Fluff and Stuff

When I was young, I was playing outside and saw that my neighbor, Marge, had a pro-life sticker on her car. I didn’t think too much about it, but one day I asked her what it meant. I still remember her answer. She politely replied, “that just means that I think all babies should be alive.” This was a brilliant explanation.

I, too, thought all babies should be alive.

Until I didn’t.

I won’t go into my upbringing too much, but let’s just say it wasn’t awesome. I had little to no understanding of right and wrong. Just this nudge inside that told me “NO!” when no one else ever did.

I usually ignored it.

I remember hearing that nudging voice in my head so many times. But I also remember the day that voice stopped.

As a writer, I want to tell “feel good” stories. I want to type things that inspire others to be better and do better. And all in God’s name. But I can’t tell you how to be better unless I tell you about how I got better.

Unfortunately, the road to my redemption was paved with heartache and despair. Almost like a telenovela, my story is one that stirs up dust and shakes the shivers inside.

That’s because I did an unthinkable thing. I did the worst thing.

I tried for a very long time to keep that thing hidden and secret, because it hurt so badly to have ever done in the first place. It broke me. It’s that moment when I turned away from good and went down the darkest path I’ve ever walked. And it’s embarrassing. It’s degrading and humiliating. It will paint me in a way I’d never want anyone to see.

But… and it’s a big “but”, I need to tell it for the girl out there who is like me… like the girl I once was. Lost, alone and afraid. No options. No way out. My body was not my own. It was not my choice, like they told me. My undoing came from something millions have done but few talk honestly about.

Advocates shout for a woman’s body to be her own, but never consult the girl who just acted on that right by having an abortion out of fear or panic. No one sits with her in the pit of her despair that’s left afterwards. No one talks to her when she cries out in agonizing pain and self-hating guilt.

No, activists just picket for her right.

What right?

The right to destroy herself.

I did the thing that nobody talks honestly about. I robbed the world of a beautiful person. And not a day goes by that I don’t think about it.

Ironically, that’s the whole point of this. I have to tell you every gruesome detail because it needs to sink in. Deeply.

I thought that a boy loved me. I believed him. But he lied. And I was young. Initially, because I was wearing those rose-colored glasses, for a split-second I thought about keeping my baby. But then I realized the boy didn’t love me at all. And it made me love me just a little bit less too.

He asked me to have an abortion. So, I went to my mother. Having been a hippie in her time, my mother was all too happy to help me exercise my “choice,” which I had always known would be the outcome if I ever got pregnant.

Instead of teaching me about safe sex, we would just “get rid of it”. The appointment was relatively easy to make. I just called and told them I wanted an abortion, and they gave me instructions. My mom and I drove to the appointment. The boy I thought loved me went too. I remember sitting in the waiting room next to very pregnant women. I thought it was preposterous that you could abort a baby that far along.

I didn’t realize at the time that this was a service provided by regular doctors in my area. I suppose in my mind I imagined a less medical setting. More of a back alley approach.

I sat uncomfortably while my mom filled out my paperwork. I was only 17 so this wasn’t necessarily a full informed, well thought out choice... it was more like an “as long as you live under my roof, you’ll live by my rules” one.

So, I just listened.

I still felt justified in exercising it though. And I felt sad because I was sure that this boy would love me forever. But sitting in that waiting room next to him made me sick. I couldn’t even look at him. I couldn’t place it then, but afterwards I realized how very much I hated him, and myself, for what followed.

I’d been in surgery before, so changing out of my clothes, signing forms and getting IV’s seemed normal. I felt nothing as I counted back from 10.

This same nothing would continue to fill me up for years to come.

I remember waking up during the procedure and they had to push more drugs into me. Then, I woke up in a room full of girls. Some were crying. Some were throwing up. Some were just lying there. It looked like how I imagined a makeshift war hospital to be. My mom was there, and I remember the workers picking me up as if my legs didn’t work. They placed me in mom’s blue Toyota Tercel. It was hot and I was nauseous from the pain.

Realizing what had taken place, suddenly, I was the saddest I had ever been in my life.

Agonizing sadness.

The ride home was silent. Or at least if my mom was talking, I wasn’t listening. The boy had left during the procedure. He was nowhere to be found. I went home to be nursed by my mother, who I now saw in a whole new and different way. She was no longer my defender, but simply a supervisor. Someone who made sure I ate and was breathing. I felt like an object that was touched a lot and then discarded. “Nothing” continued to fill me. I was suddenly so empty.

That night was the worst night of my life.

I woke up hourly throwing up and with cold sweats; my temperature was climbing. My body was failing. I got weaker and weaker. In a frantic late-night call, I heard my mom cry out over the phone “she’s septic!”

My mother, the nurse, finally to the rescue.

But it was too late to save me. They sucked out my soul with that tube. I don’t remember everything after that, but I do remember going back to that awful place. We went through the back door this time; no one could see this abomination. No one did. Sneaking me in, they performed the second abortion. My body did not react well to the dilation and curettage which is known as a D&C in the medical field.

If the fetus dies inside of a woman, this is the procedure they do. It’s the exact same procedure for a woman having an abortion. But it’s more primitive and caveman-like; less like medical caring concern. My cervix held inside me the “products of conception” left behind. Pieces of my child. I see it now as my own body clinging to my baby in a desperate attempt to stop this from happening.

Writing this now, 17 years later, with tears streaming down my face, I finally realize what really happened. A botched abortion by butchers in some back alley... just in Main Street. It WAS exactly what I envisioned abortions to be. Kindness and bedside manners are not afforded to the whores who kill their babies...even at abortion clinics.

They finished again, and I was spit out. A number. A tally mark. A liability dodged. We went home and silently swept it under the rug.

And I graduated from high school.

The aftermath began my downward spiral. Spinning. Spinning. Completely void inside, I was empty and treated myself as the nothing that I felt I was. My already low self-esteem was now completely gone, leaving me easy to manipulate. Trying to mask the pain, I got deeper into drugs and ran with a crowd of people I shouldn’t have. I lived a lifestyle that was a lie. I went to extreme lengths to try to unravel the spinning and at a very fast pace too. It was unseemly and probably ugly. It wasn’t long before I was back in a Walgreens bathroom peeing on a stick and seeing two lines.

Oh God! I knew I couldn’t do what I did before. I knew that if I had an abortion, I would die. Or worse, I would kill myself.

This was my last chance. This was the choice FOR life that restarted my life again.

Still, I made two appointments, one at an OBGYN and one at the abortion clinic... same date, same time. On that day, I went to the OBGYN and I chose life.

My life.

Her life.

A choice, really, that was never mine to make at all. A choice that should’ve already been made from the moment she first existed - to protect her, like a mother should.

And I began to ravel myself again, to put myself back together. It has taken years and years of raveling back to be in a place where I can put words to this journey. I feel such shame. And for years, I felt so guilty for doing it. Even after being baptized into the family of God as an adult, I still carry tremendous guilt. Each time a friend tells me their infertility story. Every time I cry with a friend who loses a baby. And the worst feeling of all, each time I celebrate the announcement of a baby to be. I feel such sadness for my family and for the world; they were robbed of that beautiful soul that we will never know.

The choice that I thought was mine to make with my first child, was made easy by the lies of the world. The aftermath of despair powerfully infuses that truth. The slogan “my body, my choice” leaves devastation in it’s path. It is not as advertised. The reality is not publicized, it’s not on a TLC reality show, and it’s not on posters at a rally. That’s because it’s painful, and ugly, and sinful. What happens after? When she’s killed her baby. When she’s done the worst thing. Where is that protester? That pro-choice picketer?

(Note: She’s out there, trust me. She’s the loudest one shouting those lies because she’s trying so desperately to convince herself they’re true. She has to believe they are because the alternative is too grizzly and horrifying.)

If post-abortive women like me speak the devastating truth, it will be silenced to perpetuate the lie. The ONLY consolation that will ever work is at the foot of the cross. There is love and mercy there for the woman who felt she had a choice or felt she had no choice at all but abortion. This same love and mercy is there for you before an abortion, not at the end of a suction tube.

I cannot urge you enough. If you know someone, or are thinking of having an abortion, I beg you to reconsider.

You have options besides abortion. I will help you. Many others will help you. There is a way. I have found freedom in knowing the truth and in knowing forgiveness. Now, I have to speak for the babies that can’t speak for themselves. I must speak for my son or daughter whose voice I took away. I want to empower you and give you a voice - the voice - the voice of truth. I am pro-life! And, like Marge, “I believe that all babies should be alive,” and you should be so well loved and supported that you can believe that too... and believe in yourself, your worth, and your ability enough to make that a reality.