As a person with almost half a century behind me, like most of mankind that has lived, there are things from my past that I would just as soon leave there, not remember, let it be forgotten. But as a Christian who has lived the first 2 decades of her life without Christ, and the past 3 with His unlimited love, and everlasting mercy, I have the understanding that much, if not all things in our life, be they good or bad, are meant to be used, often at a later time, to help others. It is called our testimony and it is meant to be shared, not just to give glory to God with the testifying of what he delivered us from (which is a fundamental part) but I believe that our testimonies are meant to reach others who need to know that they are not alone, that they too can come through whatever the circumstances and shine and see good in what may have once seem impossible to find the slimmest sliver of good. Not all testimonies are meant to be shared right away, or in today’s terms, in “real time.” Some testimonies take time to see the purpose and as loosely paraphrasing the Bible, there is a time for everything. This is the time for me to share this part of my life.

Do you know that I will turn 49 this year?  I have spent more than half of my life dedicated to raising my children and nurturing them, being a devoted and loving wife and mother has been what I have aspired to do and I pray I have achieved this to some degree. Anyone who knows me knows that I will willingly lay down my life to save one of my own, in a heartbeat, without a thought, whatever I had to do to protect them, as many of us would do. I have spent those years speaking up for families and the importance of building a strong marriage for a strong family so the children are strong, well grounded and productive people in a productive society. 

Did you know that I am an abortion survivor? I survived the most dramatic and vulgar experience in my life at an abortion clinic, but my baby did not.

I suppose that I cannot start to unravel the story without first pointing out some very important facts. Abortion today, as it has been for years is a hot topic in the modern world. For years is was done in private, in shame and even in remorse but today it is almost a rite of passage for many to fight for the right to have it “legal” to kill the unborn. It appears to be a badge of honor, to be worn with pride to be able to proclaim that one fought for the “rights of women”. It is a political platform that many run on to be voted into office.  

We have taught this current generation through schooling, public forums and open conversation that the life inside the womb, with a heartbeat that begins to beat at 21 days after conception and by week 6 the babies hands, arms, legs and feet are fully formed, at week 18 a baby hears sounds of the outside world while it is cushioned and “protected” in the womb, yet our society tries unashamedly to teach us that this life is not a baby. This has been done by giving it different names such as embryo and fetus, this helps to create a disconnect to the miracle of life happening right inside a woman’s body.  Sadly, this tactic has worked.

I have heard those argue that a “fetus” is not a baby until it has been delivered out of the womb. This seems to be an argument valid only when it is concerning abortion. If it is concerning a miscarriage then the baby is a baby, regardless of what age the developing baby is at when the miscarriage happens. But the abortion agenda doesn’t care how a baby is perceived with a miscarriage but it does care how society sees the baby, at any gestation when it comes to the “right” to abort.

I believe that most of us who walk into an abortion clinic are numb at that moment, I know I was. I don’t care what the “studies” tell you or the feminist scream at you, it is not natural for a woman to have her baby surgically removed from her womb before birth. There is no long lasting relief from the abortion. Yeah, I’ve seen the appalling t-shirt “my abortion was great”. I got news for those ladies; someday they will face the reality of what really happened that day and I pray for their sakes that they are in a good place in their life to have their worlds turned upside down by that reality, because it will happen.

Here is a perfect example: Norma McCorvy (from Roe versus Wade) the pawn used at a vulnerable time in her life that was the landmark case to make abortion legal throughout the US, later repented of her part in the legalizing abortion and spent the remainder of her life working to reverse the landmark case.

Some women will never be able to have a successful relationship due to their abortion. Some will not even be able to have a relationship with their other children, some will not have children because they won’t be able to handle the thought, some won’t even be able to be around other people’s children.

The innocence that is lost, whether given or taken, at time of conception, is nothing compared to the innocence lost on the abortion table.

One abortion survivor who had conceived through rape said it this way “though my rape was violent, it was nowhere near as violent as my abortion”. The rape she said she could recover from, but not the abortion.

See there is this stream of women who are being used as a sacrificial lamb for those who are pushing this abortion agenda.  The price is high, first the cost is the innocent unborn child and the other price will be paid by the mother. Many women go into an abortion clinic because they feel they have no other option. It seems like it is the only solution and with much encouragement from our society, it somehow seems the most logical thing to do in the midst of turmoil. What most aren’t told, that sadly needs to be relearned, is that we as women were created to bear children….please if you are a women’s libber don’t waste your time tongue lashing me for that because your words are a resounding cymbal. It is true, women were created to bare children, and this is not a lowly task but a GREAT PRIVILEGE that sadly has been turned into something disgusting by a twisted and immoral society.  And because we were created that way, regardless how the child was conceived, it is a natural process that opens a need to connect and nurture and protect that child. And when we willingly, even under great duress, allow that child to be killed, it does something to the woman that will damage her in the end, if not physically, most certainly psychology.

When we enter that abortion clinic and terminate the life of our child, something devastating happens inside of us, besides the death of our baby, something inside of us dies. 

Studies have proven that women who have abortions have a higher suicide rate then women who do not have abortions. The use of psychiatric drugs is increased for women who have had a previous abortion compared to those women who gave birth. 

Since the 1970s, there has been a marked increase in North America in the number of abortions and repeat abortions, which may explain the significant increases in pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), uterine hemorrhage, sepsis, pain due to endometritis, retained fetal or placental tissue, and the increasing evidence of an abortion-breast cancer link.  Some women are not able to carry full term future pregnancy due to damage from the abortion.

Women are dealing with Post Abortion Stress/Trauma or PAS/T. Deep emotional and psychological scars happen to women who have had an abortion. It doesn’t necessarily happen right away, it can take years for it to surface as it did in my case.  The breadth and depth of the reality of abortion and its horrors can surface at the most unexpected times.

The studies I mentioned above are few and far between. This is because it goes against the abortion agenda and what it is set to accomplish. To have such studies funded and findings released could create problems.  Therefore hundreds of thousands of women each year enter into abortion clinics across our country alone, some from desperation and hopelessness, some from having no choice and some from just being misinformed without adequate knowledge and information that should be offered to them when making such a life altering decision, not just offered but offered as often, as open and as freely as information on obtaining an abortion. 

What about after the abortion? I don’t see the support offered to those who experience an abortion from those who offered such support to get one. After the abortion most of us are left to deal with its realities on our own. Dealing with it is different for everyone. Many of us are faced with the horror and its truths and have no one to talk to, to turn to.  Mourning our child is not a right, after all, we were the ones who allowed the doctor to take their life……this of course is reasoning many of us face especially from ourselves.  The abortion industry counts on this self shame. If the realities are kept silent, then the lie can continue.

See sometimes life can be so crazy and events and choices and support, or lack thereof, can be the precursor to why so many women end up opting for an abortion. There is often little to no time in the midst of turmoil to make a rational decision and once the realities are in front of us, it is too late. We are left to silently mourn and come to terms with our “choice.”

This is my story, this is my baby’s story. By sharing this with all who will find this page I pray that someone will find that they are not alone. I pray that they will find their voice to speak, shout from the mountain tops that someone might hear them so that they too might not make that horrific choice and if it is too late and if that someone had an abortion, that they will find comfort in our story. If they are only considering an abortion, I pray that this will make them think before acting.

It was 1990 and my life hadn’t exactly gone as planned.  Like many of my generation I had grown up in a home without a father, not only was he not there but I never met him.  My mother did the best she could, she kept the roof over our head, she never let us go without, but there was a price to pay as she was always working to provide those needs.  The relationships around me were broken and tattered at best.  She had no nuturing offer in lifes many choices, nor advice to give on love nor relationship, only the shattered and failed attempts that she had tried.

I started smoking by the time I was 14 and found alcohol to be a companion by the time I was 15. I moved from home when I was 17. I was married when I was 18. 1 month and 17 days after my marriage vows, I was widowed.  Life had definitely taken a turn I had not planned on. 

As many young girls do in a fatherless home and no nuturing, I found my need to be needed by a man foundational. I believed it would give me value, a worth that I didn’t feel I had.  Now being widowed I was starting all over again, trying to find someone to love me. As we all know this type of reasoning seldom ends well. Add to it an addiction to alcohol and a self destructive phase, things were not looking good.  I had no relationship with God, my relationship with my mother and my siblings was beyond strained at best. I couldn’t think beyond the moment, planning for tomorrow never entered my mind.

Several months after the death of my first husband I met a man.  He was 9 years my senior with problems of his own.  A long term relationship that had ended, no vision for the future, a drinking problem of his own and some other things that needed to be dealt with.  It was a toxic relationship from the beginning but at that stage, in that young girl’s life, it was better than being alone.

I entered that relationship hoping for the best but it was so unhealthy. Neither of us had a clue of what made a good relationship and it certainly seemed destine to fail though I had myself convinced that I was in love with him. I was on birth control, had been for a long time and I was very devoted to taking it but I suspect that the recent round of antibiotics I had taken took the toll on the pills effectiveness. All I know is I found myself pregnant. I had never been pregnant before but I knew without a doubt when I started feeling nauseous. I took a pregnancy test as soon as one would read it and sure enough I was. I remembered when I received the call from the Drs telling me the test was positive (remember this was 1990, test worked a little different back then). I instantly thought I was going to be sick.  There was no joy in the news only fear and questions. I knew my boyfriend was not going to rejoice over the news or any member of my family for that matter. I knew that I had problems and I had no idea how I could take care of a child, I was a messed up 19.

It took a few days before I told anyone and when I did I received the response I knew I would get. I had never felt so alone in my life, not even when my first husband had been killed. 

I had told my boyfriend and he lacked any emotion except to say that “sounds like we are going to have a baby”. Things got real quiet over the next few days until finally he said “I’m not ready for a kid.”

I was already in crisis mode, but when he said those words, I totally shut down. It is as if every emotion I possessed in my person was turned off, except for grief. Between his reaction and the council of others urging for an abortion I shuffled through the days as a zombie.  I longed for one person to encourage me, to tell me that my baby’s life was worth keeping, one person to rise up and tell me that they would be there for me, but as I said, I had never felt or been so alone in my life because nobody was there.

This part of the story I will streamline as details are neither pretty nor necessary but I made an appointment and went through with the abortion. It was the coldest and hardest experience of my 19 years, keep in mind, as I already pointed out, this is after being raised in a fatherless home, becoming an alcoholic by 15 and burying my first husband at 18.

I can see the entire event in my mind as if it were happening today, from driving up to the clinic, to the procedure, to remembering clearly every feeling from wanting to run out of that building to forcing myself to stay, to laying there telling my baby I was sorry. But I can’t tell you the exact date, or even the exact month. And I can’t tell you when or how my sorrow was pushed so far down that I felt nothing concerning it.

My boyfriend and I broke up shortly after the abortion; it hadn’t come as much of a surprise. I was trying to pull myself together and get my life in order though it seemed tough going.

A few months later life got moving and moving quickly almost at a pace that seemed unreal and left me with little time to look backwards.  I started finding an independence I didn’t know I had and was trying to look ahead a bit to the future, though I wasn’t sure what that was or where I would find it.

I didn’t know it at the time but my ex boyfriend too had some changing going on in his life and while I was finding my way forward, he was trying to find his way back to me, a changed man.  One day he showed up at my door. I can look back now and see God’s hand upon this whole situation trying to turn it around for us, of course I couldn’t see it then. What I did know was there was this man that was vying for my heart and he was warm, gentle, loving and kind. He was the same man who drove me to the abortion clinic months earlier, he was the same man that had been through our previous brief relationship who been cold, heartless, without feeling, without vision and the change I was seeing was shocking. And I believed it was real, because something in me had changed drastically in those few months, though I couldn’t put it into words and I could tell something had changed drastically in him.

This is where life took off on high speed, we reunited, started a family which became both of our main focus, it was if we had been given a second chance. We created a home of safety and security, both of us were converted within 3 years to Christianity. Our focus was 100 percent to raise our family in safety and love and live our lives for Christ.

We taught Sunday school, hosted Bible studies at our home as well as gave them. We participated in church every time the doors were open. We opened our home to fellowshipping, which we considered to be our ministry.

We seldom talked about out abortion and when we did it was always a matter of fact.  We volunteered at crisis pregnancy centers, prayed against the horrible act of abortion; we tried to start a ministry in our church at that time to encourage other Christians to help at the centers. But our abortion was behind us and that is where we were leaving it, so we thought.

We had our first 2 children, one in 1991 and the 2^nd in 1996.  We wanted a large family but I had a very hard time in both deliveries causing both to be born C-section, Rj being a 41 hour labor and coming close to losing him. Our children were our joy and our life. By the time Josiah was 9 or10, empty nest was starting to set in.  We wanted to start foster caring but due to our older home it failed meeting all the requirements required for a foster care home so we couldn’t get licensed.

We started talking about trying to have another child. Ron was in his 40’s and I in my 30’s, despite society telling us we were too old we started praying about it. Obviously God had other plans because, Sameul Zebulun was born in 2010. It was a joyous time. Our hearts were full and though Ron almost 50 and I found 40, we felt we had the world in our hands. It was about 1 year after that when something started to happen.

I can’t give you the exact details all I can say is I started thinking about our abortion, and I would become depressed and cry for hours. I couldn’t talk about abortion, period, any longer, mine or anyone else’s. If I even heard the term or saw a headline I would become an emotional basket case. What I didn’t know at the time was it was time for me, and for Ron, to face the events of years ago. We didn’t know that the trauma, sorrow and loss were needing to be tended to. It was a harrowing process and one I never want to relive.

It took time for it to come to its full height where the healing actually began. Before I could feel the healing I found myself resentful of my husband, which took me by surprise and totally rocked our world. This man that had spent the better part of 2 decades, loving me, loving his children, protecting us, mindfully guiding his family to Christ, praying daily for all of us, wanting to have as many children as we could because as he put it “they are the fruits of our love”, yet this man was all of a sudden someone I realized that I was bitter toward.

I had never been bitter towards him, but I was bitter then. Talk about confusion.  As I pointed out, I had gone through a fairly great deal in my first 20 years, a fatherless home that caused me to give myself away in more ways and more often than I ever want to think about only to be rejected, addicted to alcohol by the age of 15 because I was trying to fill a void, though I didn’t understand it then. Married at 18 and widowed at 18 due to a tragic accident. A destructive relationship, a shattered self that inevitably ended in the death of my unborn child. That was all history. The Lord had given Ron and I 22 years of true devotion and love. He had given me the most amazing and caring husband that any woman could want, and he gave my children the father I never had. God had restored in me everything through my husband that the canker worm had eaten in my first 20 years. He had given me Ron, who was my hero, my soul. Because I had him to share my life with, my joys had been happier and my sorrows easier to bare, but here I found myself bitterly angry at him and confused of who he was from a choice we made over 2 decades earlier. I was morning my child, our child, that he hadn’t protected, that no one protected, not even me and it was an emotion that I never expected to have because I thought I had dealt with it at the time it took place.

The confusion of who he was shouldn’t have surprised me if I would have had any ability to reason, but reasoning was not a luxury I had at that stage as I was confused of who I was. See that is the trauma of the fact, the pain will lay dormant and then one day surface with the person that was, compared to the person that they had become. 

Through it all God had given me the grace, which I was eventually able to see, though it did take a bit to get past my own pain, that Ron had his own healing to do.  Yes, part of it was from the abortion and our child’s death but for him, just as greatly,  from the feeling of being responsible, for knowing what he now was, a man who willing would die for any of us, to coming to terms with the young man he had been all those years ago.

One thing that gets overshadowed, by many who have sympathy for the women of abortion is that many men later have the same emotional trials that a woman will have.  Both women and men are a disposable pawn to the abortion movement.  As the generations have passed we see such an unnatural and selfish teaching to our youth of responsibility and ability of each sex.  By disconnecting them from this it is easy to have each see abortion as the answer, again, lacking honest truth of the many things, the young boys and girls who had abortions for whatever reason, grow up and inevitably face from their decision of yesterday.

Within 3 months after our abortion our lives changed drastically for the better because we changed by God’s grace.  Had we waited, not reacted out of fear, that dark period in our lives where having an abortion seemed like the only answer could very well and probably would have passed and we would have had our child.

See there is no one that comes in contact with abortion that is not effected at some point. I have a sister, who is the salt of the earth. Never have I met a more loving, understanding, caring, generous soul, ever. She loves her family without stipulation, never failing to be there for us even when it is at cost to her needs. And to this day she blames herself for my abortion because she didn’t’ support me in keeping the baby. She believes fully that it is her punishment that she never had children because of that. That of course is nonsense but it is truth to her. At that time in history, she was looking at her little sister, who had not had an easy road, some self inflicted and some of no control of her own. Her purpose was to protect me, her little sister, and she felt that it would be best done by not having the baby.  But abortion reaches so far beyond the child and the mother and the moment. There are few people in this modern society that have not been touched or damaged in some form by the ills of abortion. For my sister it was when her first nephew was born, RJ.  She became a second mother to him, to all my boys. Though she is “merely” their Aunt, her love runs as deeply as a mother’s love can and she weeps for mine and Ron’s baby, to the point of blaming herself. Regardless of how I have reassured her over the years, letting her know that she gave me the best advice she had at the time, I don’t blame her.  But what I do blame again, is that her advice was limited based on what society had given her.  Those powers that be are to blame for the lack of information on the effects of abortion.

For Ron, he of coursed mourned our child, and despite my ill feelings towards that young man all those years ago that he had been, I could see the man he had become over the years and that he was being tormented on the  inside to see what was happening to me , I could see that it tore him up that he wasn’t there all those years ago, that the life we had built together had this scar that didn’t seem like it could be healed. He couldn’t take my pain away and he couldn’t come to terms with wanting an abortion, and that was killing him because he had been part of the pain.  The trauma from abortion all of a sudden can confuse the present with the past.

Abortion destroys everyone involved. There are a lot of fathers or would be fathers out there, who like the mothers, feel like it is the only option and encourage it. But later they face the same grief, remorse and pain that the mothers face. Abortion kills so much more then the innocent child and it is not just the woman who is scarred.

Thankfully Ron and I had been given a beautiful marriage and because of that when the pain from our abortion finally surfaced, the good Lord was there to work us through that hard time.  It took a good 3 years to get to a point of feeling whole again, where I wasn’t weeping just from the mere thought, where I withdrew into myself because I couldn’t handle the pain, however I still couldn’t talk about it for about another 2 years. But in that time of healing God not only drew Ron and I back together, but better than we were before, he also showed us that he had a purpose, a purpose for that confusing, morning time in our life, and for our baby.

The first part of the healing process is understanding that you have the right to mourn. You may feel 100 percent responsible but whether you are the mother or father, the brother or sister, Aunt or uncle or grandparent, you have that right to mourn over the loss of that baby. Mourning is the beginning of healing (word of caution, give yourself plenty of time and room to mourn, but don’t get lost in the mourning. Remind yourself it is only part of the healing process…which can be slightly different for everyone). Just because we were the ones who walked into that clinic and agreed to end our babies life, does not mean that we wanted to. It just means we did the only thing we felt we could at that time.

Part of our healing process was very difficult besides the obvious things such as emotion, pain and guilt one of the hardest things was telling our grown sons.  See our children, like many children and their parents, look at us and think we can do no wrong. They know without a doubt that we love them enough to die for them, so to tell them that in a different life, a different world, we were the reason our first child died, about killed us both. But thanks be to God it was a freeing thing to do. The support and love that came from them was amazing and healing in itself. It bonded us all deeper and gave them an even deeper love for their little brothers.

Another part of our healing process was we named our baby.  Like our other children, we wanted a name that would tell the world about them. We picked 2 Jewish names Beruriah Berakhiahn and we knicked named him/her Bear.  Beruriah means “selected by God”. Berakhiahn means “God blesses.” Each child ever created was selected by God. We were convinced that Bear’s little life, would be a blessing to others.

Another part of the process was to forgive myself.  Despite who is ever involved in the decision of an abortion, inevitably it is the woman who must go and submit to the procedure that is preformed. Though seldom is a gun held to her head, many women just don’t feel they have a choice but this fact does not resolve them of the guilt that hides within.

I struggled with forgiving myself, extremely. I knew God forgave me for everything in my past, I knew I needed to do the same but I couldn’t find the forgiveness for myself, I could forgive everyone else that might lay claim to the blame but not me.  This of course prolonged the healing.

The emotions, feelings, that are rooted in an abortion can surface at any time. Most marriages that have an abortion involved will dissolve within 5 years of the abortion. Ours was more complex because God had granted us not just a successful marriage, but a successful family. Ron and I had been more then husband and wife, we had spent our marriage being partners, confidants, best friends. Our abortion hadn’t destroyed us, to the contrary it had united us, we just weren’t aware that we hadn’t really dealt with it completely as we thought or hoped we had.

Bears life, and maybe it was only life in my womb, but make no mistake, it was life, had a purpose. Though our laws allow it, and society encourages it, and Bears life never had a chance to let that purpose shine, God had a plan to take what was meant for harm and turn into good.

For us, because we believe fully that God will work all things together for the good of those who love the Lord, even those things that are horrible and meant by Satan himself to destroy, God will use it and make it a purpose of beauty.

Once the darkest period of healing started to lift, we were then able to search for the purpose of what we had endured. Hardly is there a day that goes by that we don’t think of Bear, or long to hold him or her in our arms. We take comfort in knowing that Bear is with God and we can trust that God has shared our prayers of love with Bear and lets Bear know that Momma and Daddy do love him/her with all of our hearts and that we will stand strong and be a voice, if only for one person, or more then one should God so will it.

For those of us who have lived to tell about this horrible and legal procedure, we can do all we can do to help and encourage others not to make the same mistake we made. Maybe it is as simple, yet as painful, as telling our story. Maybe our story and that of our child’s can help someone who is blindsided by the emotional trauma of an abortion, to know that there is healing. Maybe it will help them to know that God is the answer to the healing. Maybe by sharing our story it will help to let them know that giving voice to their experience gives voice to their baby that was silenced. The attack of the innocent, both the unborn and those who feel they have no choice are being ramped up daily.  They now are pushing abortion even to a live full term birth. The state of New York celebrated the murder of the unborn by lighting up pink and waving the flag of “women’s rights”, “reproductive freedom” or whatever name they give it this week. The state of Virginia wants to see abortion acceptable even after full term delivery, in other words they want to be able to outright kill babies if so desired.

For those that don’t understand that this is a battle, a spiritual battle that can only be won on our knees, I pray they soon get the understanding. While we wage the war against it, there are many casualties that need a helping hand to recover from their time on the front lines. Evil is real and it is all around us and growing stronger daily. Take control, take back what was once taken and give it to someone who needs it. Be silent no more.