NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {A} mid the debates over what studies prove or disprove about the effects of abortion, we often neglect the truth — the untold stories of women. We know that every abortion causes the death of a child. But one population remains disregarded on both sides of the issue — the myriad of women suffering as silent victims after undergoing an abortion. We should all be willing to listen to their voices.
The Abortion Memorial website, for instance, features hundreds of women commemorating the stories of their aborted children. These mothers testify to their own grief and regret, in part as tribute to their child and as warning to other mothers.
“Laura,” mother to an aborted baby girl named “Hannah,” writes that she had the abortion eleven years ago. At the time, she thought it was the right thing to do — and she suffers every day because of the loss of her child.
“Oh the lies we tell ourselves!” Laura writes. “The truth is, you leaving made my life so dull, so full of pain, and nothing got easier. Nightmares haunted me,” so “I dulled the pain the best way I knew how. . . . I love you so very very much. . . . I will never be silent, no one should ever have to live through this pain. I will talk about you and no one will stop me.”
Another grief-stricken mother writes anonymously to her aborted baby “Nic” in a post titled “I am sorry. If only I knew.”
She says that she imagines cuddling him and wishes he could play with her hair as his living sister does. “Please forgive me I took your life for selfish reasons,” she writes at the end of her post. “If I could turn back time, I would choose you over me, over and over again without doubt.”
Another mother asks her baby, aborted in September of 2004, to forgive her.
“I’ve cried many tears over the years and still wonder if you were a boy or a girl,” she writes. “Would your eyes have been blue or brown? Would you have my love for music or would you be a talented artist? All these things, I will never know. I am so deeply sorry that I took away those possibilities. I shattered those memories I will never have. I love you, please forgive me.”
These mothers’ testimonies are powerful, heart-wrenching accounts of what we know to be true: Abortion inflicts grave physical and psychological harm on women.
The harm is obscured from them as an emotional reality until it’s too late. They spend their lives haunted by the mental-health implications of an irreversible decision because their abortionist told them lies: lies such as “Abortion won’t harm you,” “It’s as easy and safe as taking an Advil,” or “You can walk out of here and forget it.”
One study found that more than three-quarters of women who took abortion drugs regretted it.
The process of an abortion itself is inherently traumatic and comes with a range of physical risks. It’s painful. There is a lot of bleeding. It doesn’t always end the pregnancy. When it does, women expel what is recognizably a tiny child. Few women are warned they will see the dead body of their fully formed child instead of the “pregnancy tissue” they were told about. We know because when women are shocked by the pain or trauma they experience, they call our clinics, panicked, looking for help.
How could any person emerge from such a brutal and violent process unscathed?
We hear so much talk about how women somehow need abortion for their health, while disregarding the studies and stories that show so many women regretting their abortions and suffering from the psychological and emotional damage that the experience wrought. By ignoring their voices, we marginalize and silence the very real pain that these women endure.
Their stories are difficult. They suffer silently. And the results are devastating. So much for women’s empowerment.
We owe it to women and their lost children to lend a voice to their untold stories. We must make the mental-health risks of abortion known — before it’s too late for another mother and child.