“My first abortion was done in Madison, Wisconsin. I was 17 years young and my boyfriend told me if I didn’t have the abortion that he would leave me. I thought I loved him, and I knew I could not have a baby without his help and support. So I did what I was told and went through with the abortion.
When going in for my abortion I was told by the ‘professionals’ that it was only a blob of tissue, and it would be safer and easier to abort than to carry my baby to term. I would later find out this was a lie.
eight-week-old “blob of tissue”
I remember laying on the cold table with no anesthetic for the pain, staring at the ceiling, wishing I were someplace else. It seemed to last forever and the pain was unbearable. No amount of anesthetic could dull the pain in my heart and mind. The type of abortion I had was the vacuum aspirator method. I could hear by the increased labor of the suction machine what part or limb of my baby was being extracted. Each time I tried to look at the jar with my baby’s remains they would push me back down. To this day I still hear that haunting suction sound.”
“The whole process was awful – knowing my child was dying inside me. I was in terrible pain; the baby would not come out. Finally the Dr. took some sort of instrument and pulled the baby out. He shouted “Another success.” I saw him take the remains of my baby to a bucket to check for all the pieces. I lost my mind right then and there and asked if I could take it home with me. He said no and put the remains in the trash.”
Susan M Stanford–Rue tells the story of her abortion:
“I glanced at the nurse’s face as we walked down the silent corridor. She looked bored, or sullen, evidently not interested in carrying on any conversation… I could not help feeling that I was suddenly just a number, part of a routine.
She led me into a small room similar to the gynecological examining rooms I’d been in during routine checkups in the past. The smell of medical disinfectant was heavy. On one side was a counter with various medical instruments and rolls of gauze. I would not allow my eyes to take in the sight.
“Lie down,” the nurse said, not gruffly, but as if I were a child. “The doctor will be with you in a few minutes.”
I slid myself onto the narrow bed, which had stirrups at the lower end… Don’t think. Don’t feel, I said over and over and over. Just be strong enough to get through. Hang in there and it’ll be over. Be strong.
In a minute the door opened and I turned my head as the doctor walked in…
“There will be some pain,” he acknowledged. “Let me know if it gets to be too much.”…
I nodded mutely.…
I could feel the tube being inserted, and then a burning sensation that turned at once into intense pain. Throughout my abdomen I was in agony. Clenching my fists and teeth, I determined to bear the pain and not cry out. For some minutes I could hear the doctor moving about. Perspiration collected on my upper lip and forehead.
At last he said, “I’m going to turn on the machine now. In a few minutes, it will all be over.”
In a few minutes. Over. Could I hold on that long? There was no backing out now.
The machine was humming suddenly with a dull sucking sound. My abdomen cramped and the pain in my uterus was nearly unbearable. The mechanical whine went on and on. My breath came in shallow, panting gasps, and I thought I would hyperventilate. Biting my lip, I tried to find some spot in a distant corner of my mind where I could hide from the hurt. Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think…
When I thought I could not stand the pain and the whine of the machine another moment, the sound stopped. In the silent seconds that followed, something like an electric shock went through me – an overwhelming sense of disbelief at what I had just done. If only I could hold onto the thought that nothing had formed yet…
The nurse asked [the doctor] something and I barely overheard him say, “Oh, it looks like about 6 or 7 weeks.”
I started. 6 or 7 weeks?… I had not expected that. As long as I could think of it as a “clump of cells” it was not quite so awful.…
Actual photo of a pre-born baby at 6 weeks
I had seen textbook pictures of infants in utero. At that stage the fetus had already started to take definitive shape – It’s heart had begun beating and it had fingers and toes. What had I done?”
Susan M Stanford–Rue, PhD Will I Cry Tomorrow? Healing Post–Abortion Trauma (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H Revell Company, PowerBooks, 1990) 68 – 71
“While I was at the hospital there were three [women] in my room, two of whom had a few abortions… They were in their early 20s as I was, but their hearts were so hardened.
The nurse came and gave me a shot to relax me and then they came to roll me down the hall to the operating room. I remember saying, “Please stop. I’ve changed my mind; I want to keep my baby.”
Their reply was now, now, it will be over before you know it. The next thing I knew I was waking up very empty very lost. I would lie there remembering how my body felt full of child and how in one moment of time my body felt dead and empty… I see young girls doing what I did and it breaks my heart. If I could only talk with them for just a minute and share with them the hurt that I have suffered…”
“Two Women Tell About Their Abortions” Voice for the Preborn, Sept/Nov 1979
“They told me the local would be less dangerous and that general anesthetics would give me cramps and make me throw up and have to stay there for hours recovering from it. The local, they said, was just a shot in the cervix which has no nerve endings, and that I’d be out in 45 minutes. And like an ass I believed them… Instead of shaving my crotch, they spray-painted it with some orange disinfectant. It was like graffiti. Then I saw a long syringe and nearly died. But it didn’t hurt, just like they said. The doctor said he’d have to dilate me three times with rods to open me up enough. So when he starts to work, the nurse start asking me dumb questions like what religion I am and who the father was. God, the pain. I was screaming and the doctor was getting worried. “Hang on,” he kept saying, “It’ll be over in just a minute.” I kept screaming back, “You said there’d be no pain and you lied!” Then they made me sit up and I didn’t know if I was going to faint or throw up. The nurse gave me some smelling salts and led me over to a cot… The cramping got so bad I had had to stay there five hours.”
Linda Bird Francke The Ambivalence of Abortion (Random House, 1978) quoted in Ann Saltenberger Every WomanHas a Right to Knowthe Dangers of Legal Abortion (Glassboro, New Jersey: Air – Plus Enterprises, 1983)
Mommy *sighs*. That could have been me. Mommy. I just want my child back and I can never have that. (Expletive), I am never going to heal from this. I’m just going to live in regret, agony, and tears for the rest of my life. I have no purpose. For a few fleeting moments my purpose was to be a mother and all that is gone now and I am left with nothing. And the would-be daddy? He didn’t give a (expletive). He just wanted me to kill it. He never cared one ounce about his child I was carrying. He didn’t want the responsibility even though he was physically and financially able to give his child the life it deserved. So now here I am. Alone. Empty. Utterly empty. Nothing can replace the child I wanted more than anything when I found out I was pregnant. But that chance has passed and now I am left alone. Crying. Alone. Inconsolable. I no longer have a purpose except to be miserable.
Evolution of Chase, blogger Chase (who describes herself as pro-choice) quoted here.
“I asked someone what I had inside me. They told me it was pretty much like a tumor, and honestly that is what I wanted to hear,” she said. She had the abortion, and years later at college she saw some of her friends’ ultrasound pictures.
“I just remember thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, that isn’t a tumor,’ ” she said. She isn’t sure if she would have taken the option to have an ultrasound or would have wanted to hear that her fetus may have felt pain. But having that information, whether she wanted it or not, would have made her more aware of what she was doing and might have led to a decision to not abort, she said.
“I did not want to have an abortion. I would have welcomed information to convince me out of it. But they told me what I wanted to hear,” she said. “I would have liked the respect of sitting me down and giving me accurate information, and then making my decision…. That child would have been 16 years old this year.”
“I was almost 5 months when I told my mother so I had to pay $1,000 to have a saline abortion and the doctor stuck this big needle in my stomach and joked and laughed the whole time like he was at a golf game with his country club buddies and he had no emotion or empathy for me it was awful and demeaning, then I was admitted into the hospital until I delivered the baby, the pain that I had with the delivery were terrible and when the baby came the insensitive nurse said It’s a girl! Like it was a normal delivery and it was a happy occasion but all I could do was cry, after that I was taken into another room where the doctor removed the after birth and checked me for missing body parts from the baby and there was so much blood I thought I was gonna die right there. Then they put the baby in a jar and left her in the bathroom on the edge of the shower for me to see.”
“I firmly believe that “pro-choice” would be better put as being “no choice.” How can a young girl or woman make this type of choice while under severe emotional/mental/stress/anguish and also while experiencing physical hormonal changes?”
Pam Koerbel Abortion’s SecondVictim (Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1986) 62
“I have, however, experienced personally as well as heard of many instances where if the woman changes her mind while on the abortion table – she is not permitted to leave. This is a grave violation!”
Pam Koerbel Abortion’s SecondVictim (Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1986) 83
