I had multiple abortions because I was afraid of what would happen if my parents and family found out and because I selfishly did not want to forego my schooling in order to raise a child with no support, emotionally or financially.
My experiences at the clinic; Planned Parenthood was efficient and impersonal. No one talked about alternatives or gave other resources. It was an empty and cold experience, sort of a warehouse of whitewashed death. I was both relieved and depressed. Grieving is what it felt like and being numb. I didn't want to focus on the experience, and I wanted to quickly forget it.
The regret and pain, the hauntings of what I had done would arrive in the form of nightmares, seeing my unborn children up in heaven asking, "Why? Mommy!?” I felt anguish and terrible guilt. This did not occur until I went into treatment for my alcohol addiction. I had spent many years in self-destructive behaviors, both with alcohol and promiscuity, both to try and "forget" and because I felt like I didn't deserve to be happy, much less live. I felt God surely hated me and that I was doomed.
I found both forgiveness and healing more than 30 years later, through an online ministry dealing specifically with abortion and sexual abuse, which I had also experienced in both childhood as a pre-teen and then as an adult. I have been set free from this burden, through this Christ-centered program. It has healed my heart and, through a 10 week long online study, I have faced the accountability of my actions and the grace that only God can provide to forgive me.
I cannot change what happened but I can share about it and speak out, in the hopes that perhaps one woman out there will make a different, wiser, better choice, a life giving rather than a life taking choice. I pray that that will be the case!