Women and men discuss abortion coercion and regret 'Face to Face'

A new episode of Live Action's "Face to Face" series brought together women who were pressured into abortions, along with men who pressured their partners into abortions. The discussion was moderated by Live Action founder and president Lila Rose.

Key Takeaways:

• Many post-abortive women report feeling pressured or coerced into having abortions.

• The women pressured into abortions discussed the sorrow they felt over losing their children.

• The men, meanwhile, expressed regret for their actions.

• All wished the abortions had not taken place.

They Were Pressured. They Pressured. Both Regret the Abortion

"Sorrow that I'm going to carry with me..."

Ron Ransom said he pressured his wife to have an abortion over 50 years ago, and he regrets it to this day. "At the time, I would have told anybody that it was a mutual decision, but looking back on it now, it was me. I coerced her," he said. "There's just no question about it now that I've taken stock in my life and look back. The pain that I caused my wife is a sorrow that I'm going to carry with me the rest of my life. Our marriage dissolved. She moved away, never remarried, and never had a family. So you can imagine how I feel about that."

But worse than that, he said he now has to live with the knowledge that he killed his preborn son. Eventually the reality of what he had done struck him, which he said threw him into a crisis.

"It took me three years to find help," he said. "It's not really easy for men to find help and healing and hope from an abortion, but I finally found it. Christ didn't let me go, and by his grace, I am now working as well, attempting to outreach to men to help them post-abortion, like the men that helped me. I'm blessed to have that journey."

"It's hard not to remember you were a mom"

Roxana Amaton's abortion was committed by her boyfriend, who was a medical student at the time.

"I was just only provided the option of having the abortion. I was never spoken to about the repercussions of how there's emotional consequences, even psychological consequences," she said. "One of the things I remember him saying was, you know, it's just one more chapter in your story of life. You're going to get through it. And so in my mind, I said, yeah, I'm going to get through it."

But later, he left her for someone else, and the reality of her experience hit her when she took a class on death and dying. She became so distraught she had to leave in the middle of the class.

She continued on living in denial until she was finally able to process her feelings, though she still lives with the pain. "I carry the grief. I mean, it's hard not to, remember that you were a mom," she said. "I was a mom, and I'm 38. I'm not married. I don't have any children."

"I was driven by fear" 

Eusi Fraser said he pressured his girlfriend to have an abortion, because he was scared of things that he says he can now see are all non-issues. While he didn't control her, he believes if he had given her the support she needed, she would have had their baby.

"If I had said to her, 'we're going to have this baby,' it wasn't a question about it, not because I controlled her or whatever, but because of that support — and because that support wasn't there, it was easier for her to do it, right?" he said. 

The two had what he described as a great relationship, but he said he didn't have the courage to talk to anyone about it, and find a way to raise their child together.

"I begged for the baby's life"

Leslie Dean was in college when she got pregnant, and her parents and husband both told her that her priority needed to be finishing school and graduating.

"So I went forward with the abortion, and about a year later, when I was a new graduate, I had kind of been forced into helping, assisting with a second trimester abortion, and witnessed that baby being born alive, and dropped in a bucket," she said. "It lived for about, I would say, six seconds. Extremely, extremely traumatizing."

Eventually, Dean and her husband divorced, and she remarried a few years later. They had one child together, but when she got pregnant a second time, her new husband told her she had to have an abortion, and if she didn't, he would leave her.

"I begged for the baby's life. I just begged," she said. "After everything that I had been through with the other two situations, I was desperate for this baby's life, but I was also extremely codependent, so I wanted to please him, and I didn't want to be alone, so I went through with that one as well."

"I was not going to bother with having a child"

Haywood Robinson was an abortionist who is now pro-life. While he was an undergraduate in 1973, he pressured his girlfriend to have an abortion, because he didn't want to "bother" with having a child. "I bullied my girlfriend with the help of a counselor into getting an abortion, and I realized that even though that I did not use the instruments, I paid for that abortion, and I bullied her into getting that abortion, and I was an abortionist," he said.

He later went to medical school and got married; he and his wife both worked as abortionists. But when another surprise pregnancy came up, that child was almost aborted, too.

"We aborted many, many children," he said. "In addition to that, I had a near-miss abortion when I was an undergraduate, after that first aborted baby, my first born. And thankfully, that child survived and is now 50 years old and is a physician. So I've had experience bullying, doing the abortions myself, and now being a pro-life physician who's fighting for babies."

Go Deeper:

Watch the entire video to see other testimonies and the rest of the emotionally riveting discussion.