I had an abortion because I was a young, ambitious African American 1st generation in my immediate family, college student, married and my family looked up to me that I had chosen education goal and was successful. My mother shamed me with my first pregnancy prior to getting married. I was a pregnant bride. My husband did not have much income. I wanted to finish college; my mother had a lot of influence that another baby was an inconvenience to my goals. I had severe postpartum depression after my first child. So much so that I tried to end my life. I did get help with my mental health and help, family support with my daughter.
I graduated college and got a well-paying highly responsible job I had an abortion because I was lied to and told it was not a life. A clump of cells. I asked at the abortion clinic to see my child, they would not let me. Each time I asked, and they would not. The 3rd time they had to walk out of the room for something else and I looked at the medical record and they had written that there were identified body parts in the decidua (hands, feet). During the abortion procedure(s) I felt shame, cold, sad, ignored by everyone in the room and afterwards.
To this day I can hear that suction pump noise and hate it. I can't go to the dentist to this day because the sound is the same. I was not informed of anything before, during, afterwards, just cursory information. I felt numb after each time, I did not feel for years. As time went on after the 3rd abortion, I was divorced within 6 months. I became terribly promiscuous, developed alcohol dependence, cocaine dependence, had another subsequent suicide attempt. I overdosed 3 times on drugs. I lost my lucrative job that I obtained out of college. I could not care for my daughter my parents had to raise her the first 7-8 years of her life.
I eventually got clean from drugs and went to graduate school. Planned Parenthood recruited me to work for them for income while in graduate school. I was a single mom and needed income. I did not work directly at an abortion clinic but one of their satellite reproductive centers. I wanted to give women who I thought needed support and love while pregnant and help those teens with how they could parent, and resources for support. My work there was nerve wrecking. They were very controlling, and we were limited in what we could refer. We could only give out a sheet of paper with where to get an abortion, and not any other specific resource information other than the phone number for the Public Health Clinic if they DID NOT want an abortion or insisted that wasn't what they wanted. NOTHING ELSE.
Our training was strictly abortion/termination focused. My daughter became pregnant I coerced her into getting an abortion. She was 14 at the time she became pregnant. My mother again was instrumental in my decision-making process, as was her father, my ex-husband. That was the worst decision I ever had made in my life. I left after I received my master's degree. I left particularly because they were planning to close my satellite clinic, I worked at and merge with the actual Abortion Facility Clinic with an Abortion Provider. That would mean I would be in direct contact with the Abortion Providing Facility onsite. My manager was hostile and angry with me because she thought I was going to stay after getting my master's degree and work full time for them.
I found help and forgiveness in layers. First and foremost, I changed churches and became part of a non-denominational church that was very pro-life and spoke truth about what abortion was. Second, I had a minister at an internship I had to complete for a certification, who I worked with who took me in his office (not knowing of my horrific past abortions, my hand in my grandchild's death) and led me to CHRIST. I felt forgiven enough to breathe at least. 3rd my daughters father remarried and low and behold to save the life of his second wife they had to complete a c-section birth when his daughter at 24 weeks gestation, she only weighed one pound at birth, SHE WAS NOT JUST A FETUS she was a child.
I could hold her hand (she almost fit in my hand. REALITY HIT HARD, she survived, and she is now 25 years of age. 4th I began a career with a prolife organization that truly helped pregnant women in a crisis pregnancy, as an alternative to abortion. A friend colleague there led me to Deeply Damaged Healing Group and PAID FOR ME TO GO (what a sacrifice of love and the fact that I was still of value and forgiven despite what I had done). I then became even more involved with a Ministry that helps with hurts, wounds of our past including abortion. I healed more and more. After years of pain, I finally was able to receive GOD's Christ true love still for me and my worth. I was really forgiven for the atrocities I had done. THAT IS WHY I AM NOT WILL NOT BE SILENT NO MORE ABOUT THE LIES NO MORE of ABORTION and the damage whether conscious unconscious and generationally.