Category: Women’s Stories

Karen, 24, who had an abortion:

“The abortion was awful physically. I couldn’t stop shaking… it was a bad experience – invading… The most awful part of it is you hear it.…. I had no counseling. I wish I had some.

Afterward, I was really sad and shocked and I didn’t know how to deal with it. My dad and I went and lit a candle when the child would have been 1-year-old. It tears up your body. It is a shock your system and to your psyche.”

She went on to have a son, another abortion, and put a baby up for adoption.

Anna Runkle In Good Conscience: A Practical, Emotional, and Spiritual Guide to Deciding Whether to Have an Abortion (San Francisco: Jossey–Bass Publishers, 1998) 47-48

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In the educational video “Understanding Pregnancy Alternatives”, a post-abortion woman says the following:

“Looking back, I honestly feel that no woman should ever go through an abortion. The feelings of guilt will always be there. If the person does choose to have children later on, you always think of the child as your second baby, not your first. Even when you go to the hospital the doctors ask you, “Is this your first pregnancy?” It hurts to have to say, “No,” but yet you have no other children to show for it. It hurts to say that.

With the abortion, after it was over and done with, I tried not to think about it but you always think about it. When I look at my daughter, I always think of her as my second child, never as my first child. My first child is gone….

Every time you look at a child you think and then you find yourself counting the years- “Well, my child would have been one today,” or “My child would have been four.”…You never see another child without thinking about yours and wondering what your child would have been like. And you wonder the classic question: “I wonder if it would have been girl or boy?”

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

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One woman tells the story of her abortion:

“I was 17, engaged, three months pregnant, and embarrassed. I made the unnecessary and regrettable decision to have an abortion. Although abortion was illegal, I was in the office of one of the best physicians in town. No butcher. No back alley.

Just before the procedure began I asked the nurse: “There’s nothing there, right?” “No, just a blob of tissue,” she replied. Within a few minutes I felt like my insides were burning. At home hours later, the pain and bleeding grew worse. The woman who had arranged the abortion said, “You know, it was a little boy.”

I was overwhelmed with shock, confusion, and anger. “What do you mean, it was a little boy? She said it was just a blob of tissue! The guilt made me feel like I deserved the pain.”

Jan LaRue “There Should Be Three” Family Research Council March 1995, 8

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From an interview with one woman who had an abortion:

“I was lying back, so when the doctor came in I never saw him.” I asked Susan if she saw the doctor at all during the procedure. “No. In fact, he really didn’t talk to me. The counselor was the one talking.” I was shocked to think that the doctor had apparently not introduced himself. “He didn’t introduce himself?” I asked. “No. Actually, what I distinctly remember the best is that as soon as the procedure was over, it was, like, he couldn’t wait to get to the door. Maybe he didn’t want me to see the contents, so maybe that was out of consideration. I never saw him again or anything. It seemed a little bit odd to me. You know, it felt a bit degrading. Like I wasn’t worth talking to, or he had better things to do. I think, for a while I kind of rationalized that, well, maybe, he just had a lot of work and other people to perform on. But, in the end, it left me feeling that much worse.”

Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 35-36

Even though pro-abortion activists refer to abortion as a decision made by “a woman and her doctor”, often the abortionist sees the woman for the first time on the abortion table and then never again.

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From a woman named Susan who had an abortion:

“…. I was feeling really empty. Socially, I didn’t have anybody to talk to, and I think at that point I kind of longed to have that child. …”

Susan recounted a vivid dream she had during the same period. “In the dream I was back in Ecuador, and there was a party. It was kind of in a nice patio area, lots of flowers, everything was fun and pretty. There were lots of kids running around and my boyfriend was there. Somebody approached me, I’m pretty sure it was him, and said ‘Where’s our son?’ And it sent me into this state of panic. I was thinking, ‘I know our son is here somewhere.’ Even though at the same time I knew he wasn’t. And I started looking in all the children’s faces, and I remember they were all beautiful. I kept looking at each one, and I was thinking ‘This is not my son, this is not my son, where’s my son?’ And I was getting in a wilder and wilder state of panic, almost to the point where I think I was screaming.”

Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 125

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From a woman who had an abortion:

“I just didn’t have any dialogue with anyone other than the woman who woke me up to tell me it was time for me to leave. That’s the only person, other than the anesthesiologist. I don’t recall a dialogue that happened. I did remember that doctor’s name, so I suppose I may have talked with her. It pretty much felt like I got wheeled into this room, and this thing happened to me. I felt pretty much like I was lowlife. I felt like they were probably doing a lot of these, that I was just one more.”

Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 115

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A woman who had an abortion describes what her partner said to her when she told him she was pregnant:

“He called me a bitch. When I told him I was pregnant, he said, ‘You’re lying, you’re a lying bitch.’ And then he just stopped talking to me.”

Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 131

She had no help or support from the father, and ended up aborting her baby.

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From one woman who had an abortion:

“I wanted to have that baby. I ‘knew’ it was a girl. I ‘knew’ she wanted to be born. I miss her, to this day I miss her. I was crying and very upset but assured the clinic workers that this was my choice and that I wanted to go through with the abortion. I wish they had refused to believe my lies. I did not allow myself to get angry very much. I was afraid of the power of that anger. I was depressed for nearly a year after that abortion. I felt like a failure as a human being. I had failed my daughter. I had failed to protect her. I hated myself for that.”

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

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A woman describes her abortion pain:

“People think that having an abortion is a quick fix, a mend-all for an accident or a bad mistake. Some will reason that nobody will know about it, and nobody will see the awful thing we did…Abortion does hurt. It always carries severe consequences with it. Abortion not only kills the little baby, but it affects and even destroys all life around it. I know, for it destroyed my marriage and relationship with my family and relatives and put me under a bondage of unworthiness, depression, guilt, shame, and self-condemnation for more than 20 years.”

Cheryl Chew Make Me Your Choice (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, 2006) 26

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A woman who had an abortion said:

“My abortion lowered my self-esteem considerably, and for a long time caused me to feel-and act-like `used goods’ in male/female relationships.”

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

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