Seventeen years ago, I had an abortion. I did it because the baby would be evidence that I was sleeping around on my then husband. I had to keep up my image of being good and pure, so the baby had to go. Besides, it was legal and my right to do so. I couldn’t wait to get this "problem" out of the way. No one tried to talk me out of it. I was assured by a well-meaning friend that the baby's soul would not die, but just go right back up to heaven where it belongs. There's so much suffering down here anyway, so why not? I'd be doing him a favor. It was a win-win situation.

At WomanCare, they were quick to process me and before I knew it, I was lying on a table with a nurse checking how far along I was. Out of curiosity, I asked her if it was a baby yet. She said no, only a blob of tissue and cells. She was called out of the room and left me alone with the monitor still on my belly, and I saw two thumping heartbeats on the screen. One mine and one… the blob? It was then that I questioned the nurse’s sincerity and started to feel very uncomfortable with my decision to be there. I started to connect emotionally with this heartbeat.

But then a voice screamed in me, "What would everyone think of you? Your parents will hate you! You will put everyone in your family to shame. They think well of you now, and you want to blow that? Think of yourself, think of yourself, think, of yourself.”... So I stayed and had it done. It was painful and bloody and emotionally draining. I didn’t know the life I took that day would also take my own life, in a sense, with it.

I became promiscuous, mean, insolent, and even more selfish than before. I had another child two years later, but only days after he was born, I ran away across country and left him with his grandmother. I could not connect with him. I couldn’t hold him, even in the hospital. I felt no mother’s love that should have been there. The guilt was too huge. I did not want this baby to love me. How could I cherish this child when I had paid to have my other child cut up and thrown in the garbage? I also had an older child who became last on my list in order of needs. My needs always came first. I wanted him to hate me too.

I was a physical, mental, emotional, basket case for many years, but I did a darn good job trying to hide it.

Society says we’re supposed to feel good about our right to choose and never regret it! If that's true, then where did all the shame I felt come from? If this choice is supposed to be a freeing experience for women, then why I didn’t I feel that way? By the grace of God, now I know why...BECAUSE I AM A WOMAN. In the purest sense, women are born to be nurturers and men are born to be protectors...especially of their young, wanted or not wanted.

I was supposed to die for my child if it came to that, not have my child die for me. This fact of life needs to be told to our young and that is why I am Silent No More.