Silence Equals Acceptance

	Deborah Pennsylvania, United States

	I had an abortion because I was nervous about being pregnant. I was 17, single, and my boyfriend wanted me to have one. When I went to Planned Parenthood, the worker there told me that I wouldn’t be aborting a baby. I was told it was nothing more than a blob of cells with neither shape nor form. She also told me that it wasn’t worth disappointing my parents over this because I would have to forget about school if I decided not to have an abortion. I decided at that moment to schedule an appointment for an abortion. Back in 1975 it was against the law for a minor to get an abortion without parental consent. The woman from Planned Parenthood told me that since I was only 17 years old, I would need to bring a legal ID from someone of legal age; she told me to not tell my parents because they could have stopped me from having one. During the abortion, I was numb, light-headed, and still conscious. I could hear what was going on. I heard the sound of the machine and some little cracking noises. I could also see some blood, and I lay there wondering what the hell they were doing to me. Immediately after the abortion, I felt strange in that area, like that abortionist had just invaded and violated my innermost parts, and I was still bleeding. As time went on after the abortion, I felt like I had to try and hide my shame over this. There were physical aspects from the abortion that were bothersome, but nothing like the guilt and shame I felt. The shame was from having an abortion. The guilt was for both the abortion and the lies I had to tell in order to be able to get the abortion. A few years later, a friend of mine brought me to the Lord, and I had accepted Christ as my Savior. Little by little, I began to see that abortion is murder. It was at this point that the guilt and the shame were the worst ever. By now, I had seen pictures of what happens to a baby in the womb when an abortion is done. It is gruesome and heinous. The electric chair is more humane. Years later, thoughts of that day and the procedure kept coming back to me, over and over again. I realized that I had done the most awful thing I could ever have done, and it had been done in the most inhumane way. I paid someone to kill my unborn baby. I could see it happening. I could see the doctor doing things inside of me to my baby in order to kill it. After that, I felt that I should suffer, and that it should hurt. I felt cheap and unworthy. After all, I used sex for recreation. I used abortion as birth control. Even though I didn’t think that I was worthy of God’s forgiveness for this, the pain was too much, but I decided to go to Him anyway. God’s love and forgiveness came, and after a while the images stopped. A friend of mine who went through something similar, told me about a post-abortion recovery program at Rachel’s Vineyard. There I found help and healing. But the best was yet to come. When God forgave me, he turned the situation around into something good. I started to get involved with Pro-Life groups, and I went to rallies and protests. I even had my testimony taped to play on a show called Faces of Abortion. I realized that my shame and guilt were now gone after all these years. Abortion is America’s holocaust. Roe v.Wade is the worst U.S. Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott decision. Silence equals acceptance. An unborn baby is a living human being and deserves to be nurtured, and treated as such. The intimidation tactics by Planned Parenthood to get me to have an abortion, the abortion procedure, and the physical and emotional aftermath are too painful for any woman to have to deal with. This is why I am silent no more.

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