I was 26 years old when I ended the life of my son Christopher in a dialation and cuterage abortion. He was nine weeks old.
Confusion, shame, regret, fear, remorse, anxiety and depression burdened me with each step as I walked into the abortion clinic alone. It stayed with me, although I tried to bury it, and it plagued me for 25 years to follow. I suffered recurrent depressions, including postpartum depressions following the birth of my two children Matthew and Alexis.
My chaperone boyfriend dropped me off at curbside. In the clinic, everything seemed clouded and shadowed. One woman recognized my remorse. She took half a minute to say in an impatient voice, "You don't have to do this." This was the extent of the counseling I received along with "don't worry- it will be over quickly."
I had to ignore what I strongly sensed were Christopher's cries from within me to allow him to live.
I walked out of the abortion suite, dissociated, empty and in emotional shock. I felt like a discarded piece of trash.
At the time of my abortion, I already carried the spiritual, emotional, psychological and physical brokenness of incestual childhood sexual abuse at the age of seven by an alcoholic, predator grandfather; rape at the age of 15 and again date rape in my early twenties, and a brief marriage in my mid-twenties, marred by violence from a perscription drug-abusing husband.
The damages caused by these abuses, were compounded and complicated by the effects of the abortion. I experienced a great bitterness as it became more evident that the belief I had clung to through my teen years and my twenties - that sexual liberation (another word for liscence), bolstered by birth-control and access to abortion could protect me from further abuse and give me freedom and a greater chance at fulfillment as a woman - crumbled under the weight of the evidence in my life to the contrary.
No amount of counseling or societal messages that this was a reasonable "choice," an acceptable solution under the circumstances, changed the interior misery, chaos and self-loathing that plagued every step of my life, relationships and parenting.
Decades of healing with the help of God, the acceptance and love of my sisters at Rachel's Vineyard, and sacramental forgiveness in the Church, have allowed me to accept and grieve the loss of Christopher and the losses of my early years, to forgive Christopher's father for abandoning us and to forgive those who participated in the abortion.
I am grateful now, each day to live in hope and healing; to accept responsibility for my action, to live in the Love of God and to be able to speak the truth.
The truth is that Christopher was my child. I carried him within my body. That life I carried belonged to him and to God. He deserved his life; he cried to me from my womb for it; I did not have the strength to listen to those cries and respond with "Yes." He deserved his life, and I ended it.
I REGRET MY ABORTION.
It did not help me. It only mired me deeper in my wounds. Raising Christopher would have been a great challenge, but today I would have the joy of looking into his eyes and sharing his life.
Christopher deserved better than abortion.
I deserved better than abortion.
Women, their sons and daughters.....in and out of the womb, and their familes all deserve better than abortion.