Why We Chose Abortion: Susan and Hrach share their story
Susan’s Story:
Between 1983 and 1991, I had three abortions. The reason I had them was selfishness. I selfishly wanted my career, educational plans, and my relationships to remain unchanged. I sacrificed anything to pursue those ends including my children. It did not then occur to me that I was doing anything wrong because I had been repeatedly told and believed that I was only dealing with a “potential” human being, not an actual one. It was a lie which I accepted as a convenient truth. Besides, I rationalized; my own experience of life had been rather awful. I would be sparing other human beings from life in a cold cruel world. For my selfishness, three human beings, my children, never took a breath this side of heaven.
My first two abortions were done in a private doctor’s office. The doctor gave me morphine. The first time, I don’t remember anything about the abortion. The second time, even with the morphine, I woke up to hear the noise and see the contents of the jar. It wasn’t until years later that it all came back to haunt me day and night. My third abortion was done at an abortion clinic. This time the recovery took longer and was more painful. I had gotten pregnant during my first week of marriage to a man I genuinely loved, and we had aborted what would turn out to be our only child together.
Immediately after each abortion, I felt relief. Now I could get on with life unencumbered—so I thought. I ignored many warning signs in my life that things were not as they should have been. A futility was emerging to my activities, so I tried harder. I even became somewhat successful professionally as I worked harder at denial of the truth.
Overtime I came to know that abortion is not a choice, it is pure hell. Dark experiences were plaguing my life. I was pushing harder to achieve so no one would know I was having a major melt down. I went into a deep, walking depression. I fell into increasingly greater sin, making poor moral and professional choices, until I was without my marriage. I started experiencing inexplicable problems in every area of my life. I became depressed, confused and for a while helpless, after having been a very competent person. I experienced terror for unknown reasons. I wanted to die. Ideas of how that could be accomplished began to surface in my life.
When I received Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, healing began. It involved a period of repentance, immersion in prayer, and study of God’s Word. I have since worked through the deep grief, the denial, the anger, and the pain of my abortions. I accepted my responsibility and can now be honest about what I did. I have forgiven all, and now know a great forgiveness.
God even restored my marriage to me after a divorce of almost five years. After years of suffering, I finally know peace. I am thankful that my children are in heaven and that I will one day see them and hold them. But I will always regret my choice to abort my children—ALWAYS.
I share all this in honor of my three aborted children: Jan, Erin, and Lauren who did not have names until recently, and who are greatly loved and deeply missed. They are now redeemed.
Hrach’s Story:
In 1991, I encouraged my then new wife, Susan, in a decision to abort who would turn out to be our only child together. The reason I encouraged her was selfishness. I wanted our new marriage to get off the ground without being hindered in any way. I also did not want our professional and travel plans to be steered off-course. Besides, I had two grown children from a previous marriage. Abortion seemed the ideal solution. Making this choice is strange when I look back now. I am thirty years older than my wife and of a generation where few, if any, would have seen abortion as anything other than what it truly is, murder of an innocent life. However, like many, I became convinced overtime by all the rhetoric in the media and by influence of younger professional colleagues that a human isn’t human until they take a breath at birth. I now know I was wrong.
I escorted my wife to the abortion clinic and learned that our medical insurance would pay for “the procedure.” We were informed that insurance was happy to pay for an abortion since it is cheaper than having a real baby and all that is involved with childbirth and follow-up. I sat in the waiting room with lots of other women. No other men were there, which surprised me. I was concerned for my wife, but assumed that since abortion was an accepted practice paid for by insurance, that I could trust the medical profession.
After the abortion, I felt relief. My wife complained of some pain, but she was ambulatory and we could get on with life now. I just hoped she’d be more careful not to get pregnant next time. I felt no real responsibility in this. Looking back, I don’t even understand my own callousness, but hardened I had become. I already was depression-prone, so when my depression deepened later, I didn’t make any connections to what we had done until much later. I was in great denial.
It was not until some years after I made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ that my conscience started to come alive again. I suppressed it as long as I could. I was not very supportive of my wife early on when she started surfacing her pain years after the abortion. I kept telling her it was all in the past, under the rug. I told her to forget about it. When my own pain and truth finally broke forth, I thought I would die of agony. We cried and writhed with suffering for a very long time. Some weeks we could hardly go out. I was so ashamed. I had a very hard time believing I was still saved or that God could really forgive this horror.
It was during the process of working systematically through my grief with my wife that hope shined its light again into my life. It was during this period that I felt a deep desire to spiritually adopt my wife’s two other aborted children from an earlier time in her life and give them my name. Looking back, healing began as my conscience started to perk up again as I learned more about what it meant to be a follower of Jesus Christ. I still suffer from depression and my health is on the decline, but I have a peace with God that had previously eluded me.
I want my legacy to be that people everywhere know that abortion destroys both the life of the child and the lives of all connected with the child’s destruction. I also want those who are suffering in post-abortive experiences to know that there is one way out, His name is Jesus Christ. I pray you receive Him.
I share all this in honor of my aborted children: Jan, Erin and Lauren who now carry my name, and whom I will hold in heaven. I love you, Dad.