Post_Abortion_Testimonies

I’ve wanted so badly to be close to my mother. I thought it was my fault. But when I heard that some women who’ve had abortions have difficulty bonding with their children – I suddenly understood why my mother has been so distant from me and my brother. For the first time, I don’t think it’s my fault. When I was 14, my mom told me she aborted her first pregnancy. Ever since she told me about her abortion, I’ve wondered about the brother or sister who is missing. However, I never thought about how the abortion affected my mother. Is there anything I can do to help her? I love her so much.

When my girlfriend told me she was pregnant, I knew the baby was mine; I knew I’d take care of it. I loved her. I wanted to marry her. I would have raised the child alone, if that’s what she wanted. I told her I’d help her with whatever she decided. She said she was having an abortion. I didn’t feel good about it, but I was determined to support her decision. I wanted our relationship to last. But we were both changed afterward. I tried to keep us together. I tried so hard. But things kept getting worse until we finally broke it off after two years. I carry tremendous guilt about this. It’s hard to talk about abortion.

When my daughter, Lisa, was in college, she became pregnant by an older man. She called her mother and me for help. Ann immediately caught a flight to be with Lisa and to help her think through her options. We wanted Lisa to have the baby; but ultimately, she chose to have an abortion. Ann was devastated by Lisa’s decision. Maybe if I’d been a better father, this wouldn’t have happened… My daughter has never gotten over it. I think about the abortion from time to time, and it hurts me to do so. But I must admit—it’s much more painful to watch my wife. Ann has never stopped grieving the loss of our grandchild.

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Female Twentysomething:

I got pregnant at 16. I immediately decided to have an abortion, and I asked my friend Jenny if she’d go with me to the clinic. But Jenny convinced me that abortion wasn’t the best option. By the time I told my mom, I had decided to parent. My resolve quickly dissolved in the face of my mother’s reaction. She said I was too young to be a mother. What about college? My career? I don’t remember much about the clinic or the procedure. I just remember feeling empty and numb afterward. Most of the time I don’t think about the abortion. But each year Mother’s Day is pretty rough. My baby would have been born around that day. I always think about how old my child would be.

Randy and I were engaged. When I got pregnant our senior year of college Randy was a little shocked but very sweet – he said we’d just have to get married a little sooner than planned. We decided to tell our parents. However, our parents felt that having a baby would ruin Randy’s chance to accept the full ride scholarship to medical school. Randy and I began to doubt our decision to get married early and have the baby. We went to my doctor for the abortion. We got married that summer, and had children after his residency. We love our children, and Randy is successful in his field – but there is always a void in our home and in our marriage. Sometimes when I think about our big house and Randy’s successful career, I start to cry – they were bought at the expense of our first child.

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Grandmother:

When our daughter Julie was 16, she began dating a nice boy from her school. She was doing well in classes, had a lot of friends, and was upbeat about life. During spring semester, Julie became anxious and distracted. The more I asked, the more defensive and secretive she became. Eventually Julie stopped taking care of herself and simply lost interest in living. Neither medication nor therapy helped. One night I felt so panicky about her behavior, I started yelling at her. She began sobbing and told me she’d had an abortion. My heart hurt for her – I sobbed too. But I also felt relieved that I finally knew why. Now that we knew what triggered her depression, I believed she could heal – that our family could heal.

The previous testimonies are excerpts from the book Changed: Making Sense of Your Own or a Loved One’s Abortion Experience by Michaelene Fredenburg.

About the Web site: Many men, women, grandparents, siblings, other family members and friends are seeking to make sense of their own or a loved one’s abortion experience. Visit AbortionChangesYou.com – hear from people who have been there -find resources.

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Engaged

Well, it all started when I met my fiancé. We were about to settle down and I got pregnant. I wanted to keep my baby, but there were a lot of complications involved. My hormone levels were low and I was scared for my future. Now that it's at least three weeks after the procedure, and I feel depressed and alone. Even my fiancé can't control my mood swings and depression. Sometimes I feel like committing suicide in order to release the soul that was once in me. I feel like I don't deserve to live anymore. I am 24, confused, and alone. I hate myself for what I've done and I felt like I was the only one suffering until I found this website (abortion changes you) on the train. I was at least 9 weeks. You could barely see my baby, but I knew I was carrying an angel. I would like God to forgive me.

Reprinted with permission from AbortionChangesYou.com.

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Another mother writes...

When I was pregnant with my oldest child I had some very detailed dreams. I had never before dreamed in such vibrant color. I dreamed about a beautiful boy. He was around three years old. I can still remember his sparkling blue eyes and blonde ringlet curls. He had a delightfully happy smiling face. I even remember his dimples. I knew that his name was Thomas Christopher. He was in a swing – one of those homemade ones hanging from a real tree. The day was sunny and gorgeous and the sky a perfect shade of blue. He was being pushed and every time the swing drew near, he giggled with joy. I also saw him running in the green grass as if he were being chased. The happy, giggling dimpled face was so clear.

As my pregnancy progressed, I became completely convinced that I was having a boy and I knew his name. When my daughter was born I felt confused and bewildered. She was long and lean with a mass of dark, straight hair. I had no idea what to name her. Of course, I loved her, but I remembered my dreams. My doctor. even said, “and you though it was a boy!” I had been so sure after all I had seen his face many times in my dreams.

Several years later, I realized I had been dreaming about the child that I had aborted. He would have been around three years old at the time I was pregnant with my daughter. After contemplating upon this for many years, I have come to believe that it was not me pushing my child on that swing. My totally innocent, beautiful baby boy was being taken care of by his perfect mother, our mother, Mary. In my dreams, I could see hands pushing the swing and Thomas Christopher gazing at her with pure happiness. My child has been raised in Heaven by the perfect mother. I am eternally grateful to Mary. She, with her profound and perfect love took my child when I had refused to let him be born.

The bitterly profound loss is all mine. I will never feel the touch of my son’s hand in mine. I won’t see him gaze into my face or feel his arms around me loving me so completely. I cannot nurture him, love him or watch him grow into the man God created him to be. I can barely remember the pitiable reason why I chose not to let him live, but I live each day with the loss. My soul yearns for him. My heart grieves and my sadness is inexpressible. Yet in spite of all my pain, I know I have been given a gift. I know my son’s face – I have seen it. Thank you, Jesus; thank you, Mary, for showering me with so much undeserved generosity.

Many years later, a friend of mine gave me a gift. She was the type of person who entered the gift shop and immediately prayed – Dear Lord, Blessed Mother, please show me the gift you want my friend to have. As my friend presented me the gift, she apologized. She said, “knowing that you are a convert to the Catholic faith, I wanted you to have something more traditional, but something kept drawing me back to this”…as I opened the gift, she apologized again, saying, “this is not my taste – the frame is contemporary and the Blessed Mother looks like no other that I have ever seen but I am sure that this is the one I’m suppose to give you.”

The silver framed “contemporary” Madonna and child shows Mary from a side view embracing the child Jesus close to her heart. The baby’s eyes are contently closed. He is safe in His mother’s arms. Around his face you can clearly see wisps of golden curls. I am sure that Mary chose this gift for me, through my faith-filled friend, to let me know – Mother to mother – that my son is safe with her.

Reprinted with permission from Sisters of Life Newsletter Spring 2009 Issue.

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A husband writes...

It is one of the questions you never think to ask during pre-marital preparation – “Gee, honey, did you ever have an abortion?” Just imagine the reaction of your future wife to that question!!!

I know, because I never thought to ask that question. It never occurred to me to even contemplate asking it, and looking back over our 29 years of marriage it is probably the one thing from both of our pasts that that has affected our marriage more than any other.

It was not until we had been married a little over two years that I discovered that little secret that had remained hidden from me by my beloved. We were at one of those self-help seminars similar to EST. During one phase of the seminar, in order to strip yourself bare of any encumbrances, you had to tell someone you loved about something about yourself that was never revealed before. Well, she came up to tell me her secret, and said, “Before I met you, I had an abortion.” I remember being a little shocked – well, maybe more than a little. I replied, “It doesn’t matter.” How wrong I was! Because, you see, I never realized how much it would matter. I just pushed into the back of my mind. We continued our married life together, had a baby, and continued our life as a family.

We had met much like any other couple: through an acquaintance. We dated and fell in love, and decided to get married. But there was always something that made me feel that she was holding back. Having worked in the field of counseling for many years, I assumed that the “holding back” was due to her family’s alcoholism. I would discover much later that, in fact, it was due to the alcoholism, and so was the decision she made to abort her first child.

We made many visits to her parents with our child, and I noticed how she would become unusually quiet and sullen as we approached their home. We had a long conversation about the situation at some point, and I suggested that she get involved in AL-ANON. She followed the suggestion, and we both felt that this would be the cure-all. But there was still that nagging unmentioned thing that always haunted us.

Then one day we heard of a pro-life conference – it was actually more like a rally – at a local park. She decided to go and asked me if I would go with her. Not knowing what to expect, I reluctantly agreed. When we got there, I was shocked. There was nothing but rhetoric about the evil women who had abortions. According to many of the speakers, these abortive women are worse than murderers because they killed their own children. There were many pictures of aborted babies in various stages of gestation. There was never once a mention of forgiveness, or God’s mercy. When we returned home I will never forget her reaction – she threw herself into a chair, curled up in a ball, and screamed, “I am a murderer! I killed my baby, I killed my baby!”

I did not know what to do or say, but I reached to her and held her without saying a word. After some time of reflection and many more conversations between us, I remembered something that I had heard about during some studies for an advanced degree at a seminary. It was a program called Project Rachel.

I contacted a priest friend, who referred us to Project Rachel. We made an appointment with the priest who ran the program in our diocese. He spent a great deal of time with us, and then focused on her and her reasons for the abortion. It was the first time that either of us heard about God’s mercy and forgiveness for women who had had abortions. As part of the healing process she was asked to name her child, write a letter to him, and have a Mass said for him. She also, for the first time in many years, availed herself of the beauty of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. During these phases of the beginning of the healing process I became involved. Not so much helping with the decisions, but being there with her to listen, offer support, and to try not to be judgmental. (Looking back, I never once imagined to say or think “How could you do that?” After all, I had enough garbage in my own background. As time passed, I realized that if we were to make a clean slate of it all, I would also have to be upfront with her and tell her of my past, with all its warts.)

Despite her involvement with Project Rachel, and the referrals they gave us for private and couple counseling, there was still something drastically wrong. There would be the times I would reach over to her looking for a moment of intimacy, only to be rebuffed and pushed away as she would recoil from me. Oh, there would be times of holding hands and of intimate dinners, but the one thing that was missing was the total fulfillment of our relationship as a married couple. One day while discussing this she confided that after realizing what she had done to her first baby, she could not bear the thought of fulfilling that part of our marital relationship. Imagine the feelings of rejection and hurt that I felt!! After some time and more conversation I finally started to understand! There it was – she still did not feel God’s mercy and forgiveness.

Then by what I consider to be a miracle, a very dear friend of ours, who did not know anything about her past, invited her to go to a day of recollection and reflection conducted by the Sisters of Life. Because of the love and caring of the Sisters, for the first time in a very long time, she seemed to be making a breakthrough and started to finally be at peace. She began to feel the all-merciful forgiveness of a loving God. At one of the days of recollection with the Sisters, she heard an amazing woman, Theresa Bonapartis, tell her story of her own abortion. She became involved in Theresa’s organization, Lumina. She seemed to feel, “you know, I am not alone,” and the healing process finally began in earnest.

You may say that this is all well and good, but what does this have to do with you, a husband who took no part in her abortion? Well, my answer to that question is: everything. If you remember, at the beginning I mentioned that her abortion is the one thing that has affected our married life more than anything else. This is a journey of healing, understanding and loving that has to be made by both of us. She said that she had never felt so alone in her life. She told me the whole story of her abortion: how she drove herself to the hospital alone, how the nurses treated her like a vile individual and told her that her baby was a boy. How when she drove herself home on a particular road, she wanted to drive herself into a bridge abutment and kill herself (then I understood why when we drove on this road, she would get unusually quiet). How she could not confide in her parents because of their drinking and coldness. I read the letter she wrote to her son and we attended the Mass together that she had said for him. I attended the counseling sessions to which I was invited. I have attended some of the Lumina activities with her. I have tried to be loving, understanding and supportive.

It has not been easy. I needed my own outlet, my own confidante. I found what I needed in a spiritual advisor who is a friar with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. It has been through his spiritual guidance that I am able to be there for her and for us.

One thing I have discovered during these 29 years of marriage is that something that affects one us affects both of us. This “thing called abortion” that occurred before we even met has had more of an affect on our marriage relationship than anything else. Once it was let out of the closet, it could not in any possible way be stuffed back in – nor did we want it to be.

I had a choice: confront this together, or separate forever. I made the decision that this was part of what was brought to our marriage “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health . . . to love and honor . . . all the days of my life.” I take that vow seriously. We had to make this journey together. This journey continues today, and will continue for the rest of our married life together.

I now look upon it that I have two sons: the one whom she conceived before we met, and the one we conceived together. Would it be any different if the child had lived and this child was here present in our lives? No!! The only real difference is that we have a child who is with God and who is working and praying for us.

I tell this story from a different perspective. We usually hear the story from the post-abortive woman or man. We seldom hear how an abortion conducted prior to a marriage can affect the marital relationship. When I was asked to write this article, how could I refuse? I was not in the least hesitant. I feel it is a story that has to be told, because if it helps a husband who finds himself in the same situation as I it is worth it.

(You may have noticed that I refer to my wife as ‘she’ and ‘her.’ This may seem cold or uncaring, but believe me that is not my intention. I can honestly say that I love my wife more today than I did the day we married. I use these terms with affection and love, but I have to respect her and my anonymity – Thank you.)