The truth about abortion has been a long time escaping its silence. For all the angry, vicious public screeching about women's "rights," abortion remains a shame-filled secret, relegated to the darkest corners of our hearts. Most of us will not tell our best friends. Some of us will not tell our husbands or our children.
The truth about abortion is that it destroys not just the child, but often the mother as well.

I see the signs at the March for Life that say, “I Regret My Abortion.”

Well, "regret" doesn't begin to describe it, but perhaps a strong enough word doesn’t even exist. I "regret" the purchase of a new dress. I regret not having finished high school.

But I mourn my abortions. I grieve for my lost children and wish I had them. I wish all my children had had the chance to know all their siblings. I deprived my living children of their siblings when I deprived the aborted ones of their lives.

When you're contemplating an abortion, you hear a lot about "blobs of tissue," and "clumps of cells," but nobody ever tells you that you are going to grieve and mourn your aborted child when it is gone. Because at some point, that “blood clot” is going to become a real human being to you. It may take years, as it did for me. Nobody tells you that in your mind, you suddenly have a baby that you will never see on this earth, where before, only an inconvenient blob of tissue existed. Nobody tells you that you are irrevocably changed the day you get off that table and leave your baby behind in a suction jar. You are still a mother – but your child is no longer alive.

Nobody ever tells you that someday, a horrifying moment is going to occur in which you face the truth of what you have done. You finally understand that you have killed your own child. The nausea, the wailing, the gripping of fists and stomach, the sweat and tears that feel like they will never stop. It's like the nightmarish sense you have in the first few days after someone very close to you dies - because to you, that’s exactly what has happened. For years, you have kept this thought at bay, stuffing it down deep and refusing to look at it, but suddenly here it is – you have a child and it’s dead because you chose for it to die.

You're a person who would not ever mistreat a puppy, but you gave a man money to rip your baby into little pieces and throw him or her into a trash receptacle labeled, “Medical Waste.” Nobody tells you at the time of an abortion that it is a brutal death for your child or that for you, the nightmare has only begun.

But I will tell you. My children and I have suffered my silence long enough – maybe if you hear me, you will find courage enough to speak up for the child in your body - or your sister's, your girlfriend's, your granddaughter's, your neighbor’s - and protect that tiny human from the injustice of killing.

And I will tell you that if you are already suffering, there is hope and healing after abortion. Our Lord came for sinners and there is no sin too great for His mercy and compassion. He was fully human – He knew suffering and grief and He knows your heart. He knew it the day you had the abortion and He knows it now. Those of us with the greatest sins have the greatest claim on His inexhaustible mercy and love. He wills that you be saved, that you have His peace. His plan for you is His peace - not the disastrous wreckage you may have wrought on your own. Your children are safe in His care and they are part of the great cloud of witnesses which surrounds us with prayers of intercession.

Through the great mercy of our Lord, I am free and forgiven. I have the hope of eternal life with Jesus Christ and I can look forward to the day in which I will see my children for the first time, face to face.

The years of self-destructive behavior are over and the symptoms of PTSD are fading. I no longer sit around and try to think of ways to kill myself that won't hurt anyone else. I don't drink or drug myself to sleep. The nightmares have stopped. I can think of my children without tears and the absent ones don't prevent me from attaching to the living ones, any more.

The sadness still visits me - but it is not the despondent sadness I knew for so many years. It is wishing I could go back and make a different “choice” – the one to raise those children. It is wishing that abortion had never been an option. It is sorrow for all that I missed in not having gotten to know those children.

At one time in American history, the Supreme Court ruled that a black slave was only 3/5 human being and ordered that Dred Scott be returned to the human being who “owned” him.

Eventually, this was found to be bad law and today, it is inconceivable that one human being “owns” another.

Law exists to protect society – to prevent people from exploiting, robbing, raping, damaging, wounding, imprisoning or killing those who are innocent and weaker.

Someday soon, may Roe v Wade be over-written by good law, instead of the bad law that it is. Law that protects all human beings in every stage of development from conception to natural death.

Someday soon, may it be as inconceivable that parents could kill their innocent children as the repugnant idea that it is the “right” of slave owners to do with their human property what they will.

Women deserve better than the violence of abortion.