By Dave Andrusko
We’ve written a lot about the incredible pain and regret that so many women feel after undergoing a chemical abortion. But likely none surpasses a review we did of a pro-abortion piece that ran in New York Magazine.
Meaghan Winter provided thumbnail sketches of the reasons 26 women had their abortion or abortions. The overwhelming takeaway for me from Winter’s story was sorrow. Abortion’s ugly truth is everywhere.
Elsewhere today we reposted a story by Sarah Terzo, a very gifted pro-life writer, whose work has appeared frequently in NRL News Today. Sarah tells us she already posted one story based on Winter’s account of the experience of 26 women who went through a chemical abortion.
Today’s account is of several more women. Sarah writes
Not all the stories in the article were from women who suffered because of their abortions. (Although, of course, we know denial is often a feature of post-abortion trauma.)
But several of them told stories of coercion and emotional trauma.
So many of these women were looking for their boyfriends to signal it was okay to have their baby. Virtually all the guys in these accounts failed to help the woman in their lives at a crisis moment.
I’m picking out the most revealing statements of several of these women; they really are heartbreaking.
* Nichole. “ I wanted to keep it. My boyfriend always had football practice, so he couldn’t go to the doctor appointments with me. If he’d gone, he would’ve felt differently. But he says, ‘No way.’ I wanted to show him that I loved him enough to do it for him.”
She very, very reluctantly has the abortion.
“When I cry about it, I cry alone. He thinks it would make me sad to talk about, but I don’t want our baby to think we forgot.”
*Heather has had two abortions. She had the second “even though she didn’t want to.”
Now, she suffers emotionally. She says, “It’s almost too much to open the door of guilt and shame because it’ll all overcome me.”
She also says that when she went for her abortions and sat in the waiting room, there was “a dead silence that’s hard to describe.” All the pregnant people waiting for their abortions, she says, were holding in their emotions “to a heartbreaking degree.”
*Madeline. She says, “I didn’t think I was ready for sex, but my boyfriend pushed it. Rape feels too strong, but it wasn’t really consensual.”
She was 20 weeks along when she had her abortion. During the ultrasound, the abortion worker told her how big her baby’s head was. Madeline says that this “was the most scarring thing.”
She says, “I feel bad that it was so far along, developed.”
Madeline was still in school and says that in one of her classes, they spent a week discussing abortion. She describes this as “awful.”
Like most of the other women, Madeline doesn’t talk much about how the abortion affected her. But for the rest of her life, every time people around her talk about abortion, it will bring back the memory of her lost baby.
Sarah’s final quote is a “comment on the [Winter] article by an unknown post-abortive person.”
My only advice – if you are thinking of getting a termination PLEASE get proper councelling [sic] first. I am pro choice [sic] but my god – I had no idea my abortion would be this hard…
I just had no idea that this would be so life changing.
Yes – I was solving a problem, but that doesn’t mean you are left problem free. No one mentioned the profound grief, hormonal rollercoaster and loneliness that has now come.
Sarah writes, “Though still ‘pro-choice,’ she was clearly devastated by her abortion.”
Please take the time to read Sarah’s full post which can be found here. Winter’s New York Magazine article can be read here. My take on the Winter article can be read here.