The Guiding Star Project blog has the story of a woman who was forced to go to an abortion facility after her baby died in utero. She went through the whole abortion process although her child was already dead. Haunted by the emotional and physical pain she witnessed in the post-abortive women at the facility, she shares her story.
The blogger was late in her pregnancy when her baby’s heartbeat stopped. Her doctor arranged for her to have her child removed from her womb. He sent her to facility for what would be a two day process. On the first day, laminaria sticks would be put into her cervix (the neck of the womb) to dilate her. These would slowly widen the entrance to her womb. On the next day, the surgery would take place, removing the child’s body.
While leaving the abortion facility on the first day, she was approached by a pro-life sidewalk counselor and realized, for the first time, that she had been referred to an abortion facility and not a regular doctor’s office. She was horrified that her baby would be taken from her in a facility where other babies were killed.
She and her partner called the referring doctor and her insurance company but were unable to convince them to send her somewhere else. Shattered with grief and hearing the doctor talk about the serious health risks of not going through with the surgery, they had no choice but to give in and go back the second day.
At the abortion facility, the woman sat in a room with other women who were having abortions. She says:
I was ushered into a waiting room where the other women sat as they waited to go in for their procedures. It was just us women – no friends, support partners, or nurses. It was a closed room and we were free to talk. They shared their stories and their reasons for undergoing their late abortions. I was the novelty in the room – the only one there who didn’t choose to be. There was an air of calm and friendliness among them. As I sat there, my mind raced as I tried to find the words to beg them not to go through with it. But, it was already too late. They had already had the shot to stop their babies’ heartbeats. Their babies were already gone.
But the scene was very different in the recovery room, where the women were sent after their abortions.
When I woke up in the recovery room, it was to the sound of weeping. Gone was the air of easy calm among us. The things I heard from the women surrounding me were unimaginably sad. I could hear the shock in their voices. The regret. The pain.
“I want my baby back! I just want my baby back! Please!”
I spoke to the girl who said this, telling her that her baby was in heaven. She didn’t have to worry for him. But how flimsy these words must have sounded in the face of such a situation! A woman is told that her decision to end her pregnancy is brave. Strong. Wise. The easiest option. The right choice. HER choice. These words, fashioned into soft scarves, pull her into a clinic that claims to stand beside her. But as the girl next to me laid there on the bed, those silken words hardened into stones that now pelted her. Those words mocked her pain, proving false in the face of reality.
An abortion worker heard the blogger trying to comfort the woman and intervened, snapping closed a curtain between them. They did not want her to acknowledge the humanity of the baby to another patient. But the women, their wombs now empty and their babies dead, knew what they had lost.
The facility workers, who had been full of smiles and sympathy before the abortions, were different now.
After the recovery room, we were led to a separate room where we had to wait an hour before we could be released. We were all writhing in pain, but the best that the nurses could offer was Tylenol. Gone were the friendly smiles from the surgery suite. We felt like we were now annoyances, begging for relief when they couldn’t give us any. We received choppy answers, were told we needed to be quiet, or were simply ignored altogether. Yet another lie revealed itself to these women: abortion IS extremely physically painful, especially in the later stages.
The women were in extreme physical and emotional pain after their abortions. The physical pain, for most of them, would pass. But the emotional scars might remain for much longer.
Studies show that post-abortive women are 65 percent more likely to suffer from depression. Two studies based on medical records found that post-abortive women were six to seven times more likely to commit suicide. Other studies have linked abortion with post-traumatic stress disorder, sleep disturbances, and substance abuse.
The blogger says:
What happened to these women matters. They didn’t enter into that clinic under the assumption that they were putting themselves at great risk of lifelong psychiatric disturbances including suicidal thoughts, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and depression. Neither my admission nor discharge paperwork mention the possibility. It also failed to mention my increased risk of infertility and miscarriage with future pregnancies. I believe that the real risks (of which these are just a few) are buried under language crafted to hide the very real devastation that abortion can cause women. Pain is called “discomfort” and sadness and depression aren’t even mentioned…
My experience at the abortion clinic that day introduced me to the very real anguish that abortion brings to women. I truly believe that several of the women at the clinic with me that day would not have entered the clinic if they had received a thoroughly honest portrayal of abortion.
Pro-abortion groups spread the myth that abortion is empowering to women, but there was no empowerment in the facility that day. Only grief, remorse, and pain.
There is a reason why abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood bitterly oppose informed consent laws, which would warn women about the physical and emotional dangers of abortion. Pro-lifers must never stop telling the truth about abortion and the way it damages women.
