Bernadette, who had an abortion, initially wanted her baby:
“… I knew this next baby would be healthy, and through all the fear, worry and stress I wanted him. Lying in the bath, I would put my hands on my tummy and speak to him, telling him I was his mummy.
When my fiancé came around, he wanted nothing to do with me – the usual story – and suggested I abort “it”. I became hysterical; the very suggestion of abortion was the ultimate rejection of us both and I could not understand that this was our child he was talking about. Yet somehow a seed had been planted in my confused mind and I went into “survival mode.…
I felt too ashamed to tell my parents, which in turn was a further tragedy as the heartache of my mother was unbearable when she found out about the abortion. They would’ve helped me; this became a heartache also.”
Melanie Symonds, Phyllis Bowman And Still They Weep: Personal Stories of Abortion (The SPUC Educational Research Trust, 1996) 3, 4
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