In 2007, the New York Times stated that scientific evidence “strongly shows that abortion does not increase the risk of depression, drug abuse or any other psychological problem.” This confident assertion—already dubious when it was made—is being overwhelmed by reams of evidence suggesting the contrary: that abortion leaves a discernible wake of sorrow, suffering, and devastation.
Along with the disturbing statistics, however, is the compelling testimony
of real women who have aborted their children and of what happened to
their lives as a result. Though abortion does often provide a short-term
solution to real problems pregnant women face, thus granting some
immediate relief, the myth that women come out of abortion
psychologically unscathed now seems unsustainable.
Jewels Green
was a former abortion clinic worker who had an abortion in 1989, after
nine and a half weeks gestation. After aborting, Green continued her job
but started seeing her “lost child in every jar of aborted baby parts.”
She started having nightmares “so gruesome and terrifying” that she
requested an appointment with the clinic director and ended up quitting
her job. Her sorrow is expressed in a language only a mother could
understand: “Happy Nobirthday, Unbaby. I miss you every day. Love &
tears, Mom.”
The founder of the pro-life group And Then There Were None is a woman named Abby Johnson, who had two abortions. One day in the car, her daughter
asked out of the blue whether someday she would be able to see her
siblings in Heaven. According to Johnson, “I asked her what she meant…
honestly, hoping that she was not talking about my own two abortions.
She said that she knew I had two abortions and she wanted to know if she
would ever get to meet those babies because she said, ‘In my heart, I
miss them.’”
When I had my abortions, Johnson said, “I never thought about how it
would affect others. I didn’t think about my future children. I never
thought about how I would have to explain my selfishness to them.”
Lori Nerad’s testimony
is even more harrowing. The former national president of Women
Exploited by Abortion, Nerad describes going into labor two weeks after
her abortion. There in the bathroom, she says, “with my husband beside
me, I delivered a part of my baby the doctor had missed. It was the head
of my baby.”
Nerad says she still wakes up in the middle of the night, thinking
she hears a baby crying. “And I still have nightmares in which I am
forced to watch my baby being ripped apart in front of me. I simply miss
my baby. I constantly wake up wanting to nurse my child, wanting to
hold my child. And that’s something the doctor never told me I would
experience,” she said.
Katrina Fernandez
makes no bones about the reality of what she did. “I killed two of my
children,” she said, “robbed my parents of grand-children, and murdered
my son’s siblings.” She says that she would have given anything for
someone to simply tell her: “You don’t have to do this.”
The abortions also took a toll on Fernandez’s life and mental health,
a factor often overlooked in debate regarding abortion. According to
Fernandez, her abortions “directly caused a medical condition known as
incompetent cervix which resulted in the premature birth of another son
who died after a week-long struggle in the NICU in 2001. The suffering
I’ve endured and caused others is immeasurable and the guilt almost
drove me suicidal. I am a coward in every way,” she said.
And yet now, convinced that silence fails women who need
encouragement to carry their babies to term, Fernandez declares: “I
refuse to be a coward anymore.”
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