By Sarah Terzo
This woman’s story shows how some women who have abortions do not make their own choices but are coerced by others.
“When I was 16, I became pregnant by my boyfriend. I decided to keep my baby from the start. For weeks, I followed her development with medical books and pictures.… My hand was never far from my stomach…
When I finally told my parents of my pregnancy, they were devastated. They pleaded with me to have an abortion, but I felt I’d rather die than hurt my baby. When I didn’t change my mind, they asked me to leave..…
Well-meaning people told me that God understood my need for an abortion. It was the responsible thing to do. Having a baby at my age would be unfair to so many people, they said.
My parents said my baby wasn’t a person yet, and the obstetrician agreed. How could abortion be wrong when so many people accepted it? I let my feelings cloud my judgment, and I closed my heart completely.…
I remember wishing that abortion wasn’t legal. People say it gives women a choice, but I felt I didn’t have one. Since abortion was available, it was my duty to choose it.…
[After the abortion] There was a pit inside me that I dared not go near.
Then one day at the movies, I saw it on the big screen: “Hurting after an Abortion?”… I memorized the phone number and called that night… I argued that I didn’t regret my decision, and I did not have feelings to deal with. But I couldn’t say the word baby or look at pregnant women or hold a teddy bear or buy a goldfish or touch my stomach or be reminded that I had a heartbeat.”
She described the way she felt after the abortion as “indescribable emptiness.” She eventually found healing through counseling.
From Wendy Williams, Ann Caldwell, Empty Arms: More Than 60 Life-Giving Stories of Hope from the Devastation of Abortion (Chattanooga, Tennessee: Living Ink Books, 2005), pp. 79-80
Editor’s note. This appeared at Clinic Quotes and is reposted with permission.