On June 4, 1980, the radio engineer I had been seeing brought me to New Orleans for an abortion.  The abortionist had to give me three times the amount of required medication just to sedate me.  I was pretty terrified.  You would have thought he would have stopped.  He told me that if I didn't be quiet, he wouldn't get any other patients back there for procedures.

I was told nothing - NOTHING.  No warnings of any kind, except for a small admonition to watch for a temperature and to take a few antibiotics which they gave me in an envelope.  What a horrific procedure.  The pain - and the sound of the suction machine.  If there were problems of any kind, I was told to go to an emergency room.

The problem was that the nightmare did not end with John's death in the abortion.  I buried my problem for many years in all the classic ways and was very wild.  Men were tossed aside like shoes and new ones brought in.

In the late 1970s, I converted to Catholicism with much fervor, but continued to lead the life of a gifted but wild university student.  I worked in the History Department and then in the School of Art and Architecture at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and was a Spring, 1980 graduate en route to graduate school to work on a Master's Degree in Pre Columbian Art History.

I was pregnant at my college graduation on Mother's Day.  It was very rough.  The abortion was a few weeks later.  But the nightmare was not over, physically or mentally for me.

Being unable to deal with the spiritual implications of my abortion, I buried it until the twenty first century, despite the fact that I had been doing pro life work for many years.  Few knew and I wanted it that way.  I did not attend Rachel's Vineyard until October of 2007.  Backtracking, I married my husband in 1989.  We were blessed with a honeymoon baby which I lost.  I was in my early thirties and dumb about such things, and did not really realize how serious the situation was.  My fertility had been compromised and I did not even know it.

Despite having shattered my pelvis in an automobile accident in 1977, and being told that I might never be able to carry children at age 17, I was successfully able to carry my two living children, Jessica (19) and Jacob (almost 18) to term.  I nursed them both for six months until I could bear it no longer and weaned Jessica at age two.  Jacob nursed until age three.  They are eighteen and a half months apart and like twins.

An unplanned pregnancy in late 1995 ended up in disaster early the next year on January 18th when I lost the baby.  I saw the embryonic sac in the toilet and it was very difficult.  My husband had to help me walk across the room.  I was not the same for several weeks physically.  The mental ramifications continue to this day.

Abortion not only ruins the cervix due to the artificial dilation, but also injures the lining of the uterus, making implantation for a baby difficult because the surface is not smooth.  Seeking that, the baby goes to the cervix, causing placenta previa, or to a fallopian tube, causing an ectopic pregnancy, both life threatening conditions.  These conditions used to be so extremely rare, but now occur with greater regularity.  One in three women forty five and under in America is post abortive.

I believe my miscarriage to be the result of damage to the uterine lining and/or the cervix.  You should have seen my OBGYN's face - he knew I had had an abortion, but all these doctors cover for each other.  After the first miscarriage, he merely said that I had to have a D&C to "clean things out" and then I would probably become pregnant again.  He was right.

I believe that my years of breastfeeding have offset my risk of developing breast cancer.  At least, I like to believe that.  So far, so good at age 53.

Pass the word, ladies and gentlemen. The child you seek to kill in an abortion may be the only child you will ever have. Thank God for Jessica and Jacob.  I do not know what I would do without them.  Thanks be to God for His mercy.  I would never want anyone to go through the trauma of abortion induced miscarriage.  It compounds the problem. 

You might find it significant, especially at this time in the health care debate.  I wrote a detailed letter outlining these problems and sent it to EVERYONE I could think of in both houses of Congress, from leadership on down.  Both sides of the aisle.  Both of my senators (Vitter and Landrieu - and a peronal letter for her also).  We never heard anything about it on the news, that's for sure.  Even Barney Frank got it.  They know about this increased chance of miscarriage and the threat to the reproductive health of American women and have done nothing.  In fact, they will risk the collective reproductive health of the women of the nation if the health care measures. including abortion coverage, become law.  I tried to send it to the President but his inbox was full.  I asked my senators to see that it was delivered to him.  I have never heard from anyone.  They do not care about our health;  they care about convenience.  The proliferation of abortions caused by what the Democrats are proposing for health care will have dire consequences for the fertility of young girls.  That should be a crime.  The Senate is a boys club, and boys protect boys.  We as women are still second class citizens.