The book Thank You for Saving My Life tells the tragic story of a pregnant young woman named Maddie, who was on her way to a crisis pregnancy center when her mother called:
“When she reached the parking lot, her cell phone rang. She saw it was her mother, so she answered it.
“You’ll make a terrible mother! You’ll ruin the life of the child, so you might just as well terminate the life now!” Her mother yelled into the phone…
Confused and now even more scared, she didn’t know what to do. She put her car in reverse and headed toward the Planned Parenthood office…
[S]he filled out the papers for the WebCam doctor to review. …The questionnaire asked if she was sure about her decision and Maddie answered, “I don’t know.” But that day the doctor did inquire about her “I don’t know” answer. He just told her to go ahead and push the button to receive the two pills needed to terminate the pregnancy. Maddie took the first pill and drove home.”
After the abortion:
“Six months later, Maddie called the center crying hysterically. No one could even understand her on the phone, she was crying so hard. We encouraged her to come in to the center.
Maggie sat in my office and cried for an hour. The only thing I was able to get out of her was that she had had an abortion. She never looked up. She just cried a heart wrenching cry…
The next two appointments were much like the first time we met. Maddie hung her head and cried the whole hour.”
She eventually found healing through counseling at the crisis pregnancy center
Mike G Williams Thank You for Saving My Life (2016) 68 – 70
A woman whose baby survived attempted abortion expressed gratitude for the life of her child. She was still pregnant when she gave the following interview:
“He[Her partner] was away on business and I immediately rang him on his mobile. However, I’d barely told him when he simply put the phone down. It was the worst possible reaction I could have imagined.
Worse was to come – when, a few hours later, he rang me back, he simply told me coldly I should get rid of it and he would pay for the abortion.
I felt totally devastated. It was so unlike him and just beyond explanation……
I hoped he would come round, but every time I spoke to him it was the same – he told me I had to get a termination. He didn’t even come back to the house to get the things he’d left here.
As the weeks went by I realised Jonathan was not the man I thought he was and while I longed for him to walk through the door and say he had changed his mind, he never came back.
When I rang him, his phone became ‘unavailable’. Slowly I realised my perfect gentleman, when faced with the realities of a pregnancy, had bolted…..
I spoke to my GP who referred me to a counsellor. I also rang Life, the anti-abortion organisation …But although the woman from Life tried to point out that my third baby could still have a loving home with its siblings, nothing could convince me not to go ahead with an abortion….
I could see the baby’s heartbeat on the scan,” she says, “and I couldn’t stop crying. Whichever way I turned I felt guilty – guilty if I had a termination, guilty if I brought a baby into the world in such circumstances, and guilty for stupidly getting pregnant in the first place.
I took the first pill in the clinic and was to take a second pill two days later at home. Staff explained I would probably begin to bleed within hours.”
But she threw up the pills and they didn’t work. She was scheduled for a surgical abortion.
“Doctors there said they could suck the foetus out, doing this termination under a general anaesthetic.
Once more I had to steel myself for this ordeal and kept telling myself that it was the right decision. I got ready for the operation, but then went for the scan that they legally must do before going ahead.
14 weeks
This more advanced scan revealed my pregnancy was over the limit of 12 to 13 weeks for the procedure they’d planned. I couldn’t believe it when the doctor broke the news they couldn’t go through with it….
By now I had seen my baby’s arms and legs waving on the scan. My baby was fully formed and even I marvelled at how it had grown so quickly into this perfect little human shape.
The sonographer estimated I may be as much as 14 or 15 weeks pregnant, and it seemed perfectly healthy and looked remarkably happy considering I’d already tried twice to destroy it.
14 weeks
Suddenly it felt as if I would really be killing my baby. …
I went out of the room. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to the nurse as I walked out of the clinic. ‘I just don’t think I can go through with this.’ It was both the hardest and easiest decision I have ever made in my life.
Overcome with emotion, I came home and wept. I put my hands on my tummy – already I could feel the bump and was overcome with guilt at what I’d tried to do……
I used to think of an unwanted pregnancy as just a bundle of cells that you could get rid of without too much hassle. Now, I feel many women, just like me, do not think deeply enough about what they are doing.
It’s only now, having gone through the process of having a termination, that I realise why you hear all the time about women who – often years later – regret terribly having an abortion.
I just feel incredibly lucky that after everything I’ve done, my baby is still alive and I will not have to live with that regret.”
She refused to have the baby tested for Down syndrome, claiming she would definitely not abort even if the child would be disabled:
One woman described what she asked the clinic worker during her abortion:
“I asked her ‘Is it gonna be a boy or a girl?’ I don’t remember if it was after the procedure or during. I think I was asking for the doctor to tell me, but he didn’t answer me. So she was the one that told me it would be too early to tell.”
Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 27
Pro-choice writer Cara J. Marianna compiled a book of women’s stories about abortion. She refers to one woman, Barbara, who had mixed thoughts before her abortion:
“Barbara indicated that she thought abortion was wrong, even though she knew it was right for her. ‘I remember I kept thinking, ‘Am I really killing a baby? Is this really, you know, a full grown [baby]?””
Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 25
A woman who had an abortion wrote about the moment just before surgery that most haunted her afterwards. The moment that haunted her for years.
“There was one moment [before my abortion] that haunts me the most. She asked if I wanted to see my baby on the screen and my heart was crying out, “Yes! I want to see my baby!” But I knew that if I saw my baby, I wouldn’t go through with the abortion. Unfortunately, I was more scared of my boyfriend than I was of the abortion. I froze.”
Mike G Williams Thank You for Saving My Life (2016) 57
A therapist specializes in postabortion trauma describes one of her cases:
“Post-abortion, Leeann was unable to drive her vehicle. She experienced deep terror, shivering, nausea and disorientation. Indeed, this young woman had become so paralyzed with fear of others “knowing” about what she had done, that she was unable to drive her other three children to school, shop for the family, or even go to the corner store. The car, to this young woman, represented something so painful and so awful that she reacted violently against it. When someone else drove Leanne, she experienced no reaction. She could not even sit in her car alone.
Over many counseling sessions it emerged that she made the final decision to abort whilst driving in her car. She even insisted on driving herself to the clinic (her boyfriend went with her to drive them home after) and all the way there she kept hoping for an accident to happen. These two events, that is, the definitive abortion decision made in the car, and her willing herself to have an accident so that she would not have to go through with the abortion, left on her heart and mind an indelible mark. After the abortion itself, the fear remained that she might still have an accident, especially when she had her children in the car. She had lost complete confidence in her skills in driving, coupled with guilt about the abortion and “his” (God’s) anticipated punishment of her through her children, led to her panic attacks. Much work was done to reestablish her confidence in God and herself and today after many months she is able to drive again.”
Anne R Lastman Redeeming Grief: Abortion and Its Pain (Balwyn, Vic: Australia: Gracewing, 2013) 118
A woman who had an abortion told her story to a pro-choice author. She says:
“I remember the night, that night after. I don’t know where my boyfriend was. I don’t remember him being in the apartment, but I remember just breaking down and sobbing and sobbing, and that’s when I prayed and was very remorseful. I had that flow of emotions at that time, just that first night, and I was up for half the night. It wasn’t until I met my husband, which was in 1995, that that all came out again, because I told him when we started dating. I guess I kind of just buried it.”
Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 78
A woman who had an abortion said the clinic was like a grief warehouse:
“I remember the experience. I remember a little pain associated with it. I remember the rooms being very dark. I remember that there were many of us there, many other women there. And I remember just getting on the table, it was almost a slab, and having it done, and the doctor being pretty curt.
I mean they were, you know, polite, I’m sure. But it was definitely a very cold experience because a lot of other people were there. I don’t fault them for it, but it seemed kind of awful in some ways. And then I remember being put in a room with several other women afterwards. And at least one woman was just moaning. And it felt pretty horrible. I didn’t feel spiritually guilty. It just felt like we were these women who were trapped in this situation, left to grieve in this weird way, just sort of in this grief warehouse.”
Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 83
