Anne's life was devastated when she decided to abort her first baby. Plagued for years with guilt and depression amid fears for the destiny of her lost child, she eventually found Hope in an unlikely place.
FINDING HOPE
A little over ten years ago, I had an abortion. The reasons why aren't complex or confusing. I was young and inexperienced, pregnant and very scared. Fear is a great motivator. It prompted me to seek a solution to my problems that ultimately proved to be devastating.
Finding Out
The day I found out I was pregnant now seems like a bad dream. I had the sense that my connection with reality was broken. My chest was tight, my face felt numb like a mask. I found it hard to speak or think clearly. My movements were slow and clumsy like a sleepwalker. Externally, I must have appeared drugged. Inside I was panicking and very afraid.
What did I want? I wanted the terror to go away. I wanted to be accepted and loved by my mother. I thought my decision to have an abortion would help me live; instead it made me want to die.
The Dilemma
A baby. Something couples dream of. Something couples spend fortunes at fertility clinics trying to conceive. A baby. Growing inside me. I should have rejoiced. I was eighteen and unmarried. I was working as a secretary and my boyfriend was a university student slightly older than me. I had an invalid mother, younger teenage brother and stepfather. They had enough trouble holding their own lives together, let alone supporting me through early parenthood.
We wanted to be married and had realised we would have to wait. My family thought it ludicrous that we would consider marriage. We knew all the arguments by heart - we were too young, we had no money, etc. Only my boyfriend's parents would listen to our hopes and dreams for the future. I clung to the hope that they would understand and help me; reassure me that I would be all right. I was desperate to see them.
A Caring Doctor
When I went to my gynaecologist with my mother, she told the doctor that I would be having an abortion. I barely registered what was happening. Abortion. The word played through my head over and over like a broken record. The doctor looked at me and told my mother to leave the room. She left, reluctantly. He told me that there was no reason why I could not successfully have this baby. I was young, strong and healthy. He asked me what I wanted to do. I cried like I had never cried before. I seemed to be drowning in fluid. I grabbed a handful of tissues and managed to gasp that I wanted my baby. But I was terrified. Terrified because there was no one who would support me. Terrified because my mother refused to allow me to remain under her roof and have the baby.
An Intimidating Mother
The doctor looked at me. He said again that I could have this baby. There were places I could go, people who would help me if my mother would not. He didn't understand. I knew all about those refuges for women. I knew they would probably be able to help me. Help me with everything - except my mother. My mother. You had to be there. She was someone people thought was nice, so genteel. A real lady. But that was the facade. She was physically weak but emotionally strong. Mum knew how to wound for maximum effect. No lumps, bumps or bruises - never anything anyone could see. But the wounds and the pain are still with me.
Choice
I had a choice. Have my baby and be rejected by my mother or abort my baby and have a roof over my head. To my eternal regret, I chose the latter. I make no excuses. My decision was based on sheer terror. The paralysing fear of what my mother was capable of was my motivator. I had defied her to my great cost before.
A Desperate Decision
I had twenty-four hours to make a decision. I managed to get away from mum for a while. My boyfriend and I went to his parents' place. Visitors from overseas had just arrived. We drove frantically around to our minister's house. He had just left on two weeks holiday. My hopes of a last minute reprieve lay in the dust. Without the immediate support and reassurance of anyone who loved both of us, I knew what I would do.
Sentenced
I was waiting in hospital admissions with my mother. Uncomfortable, tense, my mask of numbness on again, I waited. My baby waited too … soft, warm and vulnerable inside me …. unaware it was on death row … not guilty, but condemned anyway by its mother's fear. I was already sentencing myself. Some time ago, I had become a Christian. Fat lot of good my faith was doing me now. Suddenly, my number was called.
Consent?
I hate hospital corridors. I hate hospital trolleys. Lying on one and prepped, I began to panic. A nurse brought me a consent form to sign. I became hysterical. "I don't want to do this...Oh God, sweet Jesus help me. I DON'T WANT THIS!" I signed though. I don't remember how, but I signed the paper and my baby's life away.
The Abortion
Another needle … it hurt. Hurt because I was writhing around like a demented woman, then, nothing. I floated in a drug-induced abyss while my baby was systematically dismembered and pulled from my body. Consciousness hit me like a fog rising from nowhere. I felt a sudden pain and asked for a bedpan. As they raised me over the pan to a sitting position, black blood poured out of my body like a river. After filling two pans with it they injected more medication. I slipped into the abyss again.
Condemnation
I woke to find a nurse watching me…a kind face. Why was she looking at me with sympathy?
I deserved none. Nothing could ease the guilt and condemnation that I meted out to myself. My boyfriend came. My mother visited. At last I had some measure of power over her. I could justify ignoring her and telling the nurses to make her leave. She brought presents like I'd had my tonsils out. I'd been her good little girl after all. The only person I hated more than her was myself.
Empty Aftermath
I went home …empty …without a life…without reason….without myself. I didn't know who I was. I went to work. I came home. I went to bed and dreamt of death and ruin and blood. Oceans of black blood with bits of dead baby floating in it, like dolls with their arms and legs off. I refused to look at myself in the mirror, for fear of confirming that I still lived and breathed and my baby didn't. I didn't want to exist because my baby didn't exist anymore. My internal screams engulfed every waking moment. My self-hatred swallowed everything else…eating me alive. And I wanted it that way. I went through massive bouts of depression. Waves of guilt washed over me relentlessly drowning any hope or positive thought.
Complications
Then the pains started. Then the bleeding. Blood again. More blood. I went to bed and began to feel strange. The room kept going away and coming back again. I was hot, so hot and then freezing. Mum came in to check on me. Ten minutes later I was in a taxi, back to hospital.
In casualty they put me in a wheelchair. I left a nice little trail of blood for them so the doctors would know where I was. A gynaecologist was passing through and followed my trail. Instead of the torture of waiting, this time it was the torture of an internal examination. I started screaming out loud this time: "Don't take my baby, Oh God where is my baby, I want my baby." Another needle, another abyss.
Nothing Mattered Anymore
I went home. I didn't talk. I just did what I had to do. Work, home, sleep. I talked with my doctor. I had developed an internal infection. Pain, fever, another operation. So what, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore. My mind and emotions were locked into that event and whilst outwardly I functioned as I needed to, inside my thoughts revolved like a train on a circular track that kept stopping at the same stations.
Afloat in a Sea of Misery
My boyfriend and I drifted like two shipwreck survivors, clinging to our relationship to keep ourselves afloat in a sea of misery. Whilst he had his own grief about the situation, he never shared it with me. We married, had three beautiful children, two sons and a daughter. After fourteen years of verbal, physical and emotional abuse from him, the marriage finally ended.
Two Beacons of Hope
My healing is by no means complete, but two events stand out as beacons of hope in my progress from depression to freedom. The first was realising I had nearly died in hospital. I hadn't known then how close I came to getting my wish. Staff had told my mother to stick around, as I may not 'make it through the night.' I was still here… I had a second chance.
The second event occurred in 1997
I had been plagued by questions about the spiritual state of my baby. Had I sent my baby to hell because of what I did? What I describe now came to me as a kind of vision or dream. I choose not to debate or question its validity or try to prove its worth to anyone. It is enough that it was, firstly real to me; and secondly gave me an enormous sense of release and healing.
Help from a Friend
I was reliving the whole abortion experience; the pain and anguish in my heart were overwhelming. I began to pray and cry out as I had done so often over the years. This time a friend was with me and she gently suggested that I ask the Lord to heal me once and for all. I cried out at this, saying that was impossible. Why would God want to heal me when I had not only murdered my baby but also sent it to hell?
She was appalled that I had laboured for so long under this misconception. It took time but she convinced me that I was wrong. She confessed her own abortion to me and revealed how the Lord had reassured her that he had her baby. She encouraged me to pray and ask for healing and reassurance for myself. Blinded with tears, and feeling pain like a vice in my chest, I did just that.
Finding Hope
As I waited in silence, eyes closed and hands clenched, a warmth came over me and I saw bright light. The pain was forgotten as I saw Jesus holding a baby in his arms. I heard him say, "This is your daughter. She is now mine...She always was mine." I found myself asking: "What is her name Lord? What have you called her?" The answer came back, "Her name is Hope."
Since then, I have had a measure of peace that has enabled me to think about the whole event, and even write this down without the crippling pain inside me. Sadness and regret remain - abortion has violated my body, soul and spirit. But the crushing guilt and depression are no more.
