From Pro Choice to Pro Life

When I was younger I was never really for or against abortions. It was never going to happen to me so who was I to stand in the way of a woman’s right to choose.  However, when I was faced with my own unplanned pregnancy my fear quickly turned me into a pro choice advocate.  What I have since learned is how easy it is to form an opinion on an issue based on a lack of true insight and understanding. After having 2 abortions, you might assume that I remain very much a pro choice advocate, right?  Wrong!  After 10 years of soul-searching I can now state without hesitation and with true insight into my opinion, I am a pro life advocate.  I realize, of course, that some will say this makes me a hypocrite.  To those people I respond…it makes me an honest and true survivor. 

Initially I rationalized my decisions and based on a belief that it was not the right time for me to bring a baby into my life, I continued on with my life.  But as I “continued on with my life” I also crawled through the emotional trenches, suffered through the nightmares, and longed for the babies I lost. I anguished over the idea that I allowed myself to be influenced into believing that my babies were not in fact babies, but just a lump of cells or tissue. My heart knows the truth now.  It knows the emptiness that will forever remain until someday I meet my little angels. I don’t want ANYONE to suffer the way I did. I don’t want anyone to be fooled into thinking an abortion is a quick relief.  By its very nature abortion necessitates a very quick and often hasty decision – presumably delivering a very quick solution.  But as you are forced to make this enormous decision during this very brief and highly emotional period it is rarely understood that you are making a life long decision that can have damaging effects on your emotional well being, regardless of the crap that Planned Parenthood shovels out saying emotional problems after an abortion are uncommon.

In my ’Social Disgrace’ blog I spoke about the boisterous radicals and their deafening chants against abortion. I’ve witnessed first hand as people have held up signs reading ‘Baby Killers’ and ‘You’re Going to Hell.’ I’ve watched as people have screamed obscenities to women leaving abortion clinics, and cringed with utter disbelief hearing of the unspeakable violence and murder that has taken place at these clinics carried out by those very people who at the top of their lungs profess to cherish life.  It disgusts me.  And despite their efforts to make women like me who have had an abortion feel like worthless filthy lepers, my eyes are now opened to the truth of those who are the true social disgrace!

As my healing progressed I knew I wanted to stand up and speak out against abortion but I wasn’t about to join the ranks with such extremists. One day, however, I asked some friends from my church support group to join me at a march against abortion. We didn’t talk the entire time we marched; instead we simply prayed, remembered, and cried. From there I met other pro life advocates and was pleasantly surprised by their compassion; they weren’t extremists like I had seen before. While some had gone to silent protests at clinics, I could see that they truly held no judgment, only sympathy for what any woman must be feeling as she faces an abortion decision. This group of people gave me hope. Hope, that someday as we work together through outreach and prayer that people like us will suppress the in-your-face, hateful acts of pro-life radicals and our message of compassion and understanding will rise up and triumph over hatred and judgment.  And I will continue praying that one day I will see an end to the damaging effects of abortion.