questions brought my focus to the Planned Parenthood clinic in a medical building across from San Jose hospital. The walls were gray, the carpet gray. Steel-framed chairs had gray fabric upholster. No pictures on the walls. The magazine I picked up showed graphic color pictures detailing women’s vaginal anatomy. I couldn’t look. I put it down and waited for my name to be called.
I was ushered into a room and handed a hospital gown, told to change, and then brought into another room with an “exam” table with stirrups. I was given no drugs. A matronly looking woman helped me up on the table, told me to relax, and held my hand. With a mask covering his nose and mouth, the doctor’s eyes was all I could see. He looked old, like my grandpa. I don’t remember him saying anything to me, although he may have. I just remember instant, excruciating pain and cramping. I squeezed the nurse’s hand as hard as I could, crying out.
As the painful memory returned, I wasn’t thinking about Jesus. I was thinking about the pain. But as I looked into the nurse’s eyes, suddenly I was looking into the eyes of Jesus. His look of compassion and love flooded me with peace, and I instantly forgot the pain. Jesus was holding a blue blanketed bundle—my son. Smiling, he turned with a sweeping gesture of his arm and behind him, all of heaven opened up. The colors were brilliant; rolling hills of green, flowers of every color. The sky was the bluest I’d ever seen. And there were children everywhere, thousands of children of all ages. I knew instinctively that they were aborted children. But they were beautiful, whole, and safe with Jesus. Not as I’d imagined in my mind or nightmares. They were happy, laughing and smiling.
Just as suddenly, my first husband, Bob, appeared. He had died several years earlier, after telling me he knew he was going to die but believed he would go to heaven, since he had trusted Jesus as his Savior. At the time, he had asked me to forgive him. Time had passed, I forgave, but mocked his premonition of death. We were only 28. He died three weeks later.
But there he was in this vision that God had allowed me to see. Jesus handed the blue bundle to Bob, then turned again toward me—this time holding two pink bundles, my daughters! And the vision was gone.
An emotional dam broke. Tears flooded my face, and I wailed like the women one sees on TV in the Middle East when they’ve lost a loved one. I had not shed a tear for years. The hardness of my heart, the fear of broken and mangled children, the insecurity that God could never forgive the taking of three innocent lives all disappeared in the blessed gift of this vision that God had given me. I was finally free.
Since that time, March 28, 1989, not only have I been involved in facilitating post-abortion support groups but also have been blessed with the opportunity to comfort other post-abortive women who constantly cross my path. Abortion does change you. But out of the ashes of a broken life there is hope for healing and the understanding that I can now comfort others with the same comfort with which I have been comforted.