I Had No Idea What This Would Mean to My Life

I had four abortions; all of them with the same man, the man I loved. He did not want children, and I was a "70s" woman, believing that these were not actually children. I had no idea how I would feel when my friends began to have babies and I would hold them and watch them grow, never to be called "Mommy" by any of them.

In February of 1976, just about six months after my third abortion, we got engaged and began to live together. We had not dealt with the abortions. Although for six more years we stayed together in a turbulent and volatile relationship of sorts, it did not work. We loved each other but were not able to be together. I believe now that these abortions and our denial for the most part of how we felt about them had much to do with the demise of our love affair.

Each Mother's Day after I had had my final abortion at age 35, I became depressed. In fact, I was depressed all the time and really did not know why since abortions were just part of life in those days. I never received counseling prior to any of them. The third time, I did not even go back to my own private doctor. I went to a clinic. The doctor there confirmed that I was pregnant and said that I would have to wait a week for them to be sure that they could do a "complete abortion." If I had one right away, which is what I wanted to do, I might have to come back in a week to complete the procedure. I chose to go the very next morning and drove myself...like some little suffragette...to the clinic. I had no idea what any of this would do to my mind and to my emotions and to my health in the upcoming years; in fact, for the rest of my life. This was in 1975. I was ill all the time. By the spring of 1977, I was clinically depressed and had no idea why. I gained weight, could not sleep, had all kinds of physical symptoms which were difficult to diagnose and was totally miserable.

The father of my aborted children is now married and I am not; however, we have admitted to each other the feelings we have about aborting our children whom I totally do believe God meant us to have and share. I, born Jewish, have converted to Catholicism. This has helped my life immensely as I know I am forgiven by the Lord as I knew not what I was doing at the time. I have forgiven myself as well as my boyfriend. I am now 61 years old and see my friends becoming grandparents, so the pain does not ever totally end. I deprived myself and my boyfriend of so much joy we could have shared had we had even ONE of the children we were blessed to conceive.

I am very grateful for my survival and for my clarity about what I did and why. I would love to have the opportunity to share this story with anyone who it could help. I urge all of the girls who are in their 20s who I am close to (my friends' children) to NEVER do what I did and to count on me to help them if they ever find themselves in a situation where they are pregnant and need to make a "choice".

My life has been so deeply affected by the entire social climate of the 70s and early 80s, the ease with which we could get abortions, and the total approval of anyone who chose to end a pregnancy...I just wish that I had been Catholic at that time and active in the church...I wish ANYTHING other than having to live with the choices I made so long ago which, hurt my heart and that of my ex-boyfriend daily.