Category: Women’s Stories

One woman tells her heartbreaking post-abortion story:

God is calling me to share [my story]  with more [people] but I am nervous and scared. The truth is I have been carrying around a deep dark secret. Carrying it on my back, and dealing with it all alone because of what the consequences are if people were to hear the truth. The truth is I no longer care what others think. The truth is I know there are others out there like me, suffering alone when they don’t have to. The truth is…God is calling me to speak out.

The truth is when I was 19 years old I got pregnant. Upon telling my parents; they decided that I would get married. We began to plan a very quick wedding. The boy I was dating at the time turned out to be abusive. He was from an abusive home and had his father had brutally beaten his first wife in front of her two sons. The first time this boy threw me to the ground while I was pregnant I knew there was NO WAY I was going to allow this cycle to repeat. I broke off the engagement and began looking into adoption. I was only 19 and I knew I wasn’t ready to be a mom. When I told him I wanted to make an adoption plan, that I knew that was the best choice for us and the baby, he became very angry. Threatening, yelling, and screaming, he told me no one would EVER take the mother of his child or his child away from him. He wouldn’t allow it – that we WOULD be together. I became scared. Fear set in like I can’t even begin to explain. I realized that I could be a victim of abuse or I could save myself and my unborn child and choose to make this all disappear. I told him I had a miscarriage (which is what I told everyone else too).

Walking into Planned Parenthood the smell of depression and hopelessness lay thick in the room. Yes, I could actually smell it. None of the women looked thankful that they had the “choice” to be there. They all looked empty. Broken. I felt it too. I had always said I would NEVER have an abortion. I was wrong. In my mind I believed it was the only “choice” I had at the time to protect myself and my unborn child from a life of fear and abuse. My name was called and I headed in the back. I was scared and alone.

I hear people talking about the right to “choose.” I wish like HELL I didn’t have the right to choose that day.I wish there had been counseling. I wish there had been adoption agencies out there trying to reach the youth. I wish THOSE things were easy access; NOT Planned Parenthood. I wish more than anything, ANYTHING, I could have taken away MY right to choose and allow my baby to have their right to choose life. I wish there was support out there for girls like me. And maybe there was…but Planned Parenthood was easy to find. Abortion is easy. Walk in, walk out. Done. Pregnant. Not Pregnant. Simple. Except…it’s NOT that simple. They forget to tell you about the rest of the story.

The truth is they don’t tell you about the memory you live with for the rest of your life. For awhile I was able to forget. I had to suppress the memory in order to survive MY right to live. But slowly the memory began to resurface. Back to the room…back to the smells…back to the empty eyes of broken women. Back to the face of the man that literally sucked life out of my body.

Abortion is not about choice. It’s about selfishness. It’s about desperation. And I can say that because I have had one. I have walked a mile in those shoes…and it’s a mile that never ends.

Susan VanSyckle “Regretting My Abortion: I Wish I Didn’t Have the Right to Choose” LifeNews 11/12/12

“No one knows of the torment that can come after it’s over, unless they’ve gone through it. We could not talk about it for years, and still it is hard… This is my first grandchild!”

From a mother who coerced her daughter into aborting, describing how she cries, even many years later when thinking about the lost grandchild. She is under psychiatric care.

Paul B Fowler Abortion: Toward an Evangelical Consensus (Portland, Oregon: Multnomah Press, 1987) 197

An article tells the story of one woman, identified as ‘Nichole Anderson,’ who had a methotrexate abortion. Methotrexate is a drug that has legitimate medical uses – it is used to fight cancer and autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis. However, it can also cause an abortion when injected or taken in pill form. While not as commonly used as the abortion pill formally known as RU-486, methotrexate can also be used in some clinics.

At night, after Nichole Anderson found out she was pregnant, she would take her boyfriend’s hand and lay it across her stomach. “Can you feel our baby growing inside me?” she longed to say. But he would snatch his hand away. He wanted Anderson to get an abortion. Their wedding would be in September, nine months away. It was enough to prepare himself to become a husband, let alone a father.

She took the shot of methotrexate at the clinic and:

That evening the contractions started. At 11:30, lying on her bathroom floor, Anderson passed a blood clot the size of her fist. She flushed it down the toilet.

The following week, Anderson was in such physical pain that she could barely walk. For the rest of the month, she continued to bleed spottily. But worse was her depression. She tried to talk to her boyfriend, but he always changed the subject. A month after the procedure, he told Anderson they were through. She says she envies his ability to walk away from the situation. “If I could have stopped what I felt and walked away, I’d have done it, too.”

A few days after he left, Anderson began hemorrhaging. She drove herself to the hospital, where she was scolded by the doctor: “If you had let nature take its course, you wouldn’t be having these problems.” Even after the bleeding stopped, Anderson felt increasingly alone. In February, she slit her wrists but survived. A friend told her about a crisis pregnancy center in downtown Richmond, where she met other women who felt devastated by their abortions. Slowly, her psychological torment began to ease.

In September, Anderson finally put away the crib she had kept in her room for several months. She painted a watercolor that reminds her of the ultrasound of her fetus and hung it in her apartment. Around her neck is a gold charm in the shape of a baby, set with an August birthstone, the month her child would have been born. “I don’t want another woman to have to feel this,” she says, explaining her decision to discuss her abortion. “It’s time for women as a group to stand up and say ‘This hurts me.’

Elise Ackerman, Cheryl L. Reed, Ilan Greenberg, Natela Cutter and Jill Jordan Sieder “Who Gets Abortions and Why” US News and World Report Jul 7, 2011

A theologian writes about someone he knew who had abortions in America magazine:

“Jane sometimes awakes at night and hears the sound of crushing bones. She recalls the physical sensation of pressure and the psychological helplessness of her strapped-down situation, both during the abortion procedures and subsequently. Recently Jane’s living child, now eight, chooses to come “home” from school to a friend’s house, to eat supper there instead of at Jane’s table, to stay overnight with her friend. Jane asks herself, “Does she know, consciously or subconsciously, what scientists have demonstrated?” Animals and even plants communicate danger and death. Does the girl know that her mother terminated the life of her three siblings? Does the girl fear that her own life could be snuffed out as well?

….

Jane awakes other nights and hears the cries of children. She wonders how they might have loved and responded to her own love. The vaginal area was anesthetized for the abortion procedure, but Jane’s human awareness was all too keenly alert. There is no anesthetic for conscience.”

Sur, C. (1996, Sep 28). The post-abortion syndrome: A theological reflection. America, 175, 30-30.

Read more about siblings and abortion here. 

Cesare Santangelo of the Washington Surgi-Clinic has been exposed as having no problem with allowing unborn babies to die following failed abortions.

According to his patients:

Not so good points: I think he is rough (my exam was very painful) and his D.C. office/waiting room was extremely cramped and messy.

***

“Waiting room is tiny and you have to wait all day to be seen (most of the day the dr is not even there). We wanted our child but had to terminate for medical reasons. The doctor nor his staff cared in the slightest and were very rude and inconsiderate. We received no counseling or instructions. When we tried to leave they refused to help because the medicine they already gave would cause a miscarriage. They had no where near enough staff to handle an emergency and no one runs the front desk or is around to ask questions.”

***

I think about the day that I had an abortion in December 1999. I also received no counseling whatsoever from Dr. Santangelo. It was like a “cattle call” abortion clinic. You waited a couple of hours with other women, and then you and the other women were taken back to a big room. You took a sedative and then you were called back to the individual rooms where it took like 5-10 minutes. I didn’t see the doctor until literally the very last moments before the abortion. No counseling at all and rushed the procedure. Paid around $250 all in. Disgusting. Lowest day of my life and I agree that the guy is a low life.

***

This doctor practices in the facilitation of child birthing but he is also a abortion doctor….up to 24 weeks at 2112 F Street NW, 4th floor. The staff was rude and manipulative and I did not receive counseling prior to being administered dilation medication. I asked for the medicine to be taken out but was told it would cause miscarriage or infection. The doctor’s name includes SATAN, just what he looks like and is

On their website: “supportive, compassionate, expert care provided by highly trained professionals”

Steven Ertelt “Former Clients Slam Abortion Doc OK With Infanticide: “Worst Day of My Life” LifeNews.com 4/29/13

Film star Margot Kidder’s illegal abortion “haunted” and “scarred” her deeply, though she said she did not regret the abortion.

“I cried for the loss. I went through the grief. But I always knew I would not have been a good mother then. I knew that having that baby would have been wrong for the baby, and you don’t do that to children.” She remembers saying, “I want my baby back”; she remembers the “horrible, horrible nightmares” after the abortion. “They were constant and went on for a long time – images of children running at me with slashed wrists, of dead babies… coming out of my vagina… The nightmares stopped when I had my child.”

Margot Kidder, as interviewed in Angela Bonavoglia ed. The Choices We Made: 25 Women and Men Speak out about Abortion (New York: Random House, 1992) 99 From

Camille S. Williams “Feminism and Imaging the Unborn” Brad Stetson, editor The Silent Subject: Reflections on the Unborn in American Culture (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1996)

A 19-year-old girl describes her experience with abortion:

“I took a pregnancy test around 5:30 AM I was overwhelm with the results I immediately called my boyfriend . My luck he did not answer his phone I was going insane . He finally called me I told him I took the test and that I was pregnant he immediately told me what do you want to do about it. He suggested getting an abortion I was against it . Yet, I was so frightened I was in college and to my parents I was there pride and joy ; how could I disappoint them .My boyfriend came over that same day and said, ?I would love to have a baby but, we don?t have anything to offer him/her.? Being so scared of my parents disappointment and not having a dime to raise a child ; I called the clinic and schedule an appointment within two days. I had to do it before my parents returned from their trip. The night before the abortion my boyfriend called me and told me If only I had a place and money so the three of us could live in; yet he said, ?We have no choice you must give him/her up so that we could both make something out of ourselves?. I woke up the following day and went to the clinic alone . The nurse told me I was six weeks pregnant ; Yet, I still went through with it and took the pill . I wish I had the support of my boyfriend telling me not to do it that we would somehow make it work. The next day I took the rest of the pills I can still recall seeing my baby in the toilet his tiny structure. I cry and pray for my baby every night.”

“Teen’s Abortion Relived Seeing Her Baby in the Toilet” Teen Abortion Issues October 24, 2013

“Shut up and quit that yelling!”

Is what this patient said the abortionist told her. She continued,

This man arrived at the hospital, talked with my parents and decided to do the abortion, without speaking to me. I refused and tried to get off the examining table. He then asked three nurses to hold me while he strapped me to the bed and injected me with a muscle relaxant to keep me from struggling while he prepared to kill my baby. I continued to scream that I didn’t want an abortion.”

The woman claimed her father raped her at the age of 15 and that is why he paid for the abortion.

Doris Kalasky Accomplices in Incest,Case Study Post Abortion Review: Elliot Institute

Quoted by Life Dynamics

A woman tells her story about having an illegal abortion provided by an abortion service made up of feminists called Jane. Abortion, legal or illegal, is a difficult experience for a woman to go through.

“I was so overwhelmed with emotional pain after the abortion,” Celia says, “that I broke up with my boyfriend. It was like he let me down because he didn’t stand by me. He always said, “We’re going to get married.” And then, when I got pregnant, he said, “Well we can’t get married.” I said, “Fine. We don’t have to get married. I’m going to have this baby.” And he said, “What will my family say? What will your family say?”…

The day of her abortion, as she and Eddie drove to the Front, she turned to him and said, “It’s not too late. We can still change our minds.” Eddie said nothing. They drove the Hyde Park in silence, listening to the radio. The front was crowded. Except for a few whispered conversations, everyone was quiet…

When it was Celia’s turn she went into a bedroom where Julia was waiting. When Julia put the blindfold on her she began to shake, so, instead, Julie held a pillow in front of her face. The abortion took longer and was more painful than she expected partly because she had underestimated the length of her pregnancy by almost a month. To keep from screaming she bit the pillow and squeeze Julia’s hand as hard as she could. Julia kept talking, or for encouragement: “you’re doing great. It’s almost over.”

Afterward Celia went to her parents’, feigned the flu, and curled up on the couch with cramps. She felt as if she’d “been ripped the heart, like something had been taken away from me.”

“Women should have a choice,” Celia says, “I believed it back then; I continue to believe it. However, for myself, I don’t think I could ever do it again. There’s a part of me that regrets having done it. I don’t regret the abortion, but I do regret not having had the courage to do what I really wanted to do, and that was not have it….”

Laura Kaplan The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service (New York: Pantheon Books, 1995) 145 – 147

One has to wonder if the feminists in Jane really did help this woman. What would’ve happened if they had provided help and support for her to keep her child? Would she have suffered less emotionally? Even though the people who worked at Jane said that abortion was “a positive experience” (p 134) for women, this woman’s testimony shows that often all women need his support to carry the baby to term, and that abortion, in many cases, is a negative experience, and not a positive one