by Hannah Smith
Some people may look at me as hypocritical because I am pro-life. This is because on the day I turned 19, I had an abortion.
I was about five weeks along when I took the RU486 pill. I was a young, naive girl who thought partying and fooling around had no consequences – much like many teens believe. I was in my freshman year of college at an out-of-state university which my parents were paying big bucks for me to attend.
I came home for Christmas break, and my mother was adamant about me meeting her friend’s son, so I did. I met him, and we partied together, and had sex a few times. One of those times being without a condom. After all, there were no consequences for me.
I was raised Catholic, but somehow, I had lost my way. I felt the pressure of society and became the selfish, self-proclaimed woman that society had wanted me to be. I didn’t dare tell my mother that I was pregnant, because I knew she would make me keep the child, and my life, as I knew it, would be over.
As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I called the guy and told him, and his response was, “You have to get an abortion.” And as much as I knew it was wrong, I agreed, because I couldn’t imagine my life as a single mother.
I was scared. I knew that this guy wanted nothing to do with me, or with a child, for that matter. He forked over the $350, and away to a clinic I went. They gave me a pill to take orally first and a few others to stick inside my vagina.
Coincidentally, this was right around the time of my birthday, and on the night of my birthday – when all my friends were out partying – I was inside my friend’s dorm room, killing my child. I cramped and bled in the toilet for hours.
Isn’t it ironic that on the day of my birth, I was killing my child? What made me so special that I got to live, but my child must die? Why did I get to breathe a lifetime’s worth of breaths, when my child would never take his first?
I kept on living as if nothing had happened. It wasn’t until a few years later that it hit me, and it hit me hard. I was pregnant, again. This time with my current husband, who had more morals than the first guy. He decided to change his life and become a father.
I was reading a near-death experience of a man who was cast into hell. I remember breaking down and wailing. My husband didn’t know at the time about my previous abortion and asked what was wrong. I told him, “I don’t want to go to hell.” I cried and cried, and I still cry to this day, knowing that I killed my child, and that I will face judgment one day. I cry myself to sleep all the time. What have I done?
I was so selfish and self-absorbed that I couldn’t allow a baby to protrude into my life. I also remember reading “The Testimony of Gloria Polo,” which was another near-death experience, and in one part, God talks to her about all the abortions and unintended abortions she caused by being on birth control, and how each conception produces a spark of light which becomes the soul. Every conception is beautiful and full of light and full of spirit. That spirit comes into life at each conception.
I killed that life. Abortion is the greatest evil of our time, and we have brushed it off as if it is a woman’s choice. If I could do time in prison for the murder I committed, I would.
It shouldn’t be a choice. The choice you have is the choice where you decide to open your legs or not. If a baby results, your “choice” has already happened. I wish abortion was never legal, and I never would have had that choice, because I would be with my child, and my life would not be so full of pain and regret.
Abortion is nothing but a selfish, cowardly act, and I know because I had one.
