*Publisher's note: this personal testimony is being reprinted in light of the upcoming vote in South Dakota on Initiated Measure 11 and the recent statement by the American Psychological Association that abortion does not threaten women's mental health.
By Rebecca Porter
Declaration Collection Team Leader
Operation Outcry
At the age of 21, I made the wrong “choice” to have an abortion. At the time, I was told that it would solve my problem and I could go on with my life. It didn’t solve anything. Instead, I turned to drugs and alcohol to hide the pain and guilt I experienced because of choosing death for my baby.
It also changed the way I related to my six-month-old son waiting for me when I came home from the abortion facility. He was crying, and I couldn’t hold him and comfort him. Our precious relationship changed that day.
Because of my aversion to babies, ten years later I made another wrong “choice.” I had received a Depo Provera shot from a clinic; and, then, the unbelievable happened. A few months later I was pregnant again. I DID NOT want to go through another abortion, so I decided this time to have my baby and place it for adoption. But the father said, “My parents would NEVER allow one of THEIR grandchildren to be given away!”
So I went back to the clinic crying, trying not to think about what was going to happen. No one there acted like they cared to stop me. I cried during the whole procedure, and especially when the nurse looked down at the doctor and said, “Oh look, twins.” She was smiling at me like it was something I should have been proud of – I remember seeing her in slow motion like it wasn’t really happening.
I became hysterical and started to scream and tried to get off the table. The nurse and others had to come in to hold me down. The doctor yelled at me to lay down and told me he couldn’t stop what he was doing because of tissue left inside me. So I had to lay there, held down against my will, while the doctor took the rest of my other baby out of me.
He came in to speak to me while I was in the recovery area and apologized for the nurse’s “behavior.” They aren’t supposed to tell women about their babies.
I remember walking out of there like a zombie, wishing I were dead. I tried to commit suicide and overdosed several times because I hated myself for what I had done.
I want women and men to know that you can never imagine the pain unless you’ve gone through it yourself. Abortion is not something that happens, and you just go on with your life. You go on as a very wounded individual. I don’t want other women to experience the pain that I have had.
I will speak out to let people know that the laws need to be changed, so that other women don’t make the wrong “choice” like I did.
I was not supposed to hear about my twins that day. But I think God allowed me to hear so that my eyes would be opened, and it may help open other women’s eyes one day.
I believe that abortion facilities should be required to tell women that it is NOT just tissue, it’s a LIVING BABY!
But most of all, I hope that the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade.
Rebecca is the Florida State Leader for Operation Outcry. She serves as the client services director at a pregnancy care center and is also their certified facilitator for "Forgiven and Set Free" post-abortive women's Bible study.
She also serves as an at-large director for Florida Right to Life. She worked to help pass the Florida "Women's Health and Safety Act" and parental notification legislation for a minor to have an abortion.
Rebecca lives in Plant City, Florida with her husband Wally and her two teenage sons.
Rebecca leads 'A Cry Without a Voice," a project that allows women to commemorate their child’s lives attaching a card with their aborted baby’s name to a pair of baby shoes. These shoes have traveled in the US, Israel, and Holland.
*Reprinted by permission of Operation Outcry.
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Monday, August 18, 2008
Abortion Didn't Solve Anything
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1 comments:
What a tragic and gut-wrenching story!. I know that God has forgiven Rebecca; I hope she gains some peace in her outspoken witnessing about the horrors of abortion and that some hearts are changed.
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