You Never Forget

The year 2003 is a dead tie (with 2014) for the worst year of my life. At the start of the year, I was a 24-year-old, married mother of two. By mid-June, I was a divorced, weekend parent living in a cheap motel.

All I had to show for my six-year marriage was a couple trash bags of clothes and a box of personal belongings. Eventually, I acquired an old station wagon with 300,000 miles on it and I figured it was cheaper to live in my car- so that’s what I did.

One night, I was asleep in the backseat and woke up just in time to see a man creeping up to my car. I guess he didn’t know I was in there because he looked shocked before he ran off the other way. I decided it was time to find a roommate.

The Boyfriend

After I secured a more stable living situation, I met a guy online. We talked for a couple weeks and eventually started dating. By this time, my car was shot, and we lived 45 miles apart. It took me 2 1/2 hours and three city buses to go see him. Needless to say, we only saw each other on weekends.

One weekend we slept together. Afterwards, I freaked out because he hadn’t use protection and he freaked out because he assumed I was on the pill. I didn’t see him the next weekend because I had to work.

Later that week, I realized my period was late. I took a home pregnancy test and it was positive. I didn’t tell him. Then later, I had to go to my ex-husband‘s house to get some medication that I left there.

We got into a fight and he called the police. Apparently, I had a warrant for my arrest for unpaid tickets. Because it was Labor Day weekend, I had to wait five days to see the judge before being released. The only good news is, all my fellow inmates knew I was pregnant, so they treated me like a queen.

After I finally got out, I went over to my boyfriend’s house to explain in person why I had been out of contact for nearly a week. We went out to dinner and then I sat in his car waiting for my bus to go home. I was super nervous, but I knew I had to tell him.

The Reveal

My hands were shaking as I pulled out the pregnancy test and showed him. I wasn’t sure how he was going to react. He wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t mad either. He just seemed anxious and said, “I can’t be having a kid right now.” I asked him what he expected me to do. He shrugged and said, “Just get an abortion.”

I have been pro-life all my life. But I was a single mom living with a roommate in a studio apartment with barely enough money to buy food; I couldn’t afford to raise a baby on my own. The thought of government assistance or welfare never even occurred to me at the time. I just knew I didn’t want to be a single mom.

So, the next day I did something I thought I would never do- I called up an abortion clinic. On the phone, I flatly told the receptionist I needed to schedule an appointment for an abortion. She was very matter of fact about the whole thing, and I went for my appointment a couple days later.

The Procedure

They asked me some questions about my last menstrual period, etc. and whether I had anyone to talk to after the procedure. At that time in my life I literally had no one. She took me back into a little room and did an ultrasound to confirm the heartbeat.

I was only five weeks pregnant, but there was a definite heartbeat on the monitor. It was turned towards me, so I had no choice but to see it. After the procedure, I didn’t have anyone to come and pick me up, so I rode the bus home.

My boyfriend and I broke up a week later. And in case you’re wondering, yes, we only slept together that one time.

The Aftermath

My due date was April 2004. The month of April never goes by that I don’t think about how old my child would be. They would’ve been 15 this year.

You never forget.

I never went to any kind of counseling afterwards. I knew that God would forgive me, and I asked him, but it felt like nothing changed. I tried to just forget about it and move on.

Five years later, I got remarried and we decided to try and have kids. One day I started crying, worried that I might not get pregnant again as punishment for what I had done.

You never forget.

Fortunately, I got pregnant within just a couple months. I tried to be happy, but I was concerned that something would be wrong with the baby, again as punishment. She was born perfectly healthy, and two years later, I had a son.

I went back to church in 2011 and on June 6th, I received the Holy Ghost. At some point, I was reading the Bible and, though I had read this scripture many times before, it now stopped me in my tracks:

Psalm 139:13 You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

You never forget.

The Healing

I decided I had to do something to heal. I looked and found a free, guided, online counseling/Bible study about post-abortion healing. It was 10 weeks long and very intensive. At one point in the study, it struck a nerve.

It said not only did I need to pray and ask for forgiveness from God but that I needed to ask for help forgiving myself and my guilt. My guilt. It wasn’t that God had never forgiven me; I just couldn’t get over the guilt.

I prayed and cried and cried until suddenly I felt like God said to me, “Your baby is waiting in heaven.” I was filled with joy that I would see her again. I say her because even though I was only five weeks and there was no way to tell, in my mind/vision, she was a little girl.

For seven years I have been wanting to help women who have dealt with the same thing I’ve gone through, but it’s extremely hard because nobody ever talks about it. I think maybe three people in my life know what happened.

The Plea

If you are a close friend or relative and this is how you found out, I am so sorry. The guilt and shame are so tremendous that it’s not something you tell the whole world. But now I am telling the world because I want to turn my tragedy into my testimony.

If you have gone through an abortion and you are suffering with guilt, shame, hurt, anger, depression… please know there is hope. If you are pregnant and considering an abortion, please hear this mother’s cry…

You will never forget!

For the rest of my life, anytime I fill out medical paperwork and they ask me for the number of pregnancies I’ve had, I put five- even though I only have four children.

Sometimes they will even ask you for number of stillbirths, miscarriages, or abortions. I must write the number one and it kills me. Abortion is not something you can do and put out of your mind.

Giving up your child for adoption or being a single mother is hard (I am now a full-time, single mom of four), but at least you can have a clear conscience that you did the right thing.

The Resources

If you are like I was and have nobody to talk to, please know you can talk to me. I am willing to talk over the phone, text, email, Skype, FaceTime, in person… whatever you need, and you can remain totally anonymous. You can use my contact page to contact me.

If you would like more information about the free, online, guided Bible study I took, you can find their website here.