1975 was the time of free love – sex and partying.  I was about to graduate from college; my life finally turned around.  And I was pregnant, again!  I had to make a choice and I chose to terminate the child who I thought could ruin my whole life.   It was no time for a baby. The school nurse told me there was an easy solution, just go down the street to the local Planned Parenthood and have an abortion.  

After 46 years it is a still a vivid memory, lying on a cold table in a heartless room.  A room where my child died as well as my inner self.  My son Matthew was vacuumed from my womb and like a freshly cleaned carpet; the footsteps of my sin were erased.     

And for the outer Carol, the one that some came to know, the path that led me to murder my own child became a memory that only I shared, only I felt and only I hated.   In my loneliness, in my forsaken world, I could only screech making alien noises like the born alive baby Kermit Gosnell murdered. Those who knew me at the time of my abortion forsook me – leaving me in an empty dorm room to cry for my child.  The father of the baby paid his dues – taking me to dinner and acting like nothing had just transpired – that our child had become dust and mud in a vacuum bag to be discarded with the rest of today’s trash.  After dinner, he brought me back to my dorm room and again I was forsaken, left alone with my misery.   I never saw him again.  

Night after night I saw the face of the nurse at Planned Parenthood who laughed at me when I started to sob upon being awakened after the abortion.  She was laughing as I screamed “I want my baby back and to put it back inside me.”  She even called another woman over to share in her cruel laughter.  After days of crying, I decided to put this behind me and pretend like it never happened.  But I secretly obsessed thinking about what this child would have been like – his personality, his looks.  I wondered what, if allowed to breathe, my child would have become.   

I realized I had done something awful – after that I could do nothing right.  I partied hard to forget, was promiscuous, used drugs and alcohol.  I felt that those I loved had forsaken me in my time of need, that the world was forsaking me and that I could no longer do anything right. The self-loathing brought me to a world of darkness. A world where love was an obsolete word and hate was the name of the game.    I deserved punishment and found someone to help me in this goal.  My self worth had deteriorated.  I gained weight, stopped wearing make-up and did not care what I wore.  My husband abused me and I deserved his abuse. 

Thirty years later, in church, I begged forgiveness for my sin – but did not feel forgiven.  The priest I spoke to told me to ask forgiveness of my child.  Over and over, I asked my child to forgive me.  In a vision, I saw 3 babies playing in the clouds.  One turned to me and said “Hi, Mommy.”  It was at this moment I knew I had been forgiven.  But still I kept my dark secret telling only my children and asking them to tell no one.  

At a 40 Days for Life Vigil, I saw a woman carrying a sign that said “I regret my abortion.”   I regretted my abortion and wanted to carry that sign.  I was convicted. On the sidewalk, I knew I had a message.  I had learned the healing power of forgiveness.  I am Silent No More.