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Have you had an abortion?
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- Posted February 15, 2013 by
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Unsupportable Grief
I am a 50 year old woman with a good job and a Master's level education. I tell you this so right from the start we can avoid stereotypes. I had three abortions. One at age 15, another at age 18, and the last at age 22. I can claim ignorance for the first one. I had no idea what was involved. I was scared, my parents were angry, and I just did what I thought they wanted. After all, I'd already disappointed them so much by getting pregnant, so I just wanted it to go away. Afterwards my father, who had driven me to the appointment, cried, and said that because of me and what I'd done, he'd lost his faith. The boy I'd been with for my precious "first time" never spoke to me again. Years later, looking at photographs in the book "A Child is Born" by Lennart Nilsson, I wept until I couldn't breathe when I saw what my baby had looked like at 12 weeks old. I couldn't believe that anyone who knew what a baby looked like at 12 weeks old would let me do that. When I read that my baby had had a heartbeat by then, I wept again. At 18 I was a little more informed, but not much. I got pregnant again and this time we both wept, the boy and I. A different boy, both of us scared of our parents, afraid I'd get kicked out of school, and no one to talk to, no one to go to, except a clinic downtown. I became suicidal afterwards and tried to overdose on over the counter sleeping pills. I had nightmares for years. The last time, same boy, except now we were fighting, mean to each other. He told me I had tried to "trap" him by getting pregnant. He said he'd throw me out into the street if I didn't get an abortion. I went alone, and lied to the clinic staff, told them that someone was waiting for me in the car. I prayed to bleed to death. For years I carried all of this in secret shame. To this day I have told very, very few people the whole story. My mother doesn't know the whole thing. My sister doesn't know about any of it. I look now at my grown son, and wonder what his brothers or sisters would have looked like, the people they would have been, and I weep again inside. My heart cries out constantly. This is a shame and a grief that will never end. Maybe God forgives me. Maybe my sweet babies forgive me. Maybe someday I will be able to forgive myself.
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