‘Hi, my name is Renae and I had an abortion when I was 14. I was barely an adult and just didn’t comprehend what was happening. I was pushed (by my mother) into making an uninformed decision out of convenience rather than given counselling and support to wrap my head around the situation I was facing. I now find this lack of care and information very disturbing.
I had no knowledge of what to expect or what would happen at the clinic – I was shuffled in without as much as a word. Someone asked me to confirm my name and that was it.
I was given an inadequate amount of drugs by the anesthetist. I woke up in the middle of the surgery and heard a doctor saying ‘There it is – got it!’ I was absolutely traumatized and distraught as I left the clinic that fateful day….
As a result of this experience I have endured depression, drug addiction and a ‘ruined life’. It’s ironic to think that my mum told me I would ruin my life if I had the baby, but no one ever stopped to think that maybe not having the baby and having an abortion instead would do the exact same thing.”
Nelle, who had an abortion by pill, wrote that she was 6 weeks pregnant when she went to Planned Parenthood for an abortion:
“The ENTIRE time I was there I was told LIES! They said, “There are no real risks, this is like a period, light cramping, it’ll all be over within 2 days.” They assured me I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t want to!…
They gave me a packet full of information and only went over the first page….I asked a Million Questions. Planned Parenthood assured me I was going to be fine, and it would all be over in 2 days….
Of course, I had to read the packet they didn’t go over with me, and inside it said I might bleed for up to 3 weeks. 3 WEEKS!
No one actually says that you BLEED FOR WEEKS! NO ONE!
That would have been great to know beforehand. I would have NEVER opted for this method if I knew that vital piece of information.
I had asked multiple nurses and they assured me it would all be clear within a few days!….
Anyway, it hurt like crazy and I have never been more nauseated and in pain in my life. I was a sweaty, bloody, crying mess. The cramping was pretty bad for me but it was the fact of feeling the chunks fall out of you. I sat on the toilet and eventually put on a maxi pad and sat on the couch. It was about 3-4 hours of cramping until it came out….
They assure you there is literally zero risk and that it is quick, private, and like a period. Which is all a lie!…
I was completely misinformed and lied to. I feel very manipulated.”
“They don’t tell you that you have the option of anesthesia. It was extremely painful and no one prepares you for that. There was nothing kind or compassionate about it. It was an assembly line procedure. And it was extremely painful physically and in an emotional and spiritual sense. I didn’t feel like anyone cared that I had tears streaming down my face. It was in and out. And I have really come to recognize that this is big business.…
Nobody told me that it might come back to you when you have the ultrasound of the children you want to have. There I was looking at this ultrasound of the baby growing inside me and [I was] screaming in my mind that that was a baby you aborted. A baby that you killed. I stuffed it down for a very long time and tried to silence that voice. Looking back on that decision it was the most selfish thing I ever did in my life because it was all about me wanting to live life on my terms.”
“I was majoring in women’s studies at Monash University at the time. I thought I knew about abortion. One of my best friends had done her social work placement in an abortion centre. I had worked as a phone counsellor at a women’s crisis line. Several of my friends had had abortions. I saw it almost as a rite of passage.
It was only as I was slipping into unconsciousness from the anaesthetic that I realized. Until that moment the word had always been “foetus”. I had had a stressful few weeks, trying to work out what to do, cope with morning sickness, finish my degree, go to work, and keep everything a secret. But as I was slipping under from the injection, suddenly, for the first time since I learned that I was pregnant, my mind became clear. I thought, “I’m killing my baby”. And then I was lying on my side, with the nurse calling my name, and it was over, and it was too late.
After the abortion I did not return to or continue the life I had before. Instead, I developed phobias. I became afraid of heights. I couldn’t walk up mountains. I couldn’t ride as a passenger in a car. I became very scared of social situations. I spent a friend’s birthday locked in the restaurant toilet. I cut myself off from everyone. I gave up my job and my further study. I stopped answering the phone. I stopped getting out of bed. …
I believed what I had been told about abortion. I believed in my right to choose, that this was a hard-won right thanks to my feminist predecessors. I believed that what was growing in my body was a foetus. I attended counselling at the Royal Women’s to help me make my choice. I understood the physical procedure, about not having a bath in case of infection…
From my work at the Women’s Crisis Line, I knew which unplanned pregnancy support services were government run and “unbiased”. I knew which phone counselling service to avoid because it was run by “Right-to-Lifers”. I knew they gave “biased” information. I knew to avoid the “emotive” language and images the Right-to-Life movement used. I believed I was well informed. I did my best to be.
Afterwards, I realized I had not been well informed at all. If anything, I had been misinformed. At no point had I been told that going through an abortion can be extremely psychologically distressing. I did not know that women’s lives can fall apart the way mine did as a result. The “unbiased” information and language, supposedly feminist, did not make me feel empowered. It denied my truth, and saved society from the inconvenience of another single mother.
I can’t tell other women whether or not they should have their babies, but I do strongly encourage them to know the reality of abortion if they are considering having an abortion. I wish I had known more before it was too late. I am not a Christian, or a “Right-to-Lifer”, but I do know that it was my baby that I killed.
She has the following message to women who find themselves pregnant:
To find out you are pregnant when you didn’t plan to be is a big thing. You are faced with an intense choice, possibly the most significant choice a human being can face – have a child or have an abortion. There is no compromise, no trial period, no thinking time. Either way, your life will dramatically change. You need all the support and knowledge you can get. There is no turning back if you get it wrong. You have to live with your choice for the rest of your life. It is beyond me why pro-choice organisations would be against women being able to make informed decisions.
Five years on, there are days when I don’t think about the child I don’t have, but they are still rare.
Lara, who had an abortion, wrote about how she felt when she watched a program on fetal development:
“Oh the pain I felt, there are no words!!! MY GOD, MY GOD , WHAT HAVE I DONE ? I STARTED CRYING AND THEN SCREAMING . I ran in the bedroom and locked the door and cried for hours. I hit the walls and cried why???”
Serena Gaefke 101 Reasons Not to Have an Abortion: A Girl‘s Guide to Informed Choices (2010) 14
Imagine how shocking it to see a fully formed, fully developed baby when you thought you aborted a piece of tissue.
“As a sixteen – year – old girl, while I lay there on the abortionist table, I looked over and saw my baby mutilated in the glass container that was connected to the abortion machine, and this image has forever been etched in my mind. As I looked over and saw it, I asked the nurse if that was my baby? Her reply was, “No, that is not what you think it is; now will you please look the other way?” indicating the direction opposite of my baby … After seeing the visual I got, I knew the “truth” that my baby was mutilated. I cannot imagine the agony this caused my baby, as she died.”
Serena Gaefke 101 Reasons Not to Have an Abortion: A Girl‘s Guide to Informed Choices (2010) 18
Click here to see what a baby this age looks like after being mutilated by an abortion
“Some time ago I was speaking to a right to life rally. When I had finished, a young woman came to the front of the auditorium and asked to speak to the audience. Noting her obvious distress, I hesitated before giving her the microphone.
Tearfully she confessed that eight years earlier she had aborted her baby… The father had wanted nothing more to do with the young woman or her unborn child. In shame and desperation she has scheduled a legal and inexpensive abortion.…
Trembling, she told us that on the way to the abortion clinic she had “prayed” that someone would stop her.
“If only one person has asked me not to do it,” she sobbed, “my baby would be alive today.”
“I can’t go back and undo what I’ve done,” she continued. “But I pledge to you, and to God, that I will be there, in front of the abortion clinic, to help some other woman save her baby.”
Listening to her story, I couldn’t help but wonder how many other babies have been killed simply because no one was there.”
Richard Exley Abortion: Pro-Life by Conviction, Pro-Choice by Default (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Honor Books, 1989) 67 – 68
“I was only 18 at the time and at that time I had no idea that would be my only opportunity to have a child. I did have a few minor gynecological problems and I am not sure if they are directly related to my abortion. A few months ago, at 43, I had a hysterectomy and that is what made me realize that I would never have a child of my own and ruined and destroyed any chance of ever becoming a mother. If only I had known. . . .”
AMICUS CURIAE BRIEF OF 3,348 WOMEN INJURED BY ABORTION AND THE JUSTICE FOUNDATION IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENTS FOR AFFIRMANCE
WHOLE WOMAN’S HEALTH, et al., Petitioners, v. JOHN HELLERSTEDT, M.D., COMMISSIONER, TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF STATE HEALTH SERVICES, et al., Respondents.
From a study on the psychological ramifications of abortion, a woman tells her story:
“Every woman knows in her heart that abortion is wrong. Even though I was young & scared, there was a feeling of “working against” myself. Through my twenties I would think about it but pushed it aside. It was only when I married & started my family that I began to really struggle with my abortion decision. When my first son was born I realized what I had done so many years ago. The love I have for my children was/is more powerful than any emotion I’ve ever experienced. The thought of anyone hurting them has an enormous effect on me as a mother. The knowledge that I ended the life of my child is difficult to manage emotionally. I have struggled over the years with being extremely hard on myself & emotionally beating up on myself. On the outside I don’t think anyone would see that. I look like I have it “together.” However, it is a battle that I have to be very intentional about. Regret is a crippling state of mind.”
Often, it is the father of the aborted baby who puts pressure on the woman to get an abortion, either by trying to coerce her into choosing abortion or by abandoning her. Here is one woman’s experience:
“When I found out I was pregnant, he wanted me to come over so he could rub my belly. He told me he wanted me to pick out the name. After two weeks of making future baby room knickknacks and picking out names, he told me that he thinks we made a huge mistake. He told me I should get an abortion and that he didn’t want to be with me anymore. He was already a single dad, having just worked himself through school. He had just started a new job and refused to even ask off for work to take me…
The stress of everything, and being pregnant and tired all the time, caused me to be late to my job so much that I got fired. I dropped my college class. I was pregnant, unemployed, and now single. I knew deep down I wanted to keep it, but I convinced myself it would be impossible. My sister had had an abortion too and told me not to tell our mom, because she would just give me crap about being irresponsible and stress me out even more. I didn’t tell my mom until after it had been done, when she told me she would’ve helped me raise the baby and wished I hadn’t done it.”
