My Child's Voice

  Kathy
Kentucky,  United States
 
  At the age of 18, I came face-to-face with my aborted child, and I have never been the same.

As a high school senior graduating with honors, I was so focused on my career goals that I simply ignored all of the signs that I was pregnant. Breaking through my denial, my family insisted that we didn’t have the money for another mouth to feed.

With college only a week away, I began to panic, and a close relative drove me out of state to a hospital referred by our family doctor. Before the procedure, the medical staff assured me that it wasn’t a baby yet, just “fetal tissue.”  But looking back, my heart and conscience were telling me something else.  

The next day, I woke up in a hospital room cramping severely, unaware that drugs I had been given were forcing my body into violent premature labor.  The trauma of the procedure paled, however, in comparison to the profound regret I experienced afterward. I wished I could reverse time and bring my baby back.   

For years, I alternated between silent numbness and periods of crying and despair. I couldn’t erase my baby’s image from my memory, and I continued to grieve over his loss and what might have been. The sacrifice of his life to protect my own from shame and inconvenience caused me to enter an emotional state of numbness that lasted for many years.

Though no one else condemned me, my own heart pounded the truth – this baby was unique and couldn’t be replaced. Even the births of two additional sons did not replace my sense of loss over my aborted child.  The choice that had seemed so simple – to get out of my predicament and get on with my life – delivered me instead into a depressive tailspin that threatened my own life.

I eventually attended a healing retreat for post-abortive women where I received a deeper healing and forgiveness than I thought possible.  Through God’s grace, I now look forward to holding my aborted child in Heaven.  Until then, I will be his voice to reach out to other post-abortive women, who are still suffering in silence -- to let them know that they are not alone in their grief and that God is the healer of hearts broken by abortion.
   
   
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