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Testimonies
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If Only One
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Dotty
New York,
United States
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She is only 26, and yet her life is over. Her husband has accepted her invitation to hit the road, her baby is barely eight months old (with two siblings under three), she has no phone, no car, no money, and lives in a godforsaken corner of the planet where even the nearest grocery store is a half hour drive. And now she discovers she is pregnant. "This is the nail on the coffin of my marriage", she thinks to herself. Since her husband had no part of the making of the baby- to-be, what are the chances she could count on him? She considers suicide but looks into the faces of her three treasures and cannot carry through. "Forget living without a mom,” she thought, "They would probably starve to death before anyone thought to check in on us, way out here in the boonies."
She had just started classes for displaced homemakers. You know... teaching necessary life skills like changing a tire or snaking a toilet. There is nothing in the synopsis about emotional support, and yet her teacher is full of it. In the very next class they are asked to write a paragraph about a tough decision they are facing. Paragraph? She could write a book! After class, on the way out to the car, the teacher catches up with her. "You KNOW you can't have another baby. You have to think of your kids. You have to think of yourself."
She makes an appointment with Planned Parenthood the very next day, just to talk, and ends up not saying much. Someone else in the room was doing all the taking. She hears herself say, "I just cannot have another baby", and all the while hoping someone would show her how she could. But, almost immediately, an appointment is made, and the wheels are set into motion.
She only tells two other people, both close friends, and both try to talk her out of it. But the wheels turn and the train rolls on, gaining momentum as it screams towards the cliff. On the abortionist's table, in the days before ultrasound, she learns that she is not in her first trimester as she thought, but much farther along. It is painful. And loud. She vows to never think of it again, and then moves on with her life.
That was 36 years ago, yet it seems like yesterday. For the next 10+ years I did a pretty good job of keeping my vow, but my abortion maliciously permeated every aspect of my life. The marriage recovered but poorly. There was no trust from my Catholic, pro-life husband. I held my kids in a choke hold and barely let them out of my sight. I drank my way through friendships and family relationships in my effort to drown my pain and maintain my promise of denial.
And then, quite by accident, I found myself at a Care Net banquet. I heard for the first time people talk about abortion with compassion rather than disdain. Over the next several weeks, as I participated in an abortion recovery group, my deepest secret and hidden shame rose to the surface and exposed itself for what it was... a very bad decision in the hands of a very forgiving God. I went through the process of asking for and accepting God's forgiveness (easy), forgiving others who encouraged me to abort, either in word or lack of support (a little harder), and ultimately forgiving myself (very, very hard).
From that point on I have committed myself to sparing as many people as possible the turmoil that was my life after my choice to abort, and I have been given many, many opportunities to share my story. If only one person changes her mind about abortion, if only one person steps forward and gets set free from the shame, then my baby will not have died in vain.
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