ClinicQuotes

Hello. My name is Kari. I was checking out this site … and I knew what I had to do. I need to tell my story.

I had an abortion on Novemeber 4, 1999. I was 17 years old. I was the youngest in the family and no one ever expected that I would become pregnant so soon. My family was disappointed in me. My mother was sad … but willing to help me at the same time. I was willing to keep the baby and do what I had to do to survive.

But one day my boyfriend — then of a year — wanted to talk. He said he was not ready to be a daddy and that having a baby now would be too stressful and we would not be able to care for it. I knew in my heart that I could … with or without him. From that day on my answer to him asking for an abortion was “no!” Finally after weeks of my boyfriend pressuring me and bothering me … I finally gave in. He had pressed the issue of abortion so much that is was pretty much stuck in my mind that I had to have an abortion. He told me that we could not care for a baby and I started believing him. One day while at my vocational class at school, I found a phone book and looked up the numbers for abortion clinics. Finding one, I went home and told my mom that I had changed my mind. I did not want to keep the baby. My mom believes in a woman’s choice so she did not argue or disagree. I told my boyfriend and he just nodded his head and asked “When?” By that evening I had made an appointment … more like a death sentence for my baby … but at the time that is not what I thought of.

Days before the procedure, I came home and my brother, who at the time was 22, was home alone. He asked me to sit down, that he wanted to talk to me. I felt very uncomfortable being that I never really ever talk to my older brother. To my surprise he started crying. He said, “Please don’t do it Kari, Don’t. You have no idea what it is like! I’ve had girlfriends that have had abortions, and it hurt me!” Staring at my brother crying made me just want to cry too. But no, I new what I had to do. I stayed strong, I would not let myself cry. I couldn’t. He said, “If you keep the baby, I will help you out with anything, money, food, clothes, please just don’t do it.” But I kept telling him that I had to, that I had already made up my mind.

I had friends tell me the same thing. But just like I did with my brother, I ignored all comments. I knew I had to do what my boyfriend had said. I did not want him to leave me; I loved him too much.

Finally: the day before. My mom had to go and fill out the paper work so I could go in by myself the next day. I felt bad walking in there with my mom. Ashamed. The next day came so fast. I woke up early, went to school to make up a test for a teacher. I told her I was having surgery that day but I did not tell her for what. She guessed what it was, and she was right, but I just said no, and that I did not want to talk about it. After that I went to my boyfriend’s house. Together we rode to the clinic in silence. I wasn’t scared. For a while I almost forgot I was there to kill my baby. It really hit me when I was put into a changing room. I was told to take all my clothes off and put them into a bag but leave my socks on. Then put on a gown, and sit in the chair until a nurse came to get me. After about ten minutes I kept thinking, “Leave Kari, leave now, don’t do this!” But that thought vanished as soon as the door opened. “OK Kari, Come with me.” She said firmly. I followed her down a long hall into a medium sized room. She said for me to have a seat up on the table and the doctor would be in in a few minutes. I sat in the white room, with blue bordered trim. Looking around. There were many machines that I had never seen before. I remember being cold, very cold. After sitting for what seemed like hours, an older bald man in a white lab jacket and a nurse in blue scrubs came in. He introduced himself and stated that he would be doing the procedure. By then I was terrified and I felt as if I could not turn back. He gave me a shot in my arm — he said it was to help with the discomfort. As soon as he gave it to me it took effect. I felt very dizzy. I was instructed to lie back and look at the picture at the ceiling. “A picture on the ceiling? How did I miss that?” I thought to myself. It was of a monkey saying a funny little catch phrase, but I cannot remember what it said. Then the doctor started with the procedure. As soon as he started it was pure pain. I felt as if I was being ripped apart. I remember thinking and crying “I want my boyfriend! Please stop!” The pain was so unbearable and he would not stop. The procedure lasted about five minutes but it seemed like an hour.

I was placed in a wheel chair and rolled into a “recovery” room. It looked more like a living room to me. There were seven leather chairs lined up in a row. I was placed in one with a blanket and a heating pad. There was a woman on each side of me. One was sleeping and she had a slight grin on her face. The other was half awake, nodding in and out of consciousness. I tried to sleep a little but as soon as I got out there a void hit me. I realized that I no longer had this living person inside of me. This person was gone, not there anymore. “What did I do???” I asked myself over and over. Then I heard loud screams. A woman was being pushed into the recovery room. She was crying and screaming hysterically. I had only been in the recovery room for maybe twenty minutes, but I had to leave, I could not take it any more. I spoke to the nurse who gave me my clothes and said I could leave. She gave me my prescriptions and sent me on my way. I had a few complications after the abortion. I woke up two days later not able to walk, and now I have bad periods. They are very unpredictable, and harsh.

Months after the abortion, I started to feel better, going around saying that I felt relieved, and better that I did not have this problem of a baby anymore, but within six months I was a total wreck. Guilt hung over me day in and day out. I wanted to die every day.

I started going to Post Abortion Classes, which I must say did help me a lot and even got me in touch with my more spiritual side. Though I am not fully healed, I know I am on my way to recovery. I am still with my boyfriend. We have now been together for two and a half years. He now talks about his experience with the abortion and he regrets every bit of it. There has been so many times that we have just sat down together and talked about it … and what our lives would be like now, but we will never know.

If you are a women, or even a young girl, and you are facing a situation such as this, I recommend that you look more into the consequences of an abortion. It may seem like the only choice to make, but it is not. I would give anything to be able to hold my baby right now. I took it for granted and now I have to live with the consequences. You do not. Try your hardest to follow your heart. Do not do things because you are pressured by others. When you are pregnant, you are in no emotional state to make such big decisions. You may think that you will have a hard life if you have the baby — and you will — but it all works out in the end. You just have to have strength, hope, love, and patience to get you through.

 

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I would like to share my abortion story with you. It happened 11 years ago, when I was 33, but it stays fresh in my mind because of the guilt and grief I still feel over it. My husband and I were legally separated at the time, and I was seeing someone else. I got pregnant by this man and then, of course, he dumped me.

My husband wanted to reconcile and said he would raise the baby as his own. But that was not to be. You see, the baby I was carrying was bi-racial: I am white and the father was black. The more my husband thought about it, the more he felt he couldn’t deal with how his family would react to a bi-racial child. So he and his sister convinced me that abortion would be the right thing to do and would solve the “problem”.

So, on Dec. 21, 1989 I went to the clinic and had the abortion done. It was awful! I can still hear the sound of that awful suction machine. I still have nightmares about it sometimes. I shouldn’t have done it. And I am Catholic so that made it very hard. I have confessed my abortion and I am reconciled with the church. I know God has forgiven me … I just can’t seem to forgive myself. I am in therapy now.

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By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

CORNWALL, UK, February 22, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A young woman, who was considered a talented artist, loved to paint and had sold a number of paintings, was found dead in her home in Helston, Cornwall, UK.

Emma Beck committed suicide on February 1, 2007 after aborting her twin babies in September 2006. She left a suicide note which said, “Living is hell for me. I should never have had an abortion. I see now I would have been a good mum. I told everyone I didn’t want to do it, even at the hospital. I was frightened, now it is too late. I died when my babies died. I want to be with my babies – they need me, no one else does.”

The inquest into Emma’s death, held yesterday, heard that she was reluctant to go through with the abortion. Emma’s GP, Dr. Katie Gibbs, described her as “extremely vulnerable.” She missed one hospital appointment and cancelled another before finally seeing a doctor at Treliske hospital in Truro, Cornwall.

The doctor who discussed Emma’s situation with her before the abortion wrote, ‘Unsupported, lives alone, ex-partner aware’ on the form. She needed more help than she got, perhaps more than those who could possibly have helped realized. The counselor at the unplanned pregnancy clinic was on holiday, so the doctor gave her the number of a “telephone pregnancy counseling service”. Eight days later this same doctor performed the abortion.

The inquest also heard that Emma’s mother, Sylvia Beck, later contacted the hospital, demanding to know why Emma had not been given more counseling and support before the abortion, given her vulnerable state. She said, “I want to know why she was not given the opportunity to see a counselor. She was only going ahead with the abortion because Ben (the estranged common-law father) did not want the twins. She was pleased when she became pregnant, but Ben reacted badly to the news. I believe this is what led Emma to take her own life, because she could not live with what she had done.”

The inquest heard that Emma made numerous cries for help after the abortion. Dr. Gibbs told the hearing, “Emma was extremely distressed by the abortion procedure, and I didn’t think she ever came to terms with it.”

A new study investigating abortion and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) published in the BMC Psychiatry journal found that “high rates of PTSD characterize women who have undergone voluntary pregnancy termination.” (see LifeSiteNews.com coverage: Study: Rates of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Increased 61% After Abortion http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/feb/08021401.html))

The Elliot Institute’s model legislation, the Protection from High Risk and Coerced Abortion Act, would require abortion businesses to screen women for evidence that they are being coerced or forced into unwanted abortions and for other risk factors that are likely to put them at risk for post-traumatic stress and other problems after abortion.

Other studies have linked abortion to higher rates of sleep disorders, anxiety disorders, clinical depression, substance abuse, and suicide.

The authors of the BMC study called for more screening to be done on women prior to abortion in order to “help identify women at risk of PTSD and provide follow-up care.”

 

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Pro-choice activists are quick to say that the emotional trauma that many women feel after an abortion does not exist. However, studies show that a teenager who has an abortion is ten times more likely to commit suicide than a teenager who has not had one.

The statistics, however, do not tell the whole story. Each girl who commits suicide has a story to tell. There are faces behind the statistics.

One such face is that of Sandra Kaiser, who committed suicide when she was just fourteen.

In October of 1984, 14-year-old Sandra Kaiser went to a Planned Parenthood with her 21-year-old half-sister, Karen Flynn. The test was positive, and Sandra told Karen she wanted an abortion. Karen made an appointment and took Sandra to Reproductive Health Services (RHS) for a safe and legal abortion.

Karen later said that during the counseling session, Sandra did not seem ambivalent, and said that she thought she was too young to have a child. Sandra also lied, saying that her mother knew of the abortion plan, approved of it, and had provided the money to pay for it. Three days later, Karen brought Sandra back to RHS for the abortion.

It is important to note that Sandra had already led a very troubled life. At age 7 she witnessed the stabbing death of one of her half-brothers. At age 11 she was diagnosed with a conduct disorder. By age 12 her problems included drinking alcohol, running away from home, temper outbursts, skipping school, crying, and nightmares about her brother’s death. She was hospitalized at least twice and had received outpatient therapy and medication. She was, in short, a high-risk abortion patient, likely to suffer severe psychological after-effects.

Sandra signed the consent form, and Karen signed in the space for parent/guardian. The two sisters also filled out the other paperwork for the abortion. They checked “No” in answer to the question, “Have you ever been hospitalized other than for childbirth.” Karen later said that they checked “No” despite Sandra’s psychiatric hospitalization because she believed the question only pertained to hospitalization for physican ailments.

Sandra was then shown a film called First Trimester Informed Consent. The film said, “A few women have negative emotional feelings after an abortion. You may feel slightly depressed, but those feelings are normal. .. [S]evere depression is not to be expected. If you are severely depressed after this abortion, it may be that your feelings about ending a pregnancy have not yet been completely resolved.”

After the abortion, Sandra holed up in her room a lot, crying. About three weeks after the abortion, Sandra’s mother overheard Sandra talking to her boyfriend on the phone. The boyfriend had supposedly gotten another girl pregnant. Sandra said that she was going to go jump off a bridge. Half an hour later, Sandra went to an overpass and leaped into traffic.

The driver of the car that hit her stopped and stood by Sandra, waving his arms to alert oncoming traffic to her presence in the road. The driver behind him stopped his car as well, and began flashing his headlights and sounding his horn to alert traffic. A woman driving an oncoming car saw the man waving his arms, and the car with lights flashing, and became confused and alarmed. She drove past them, running over Sandra.

Upon arriving at her destination, this driver told a friend of the strange event. The friend suggested that they return to the scene to find out what had happened. By the time they arrived, the police had arrived, Sandra was being loaded into an ambulance, and somebody had found Sandra’s mother and brought her to the scene. The woman driver told the police what had happened, and no charges were brought against her.

Sandra died later of multiple internal injuries.

Sandra’s mother sued RHS for her daughter’s death, charging that they had failed to contact the her mother in compliance with the law. An expert noted that at the time of Sandra’s death, she had been depressed for several weeks, that the suicide was a direct consequence of this depression, and that the abortion was the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” The judge ruled that Sandra’s mother and her witnesses failed to prove that the clinic had been negligent in exploring Sandra’s history, and that Sandra had not been proved to have killed herself due to an uncontrollable impulse. To add insult to injury, the suicide had occurred during the time that the Missouri law governing consent of minors to abortion was enjoined by the Federal courts, so the law to protect Sandra and girls like her did not apply.

Two young women, Diane Boyd and Nichole Williams, died of complications of abortions performed on them by Robert Crist at RHS.

Sources: Eidson v. Reproductive Health Services, 863 S.W.2d 621 (Mo. App. E.D., 1993), accident report

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In the most tragic cases of all, the sense of loss and guilt after an abortion drives a woman to suicide. Arlin della Cruz’s case will never be cited as a statistic of fatal abortion complications, but her death was due to abortion just the same.

Christina Dunigan writes:

A woman I used to picket with in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, told me of a day she was outside one of Harrisburg’s two safe and legal abortion facilities. The clinic was set back from the street by an expanse of lawn, with a parking lot to the side and back. Sidewalk counselors would stand in the alley, where they could call to the women as they got out of their cars. The picketers would stand on the sidewalk in front, where patients could see their signs from the waiting room.

The woman saw a middle-aged white couple get out of a car. They opened the back door and pulled out a teenage girl who appeared to be Filipino. The girl was crying. The sidewalk counselors called out to her, and she tried to move toward them, the picketer said, but the middle-aged white couple took the girl by the arms and led her toward the front of the building.

The picketer called out to the clinic escort. “Can’t you see she doesn’t want to do this? I can’t step on your property, but you can help her. You’re pro-choice, right? Can’t you help her?”

According to the picketer, the escort smirked at her, then held the facility door open, to make it easier for the couple to propel the girl into the clinic.

The next time she saw that girl’s face, the picketer told me, was on the news.

It was October of 1992, and the news story was about the suicide of 19-year-old Arlin Della Cruz. She had disappeared from her home. A search found her hanging from a tree in a nearby woods. “Under her shirt, the coroner found Arlin’s favorite stuffed animal — a rabbit.” Arlin’s mother said that Arlin had left a suicide note saying that she wanted to go be with her baby.

One of Arlin’s friends reported that Arlin wanted the baby, but chose abortion to try to salvage her relationship with her boyfriend.

If the picketer’s observations are correct, Arlin had serious second thoughts the day of the abortion.

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