Category: Women’s Stories

One woman who went in for an abortion tells her story:

“During the pre-abortion group counseling, each girl was asked to tell the others whose choice it was to have the abortion. All the girls had said it was their choice, but I said that I wanted to have my baby but my boyfriend wanted me to have the abortion. I didn’t want marriage, though – I wasn’t ready for that. The counselor seemed quite upset with me and plainly told me that I was being “romantic,” while my boyfriend was being “realistic.” How could wanting to give birth to my baby be romantic? I knew it wouldn’t be peaches and roses, but the counselor had no right to put me down like that, either. It seems to me that these people are so involved in fighting for abortions that they forget to look at the young girls and the baby’s needs.””

She had the abortion, and later both she and her boyfriend came to regret it deeply.

David C Reardon Aborted Women: Silent No More (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway books, 1987) 279

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From a woman who recounts her abortion. She says that, while sitting in the clinic waiting room:

“I waited for someone to talk to me. I wanted someone to tell me not to do this. Anyone. But no one did. And it was done.”

David C Reardon Aborted Women: Silent No More (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway books, 1987) 144

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A woman who became pregnant at 18, while her husband was in the armed services wanted very much to have her baby, but was told that her child would be handicapped because of the medication she was taking. Initially, she refused to abort. Her doctor tried to convince her, then sent her home. Over the next few days, he continued to pressure her to have an abortion, telling her that the baby would be deformed. She suspected, in retrospect, that he was afraid of a lawsuit. Eventually, she gave in. This abortion led to a downward spiral of drinking, drugs, and divorce. She became very pro-choice after having three more abortions:

“I talked real openly about abortion. I was pro-choice, and I talked to other women about the value of having an abortion. During my first abortion, I would’ve said that, “no, I don’t think abortion is right. But in my case, since the baby might be deformed, it’s okay.” But with each successive abortion, my attitude got worse and worse. I became increasingly pro-choice, to the point where I would say to other girls, “Big deal if you could pregnant. You can have an abortion. I’ve had three and it hasn’t hurt me a bit!”

I found that in talking to other women about abortion, their decisions to abort satisfied something in me. It made me feel better about what I had done. It was like I was gloating in their misery. If I’d had an opportunity to work at a counseling center to counsel women before their abortions, I would’ve done it. It would have strengthened my own decision to abort.”

She eventually came to terms with the emotional damage her abortions did to her:

“I’ve thought about why I kept doing that to myself, getting pregnant and having abortions in an endless cycle. I felt like I did it because I had to prove to myself that I was right. I had to prove to myself that it didn’t hurt, that I could go through it over and over again. It wouldn’t hurt. The more I did it, the less it hurt, physically and emotionally. I didn’t myself to pain – and to right and wrong. And so finally, with the last one, it didn’t hurt at all… I started to think about my life. Then – something clicked in me. I began to realize that everything I had done – the abortions, drugs, affairs, depressions – had all been the result of the circumstances of my first abortion.”

David C Reardon Aborted Women: Silent No More (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway books, 1987) 85-87

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Actress Gloria Swanson said the following:

“The greatest regret of my life has always been that I didn’t have my baby, Henri’s child, in 1925. Nothing in the whole world is worth the baby, I realized as soon as it was too late, and I never stopped blaming myself.”

She made this statement towards the end of her life.

Doctor Herbert Ratner, “A Baby on Her Mind”, Life and Family News brochure

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From an abortion patient:

“I could swear that there was only one doctor and he just went down the line, giving abortions. I started crying because I could hear that little [suction] machine going on and off. He just kept getting closer and closer. I heard his gloves pop off in the next room and then he came to me. He didn’t say a word. Became inundated and walked out in three minutes. Then he started down the hall again…”

Pamela Zekman and Pamela Warrick “The Abortion Profiteers” Chicago Sun-Times November 12, 1978, 12

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Actress Shelley Winters on the Donahue show, on her two abortions:

“I am a very lonely woman. I would give everything – my money, my Academy Awards, my career – if only I could have those children now.”

cited in David C Reardon Aborted Women: Silent No More (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway books, 1987) 69

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From a letter to the editor by a woman who regrets her abortion:

“I am 34, married seven years. I had an abortion not quite four years ago. The pain of the knowledge of what I did is permanent, deep, and fresh again when I least expect it. A word about a child, Mother’s Day, a song – can literally rip me apart. There is never any warning. In the middle of the happiest moments, something will trigger sadness for my action.

I can’t make you feel how I feel or how I felt. I would be writing for hours. Even if I talk to you, you could not know the pain I’ve set myself up for. It’s not just babies that abortion kills. It’s mothers too.”

Reprinted in “Mother Is the Other Victim of Abortion” The National Right to Life News, December 22, 1983, 10

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Ava Torre–Bueno, clinical social worker and Planned Parenthood volunteer, describes one patient she saw in her counseling practice:

“Sarah felt guilty about everything… Her guilt wasn’t only about harming yourself or having her abortion it was just how she felt about everything.”

Torre—Bueno A. Peace after Abortion (San Diego, California: Pimpernel Press, 1997) P43

Being a Planned Parenthood volunteer and a clear supporter of legalized abortion, this counselor may be trying to minimize the emotional devastation caused by Sarah’s abortion and its role in her guilt and depression

 

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Sue Nathanson, self-described supporter of “abortion rights” says (after her own abortion):

“The inner torment is so unbearable that the only peaceful state I can imagine is death.” Says of the exercise that she is doing. “… Perhaps I can die if I keep going in this heat… I cannot drive my physical body to death. I’m a Frankenstein that has transformed myself into a monster that will not die.”

Nathanson S. Soul Crisis: One Woman’s Journey Through Abortion to Renewal, (New York: New American Library, 1989) page 148, 150

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An article tells the story of “Nichole Anderson” who had an abortion:

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 a short of methotrexate to induce a miscarriage.

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

 

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