Woman regrets abortion after seeing her 12-week-old baby: ‘They deceived me’

Previously, I’ve written about the way abortion facility workers sometimes lie to women about the development of their babies and about abortion’s risks. In the following story, a woman discovered the abortion workers lied about her baby in the worst way possible.

The now off-line website Abortion Concern had the story of a young woman named Lynda who had an abortion. She had been pressured by her boyfriend, whom she described as being “ecstatic” when the abortion was over.

Doubts and feelings of grief began to surface on the drive home. She became even more upset when her boyfriend, who had promised to stay with her after the abortion, left her alone.

As we drove away, I felt like I had forgotten something, or left something behind. We returned home, and [my boyfriend’s] promise to me to be there with me, was totally false. He left me there alone. At first, I was relieved that it was over, and then I was hit by the most overwhelming, tremendous grief I had ever experienced.

But the worst was yet to come. Lynda says:

I was also experiencing very bad cramps. Four days after the abortion, I got up to [go to the bathroom] and felt that something was not right inside. When I wiped, I glanced down at the wad of toilet paper in my hand, and saw my 12-week old fetus. Its head was smashed, and it’s eyes were on either side of its head. Its body was attached to the head, and only the right arm and hand remained. I was shocked and horrified by what I saw.

The abortion clinic had botched the abortion and only gotten part of the baby out. At 12 weeks, Lynda’s child had been fully formed. He or she had a beating heart and brain waves. Already capable of responding to touch, he would have pulled away from the abortion instruments. At the time of his death, the baby was already right or left handed. He had lungs and would have “breathed” amniotic fluid, strengthening his lungs to breathe air after he was born. Not only did he have hands and fingers, but also fingerprints. These fingerprints marked him as a unique individual who had never existed before in all of history and will never exist again.

Lynda’s boyfriend also saw the baby:

My boyfriend saw it too. He was standing in the bathroom shaving. He heard me say “oh my gosh,” when he turned to see what I was holding. He ran out of the bathroom, and kept repeating, “I didn’t see it, I didn’t see that, I didn’t see the dead baby.”

I just sat there, with tears streaming down my cheeks, as I held my baby’s hand on my pinky, trying to find words to say, of why I failed this innocent child. I had tuned my boyfriend out, to where he was just some noise in the background.

Lynda called the abortion clinic and told them what happened. But…

They criticized me, because, “a baby does not form until the last trimester.” They deceived me when they initially told me that. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what a miniature hand, with four fingers and a thumb looked like, or to know what it was I held in my hand that day.

Lynda sank into what she called a “deep depression.”  She sought post-abortion counseling through a local church but says it only made her feel more guilty. Unsurprisingly, her relationship with her boyfriend fell apart:

At night, I’d lay awake in bed, sobbing quietly, so not to wake my boyfriend, who had turned from demanding, to insensitive and unsupportive, and couldn’t deal with me, given I simply just couldn’t “get over it.” My relationship with him ended.

Lynda finished her testimony by saying, “I believe the abortion doctors deceive a person.”  She claimed that she would not have had an abortion if she had been told the truth.

While seeing one’s mutilated baby after a surgical abortion is very rare, sadly, being lied to by the abortion facility is not. Read more testimonies from women who were misled and regretted having their abortions.