ClinicQuotes

A woman describes how her mother had an abortion after rape and how it affected her:

“My mother was raped at age 16. Her parents forced her to have an abortion. She stopped going to church, dropped out of high school and became depressed. Her young adulthood was during WWII and she had a problem with relationships. She eventually married my father after only a two week courtship and she told him what a horrible woman she was because of the abortion.

They vowed to have as many children as possible. God sent them ten children and she lost one to miscarriage; she mourned the lost baby along with her aborted child. When she was pregnant with me, her third child in four years, the doctor told her she wasn’t really pregnant and that he would remove some tissue. She knew what he meant and got another doctor.

I told my dad how blessed I was that mom knew what he meant and he then told me, 60 years later, that the reason she knew was because of the rape and subsequent abortion. She took this secret to her grave and I would have never known except my dad was praising me for getting involved in the pro-life movement through 40 Days for Life.

I was almost not here along with my four children and six grandchildren. My dad told me she mourned that aborted child her whole life and she never forgot and never received healing. My mother died at age 67 and I was told her secret when I was 60.

Rape hurt my mother, but abortion devastated her.”

Comment on Elliot Institute website

“Rape hurt my mother, but abortion devastated her.” Afterabortion.org

Visited 2/26/2018

Kathy DeZeeuw survived a brutal rape and got pregnant. She tells her story of what happened after the assault:

“I didn’t tell a single person what happened to me, I just went home…. I lived in constant fear, remembering the threats of my attacker and what he would do to me if anyone found out.

I was fearful of being pregnant and having this person’s child. As a result of the fear, I felt ending the life of “his child” was the only solution.

I attempted to abort by swallowing a bottle of aspirin. I ate ant poison and jumped off haystacks, but nothing worked. When the child inside me moved for the first time, I was horrified. But I would come to recognize that I no longer wanted to abort the child.

When my parents discovered I was pregnant, it was decided that the baby would be placed for adoption, so I was sent out of state to a maternity home until after the delivery. While away from my family, I began to feel an attachment to the baby. It was no longer “his child,” it was my child.

After 27 hours of labor, my son was born. Because he was to be placed for adoption, I was not allowed to hold my son, but could only see him from a distance through the nursery window. Even though I had tried to abort my child, now he was a part of me. My maternal feelings had grown so strong that I could not bear to be without him.

With the support of my family, I brought my son home with me. There were times when I would struggle with the memories of the assault, and looking back now, an adoptive home may have provided my son with a more stable upbringing, but I am not sorry that I kept and raised my son.

To me it is an affront every time I hear all the rhetoric from the pro-abortionists. I, having lived through rape, and having also “conceived in rape,” feel personally insulted every time I hear that abortion should be legal because of rape and incest.

I feel like cases like mine are being used to further the abortion issue even though we are not being asked to tell our side of the “rape” issue. My son is not a “misfit,” nor has he in any way turned out to be like his biological father.

The rape still affects me today in only one way: That is, I’m so very blessed and proud of my son.”

Julie Makimaa Kathy Hoffmaster The Hard Cases of Abortion: A Pro-Life Response Family Research Council, 2000, 14 – 15