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Testimonies
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It Never Leaves Your Life
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Jacquie
Alabama,
United States
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Good afternoon. I am Jacquie Stalnaker from Birmingham, Alabama. The reason that I had an abortion ... I was engaged to a guy. We were about to married in three weeks and I thought that everything was ready and prepared and ready to go. I had lived in this specific city for several years and thought that I had everything going right for me. I had a wonderful career, wonderful parents that supported me, everything was going right in my life, except for the relationship that I was in. It was slightly abusive; however I thought, "How bad could it be? When you get married, things seem to get better."
I was woken up that morning ... after I told him that I had become pregnant and I was woken up three days later with a gun to my ribs and told me, "You can decide. One of you will die today. It's you or the child." He proceeded to tell me to get dressed and we would go to the facility, which is local, up near the Naval Hospital.
We walked in the door, the gun was to my back. They gave me paperwork to fill out, but the paperwork never was completely filled out, only name and address and date of birth was as far as we got. There were four other pages to that paperwork. I was the last person that had walked in that door, but I was the first person that was taken in, which now today, I truly believe that he probably had all of this paid for and taken care of before we even arrived.
I was taken back and the "nurse" was trying to find out how far along I was. We determined that it was 11 weeks. At that very moment, the doctor walked in and said, "Are we ready?" and I'm still trying to ask questions and get the paperwork filled out. The nurse said, "Yes. We're ready."
In the fear and absolute devastation of what was going on, I thought, "Well, in order to perform a surgical procedure, you have to at least do an exam to see what you are actually performing that surgical procedure on." We went in to the exam room. I was on the table and he started to do what I thought was an exam.
The pain was so incredibly bad that I started to ask, "Please, stop." I started screaming to, "Please, stop." I raised up off the table. The nurse slammed me back down and said, "No. Just wait a couple more minutes. We're almost done." They had told me earlier that I had a band-aided problem that could be discarded and I didn't know the magnitude of that word until I learned much later and the healing process of what the word discard means.
As I'm raising up off of that table, I'm being pushed down by the nurse. The doctor says, "Yeah. Just wait one more minute. We only have one more part to remove." I knew at that very moment my daughter had been killed inside of my body and was being brutally removed.
After the abortion was over, I was told, "If you have any extra pain, just take Tylenol. If you have additional bleeding, go to the emergency room." I proceed back to the lobby and thought that's where the fiancé would be. He was gone. I walked outside thinking maybe he had parked across the street. There was a parking deck. I got half way across Wisconsin Avenue only to collapse in the middle of the street and lost eight units of blood before the paramedics could get to me.
For the next three days, I stayed in the hospital. I couldn't call anyone. I couldn't tell anyone what was going on. Finally, I was released and taken by cab to my home where I kept that secret for a very long time. Finally, it started to surface into my life. For many years, I allowed psychologists and psychiatrists to put me on many drugs and I walked around like a zombie until I decided I can't deal with this anymore.
Finally, I attended Rachel's Vineyard and was able to begin my healing journey. This took a toll on my marriage, as well. This year, I will be married 18 years, but of those 18 years, we lived apart for 12 of them because this surfaced in my marriage. It wasn't because my husband had a problem with it, it was because I had a problem with it and it needed to be dealt with.
I am silent no more in order to honor my daughter, Lilly Gabriel, she would be 26 years old this year, and to be a model for the young men and women that we have all of our hope for in today's world. For all of you who stand out here and support all of ... the sisters and brothers who are silent no more to let you know that this is a devastating issue and once it happens, it absolutely never leaves your life. You can heal, but those memorial days always come forward and there's just never no end to it. That's why I'm silent no more. Thank you so much.
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