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The Burden of Shame
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Dena
Illinois,
United States
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When I was a teenager in the 70s, society and the media were telling me that abortion was no big deal. I am going to tell you that it is a big deal. A very big deal.
When I was 17 I got pregnant by my 19 year old boyfriend. He insisted that I needed to have an abortion. I didn't want to, but he was insistent that this was the best thing for our future. I remember he said, "I thought you wanted to get married." His argument was that if I had the abortion we could do things "in the right order". He was very concerned about his parents' reaction. I didn't want to do it. He kept pressuring me to go to Planned Parenthood, and I kept putting it off. I wanted to pretend it wasn't real. I didn't want to think about it.
My mom had died of cancer three years earlier. I had an older married sister, but she had two kids and was separated from her husband, so I didn't think I could go to her for help. My father spent most of his time working and being angry with grief. With just the two of us at home, the responsibilities for caring for the house had fallen to me, whether I wanted it or not. We were not close--in fact, I feared him. Meanwhile the baby's father was continuing to pressure me to "get it over with". I was alone.
I made an appointment and went to Planned Parenthood for counseling. We did not talk about alternatives. We did not talk about how to talk to my father who I feared would not only be angry but possibly violent towards me. They didn't tell me how I could develop a support system and safely keep my baby and make a life for myself. They talked about the down side, how hard it would be raising a baby on my own at my age.
They talked about what an impossible situation it was and how it could not possibly have a good outcome. I would ruin my life, my baby would have no future, it was a very bleak picture. But mostly they talked about how they could very easily, very quickly, make it all go away for $350. They wanted me to do it. My boyfriend wanted me to do it. I felt so ashamed and alone that I couldn't even tell my best friend what was happening. So at that point I made the biggest, most irreversible mistake of my entire life. I had an abortion. I killed my baby.
The Planned Parenthood clinic in my town did not do abortions. They set up an appointment for me at a clinic two hours north of where I lived. I did not have any idea at the time that I was referred to that clinic because I was already at 16 weeks, and that this clinic specialized in later term abortions. I hadn't had an ultrasound, I had no idea how developed my baby was. I had no comprehension of what I was about to do. Had I really realized, had I fully understood, I want to think I might have acted differently. But I will never know.
My boyfriend managed to get the money together, cash only, of course. He drove me to the clinic and parked in the parking lot across the street. When it was time to get out of the car, he told me he would just wait for me in the car. I was stunned. I begged him to go in with me. I had been told it could take hours. I felt like I was going to vomit. I was terrified. But he refused, saying that doctor's offices made him "nervous". So I went in alone. Totally alone.
I signed in, and they took the payment right away. Then I waited for what seemed like hours. When my name was called I was led back to a room with a table and some equipment. Two women were there who showed me a gown and told me to change and sit on the table. I think they smiled and tried to make small talk, but I couldn't think of anything to say. I felt so dirty. I wanted to die. A man came in that I assumed was the doctor. He never spoke to me, in fact he wouldn't even look me in the eyes. It was like I wasn't there, I wasn't even a person. The women that were helping him got me positioned on the table and bustled around the room as he barked orders at them. I looked up at the ceiling and focused on the cracks in the paint and the stain where there had been a water leak sometime. One of the women leaned down by my ear and told me they were ready to start, and then I heard the sound of the machines turning on.
It seemed so loud, the noise was ringing in my ears. I felt the pain, unlike anything I had ever felt. It was like I was being ripped apart inside. I wanted to scream, to beg them to stop, but I couldn't get any sound to come out when I opened my mouth. I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die. I prayed to die. I deserved to die. Just like my baby. Then it stopped. The doctor was gone without a word, the women were busy shuffling around picking things up. I tried to vomit, but my stomach was empty. Everything was just empty.
Everything after that seems to be in a blur. I remember drinking juice and eating a couple of saltines while I sat in a chair. Then I remember them telling me I could leave and trying to make my way across the street to where my boyfriend was waiting in the car, sleeping. I looked at him lying there, and I hated him in that moment. But not as much as I hated myself. That self-loathing would shape the next few decades and decisions of my life.
I continued the relationship with that boyfriend, and we married a couple of years later. We had two children together. I tried pushing the death of our first child further and further back in my mind while I concentrated on the two girls we had. Sometimes it worked, but all too often I would remember that day in the clinic and the shame would wash over me. We never talked about it. That day when I returned to the car, he made it clear we were not to speak of it, and we never did. That silence through the years made me resent him. That resentment made me pull away from him and the more I pulled away, the more controlling he became. After fifteen years of marriage I divorced him. I married again two years later and that marriage was a disaster from the start. It too ended in divorce. I was floundering.
All these years I had never told anyone about my abortion. I had never even talked to God about it. I didn't think I could ever be forgiven for something so horrible. I didn't trust in the grace that God offered to those who would accept it. When I started dating my current husband, as soon as I knew I was in love with him, I knew things had to be different. I had to be able to communicate with him, I had to be able to break down the walls I had built around me and let him in. I told him about the abortion. I was so afraid he would judge me or even hate me. Why not, I had hated myself all those years. But instead he hugged me. He listened to me, he supported me, and he accepted me. He helped me start to work through what had happened. I finally asked God to forgive me. I began going back to church, something I had stopped doing out of a feeling of unworthiness. The closer I felt to God the more I felt my heart opening up. With God's grace and forgiveness I was finally able to forgive myself. But still I didn't share this story with anyone, even those in my family.
When the story of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell hit the news, it really hit me hard. I started thinking back and realized perhaps for the first time just how big my baby was when he or she was killed. A new sense of regret washed over me. When the videos that exposed Planned Parenthood for harvesting and selling baby parts after abortions it was like a fire had been lit under me. This was too much, this had to stop. I had to do something. I came out to my family and told everyone about my abortion. As free as I felt accepting God's forgiveness, I felt an even bigger weight lifted from me knowing that I had told my story. I was free of the burden of shame I had carried all those years, hiding a part of myself from the world. I take comfort in knowing that I will be reunited with my baby was Heaven one day, and I am at peace for the first time in forty years because I am silent no more.
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