Carole K. tells her story:
“I was supporting Greenpeace and I didn’t eat meat. I was vegetarian because I thought it was appalling and barbaric to kill an animal… So I stopped eating meat. I supported Greenpeace and I was against the war in Vietnam…
When all my friends – who were involved in these same things – found themselves pregnant, they all had abortions… All my friends told me how “far out” abortion was. One girl had had an abortion while tripping with LSD to rock music, and she said it was really far out. I didn’t know anything about abortion; but they said it was a step forward for humanity and a step forward for women. So I thought when I got pregnant, well, this must be something that’s consistent with all of these compassionate people’s values, or they wouldn’t have abortions.
When I went for counseling, I was told I had three choices. The first was to have the baby, keep it, and be tied down for the rest of my life and lose my boyfriend. The second one was to have the baby, give it up for adoption (which was emotionally impossible), and never get over it. These sounded like bad choices.
Choice number three was to have a safe, simple, legal abortion, go on with my life, keep my boyfriend, and go on like it never happened. This sounded like a good choice.
I asked a little bit about the baby. They said, “Oh, it’s not a baby. It’s an indeterminable cluster of cells.”
Years later:
“So one day in my third pregnancy I went to the mailbox, and there was a mailing from the National Right to Life Committee. I didn’t know who that was. I don’t know who put me on the mailing list. But I got an envelope, and this picture was inside. And it said, “Did you know this is how big you were when you were 11 weeks old?”
Now, the baby I aborted was 11 weeks old, and can you imagine what this did to me when I saw this baby with the hands and face, sucking his thumb? And they told me it was a cluster of cells… And I was supporting Greenpeace and not eating meat because I was so compassionate and couldn’t kill a cow.
At this point I came face-to-face with the fact that I killed my baby. It was a devastating moment in my life…..
I can try and talk to other women, other young girls so they can see the truth. So that they’ll know. Because if there had been somebody outside that hospital the day I walked in, if they had had a picture of this baby, I would not have had an abortion, and my life would be so much better – and I wouldn’t be obsessed with who that baby was, because I’d be loving that child.”
Paula Ervin Women Exploited: The Other Victims of Abortion (Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor Inc., 1985) 50-55
