Category: Women’s Stories

Heather, age 32, tells her story of two abortions:

Now I’ve had two abortions, and if my family knew, my relationship with my family would be gone. My first was two years ago. My husband and I were having financial problems and were considering separating. I just had to shut my conscience down. The doctor was grotesque. He whistled show tunes. I could hear the vacuum sucking out the fetus alongside his whistling. When I hear show tunes now, I shudder. Later, he lost his license. A few months ago, I got pregnant again. My in-laws have been helping us out financially, so we have no choice but to involve them in our decisions. They gave us $500 cash to bring to the clinic. I felt very forced. I felt like I was required to have an abortion to provide for my current family. Money help is a manipulation. I’m crazy in love with my daughters—imagine if I did that to them? It’s almost too much to open the door of guilt and shame because it’ll all overcome me. In the waiting room, there was a dead silence that’s hard to describe. Everyone was holding in her emotions to a heartbreaking degree.

“My Abortion” New York Magazine Nov 2012

Share on Facebook

A woman who had an abortion tells her story:

“The doctor took me into his office after the examination to give me the results of my pregnancy test. Actually I think I knew the results were positive and I was real shaky.

He explained the results were positive. Then he told me that from the examination I was ten to twelve weeks pregnant and asked what I wanted to do. I told him that I was afraid and didn’t want anyone to know about it. “You can come in and have an abortion tomorrow morning then,” he said.

The next morning, my boyfriend drove me down. The doctor was late because he was out delivering a baby. Up to that point I thought he was being helpful and really nice. When he came into the office, he started going on and on about the delivery, how wonderful it was, how big the baby was and everything. All the blood drained from my head.

I had to sign a release form that if anything happened to me, he was not responsible. When I signed it, he said to me, “I have to tell you what your options are. To have the baby and keep it or put it up for adoption. Or to have an abortion.” That was the extent of the counseling.

Then he went into the examining room and a nurse prepared me for my abortion. The whole thing felt like a dream. He performed the abortion and then when it was over, he lifted the sack in front of my face and asked if I wanted to see it. He said it was kind of hard to tell, but he thought it had been a boy. I started throwing up.”

Testimony from Christian Action Council

Quoted in: Curt Young The Least of These: What Everyone Should Know about Abortion (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1984) 60-61

Share on Facebook

A pro-choice author who interviewed numerous postabortion women for a book she was writing describes one woman’s situation:

“Mary was quite emotional when she recounted her story and, at times, had tears in her eyes. Even with the passage of more than twenty years, the experience remains raw and she continues to feel grief about the abortion—an event that she likened to “losing a family member.”

Mary was married, and the mother of one child, when she had her abortion. She and her husband made the decision that they could not afford a second child. They were just beginning to attain financial independence when she became pregnant, and another baby would have set them back.”

Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 62

Share on Facebook

From one woman who had an abortion:

“My abortion happened 20 years ago. I tried not to think about what I was doing. The abortionist came into the room and began my abortion. The nurse was leaning over me, staring into my eyes. After a little while, she asked the doctor, “Is something wrong?”

He said “It’s trying to get away.”

I was shocked!! It is trying to get away! I begged God to stop the abortion. I couldn’t believe what I was doing!! Seconds later the abortionist said, “It’s done.”…

I named my baby Chris. By now, she would be 20 years old. I wonder what she would look like or what her laugh would sound like. I will never be able to hold her or kiss her good night. To tell her I am sorry. I can’t believe I took the life of an innocent baby to make myself look better.”

“I Regret My Abortion” Richard and Rhonda White Confronting Abortion Distortions (Xulon Press, 2013) 124

Share on Facebook

From a woman who aborted her down syndrome baby, describing how she felt when she was waiting, just before her abortion:

“The baby kicks another time and I stitch more frantically. I start saying the word fetus over and over to myself….no baby, no baby…just a down syndrome fetus.”

Katherine G Levine “What I Thought During my Abortion” Mademoiselle May 1979, 110

At that time, only amniocentesis could have detected Down syndrome, so the baby must have been over 16 weeks old.

Share on Facebook

A post-abortion woman named Cheryl describes what happened when she told her father she had an abortion years ago, when she was a teenager:

“My father didn’t say a word. After hearing all this, he started to weep.… As I walked over to him, I began to cry, as well. As I got closer to dad, he began to sob loudly. I put my arms around him and said, “Don’t cry, daddy, I am so sorry for what I did.”

Sobbingly, he replied, “No, Cheryl. Can you forgive me for being so strict with you as you were growing up? If you weren’t so scared to come to me, you would’ve had the baby, and we would have accepted and loved our grandchild. Please forgive me for making you go through that ordeal. Now we understand why you changed after you got married. You became so distant to us and I thought that we had lost our little girl. Please forgive me!”

I had only seen my father cry twice in my entire life. Once was when his mother died 15 years earlier and the second time was when I shared about my abortion – the death of his first grandchild. Dad was grieving over the lost relationship with his daughter and his aborted grandchild…

You believe it when you hear the threat, “If you get pregnant before you get married or bring disgrace or shame to your parents, you will be disowned.”… I didn’t realize that my father’s bark had no bite to it, and that despite whatever I did, my father would always love me. Unfortunately, I found this out too late.”

Cheryl Chew Make Me Your Choice (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, 2006) 140 – 141

Share on Facebook

Cindy Hendrickson described her abortion:

The doctor at the clinic “barely spoke to me. The nurses never spoke to us any more than necessary, either. No one told us what would happen.”

Joy Juedes “Abortion Providers Failure to Communicate Abortion Risks” California Right to Life

Share on Facebook

A woman who had an abortion said:

“I remember looking at the doctor, and I couldn’t see his face, and he was quiet the whole time. He didn’t say one word. So that was the only thing that was kind of creepy, because I wanted him to, like, speak to me, to tell me this is okay. But he was quiet, and I think he was wearing, you know, how surgeons wear those masks. He was wearing one of those, and I couldn’t see his face at all.”

Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 26-27

Share on Facebook

After her abortion, a woman says she:

“stopped having sex with my husband, became actually repulsed at the sight of him naked, [and] moved into the guest room.”

Helen Susan Edelman, “Safe to Talk: Abortion Narratives as a Rite of Return,” Journal of American Culture 19, no. 4 (1996)

Share on Facebook

A woman who had an abortion recalls:

“I remember crying and feeling it was painful, but I can’t say I remember pain. I remember asking if he could see if it were a girl or a boy. He said ‘no.’ He said he could usually tell whether the woman having an abortion was a parent because it seemed harder for someone already a mother to have an abortion than it was for those without children. I remember the doctor holding my hand at the end of it, saying, ‘You have to forgive yourself.'”

Helen Susan Edelman, “Safe to Talk: Abortion Narratives as a Rite of Return,” Journal of American Culture 19, no. 4 (1996)

Share on Facebook