Abortion: The Look of Death

A story of a life-altering decision--and healing--from someone who has been there

 

By Cynthia Carney

At the age of 16, I married and gave birth to a son in the same year. One year later, at my son's first birthday that same familiar feeling came over me, called morning sickness.

While out in town one day in a town in southern California, I saw a sign that read "Free Pregnancy Tests." When I left that clinic, statements like "It's just tissue", "Your life will be back to normal in no time" and "It's just like pulling a tooth" kept playing over and over in my mind, and the word abortion was weighing heavy on my heart.

The power of suggestion would soon play a major role in my decision, as I left the clinic that day.

After telling my husband what was said to me at the clinic, he advised me to have an abortion and stated, that "we could not afford another child." I was to start secretarial school in the fall, and life was hard as we tried to survive on the enlisted pay of the United States Marine Corps. 

Some time went by as I felt an uneasiness in my heart, but pressure soon gave way, and I walked into the clinic one summer morning in 1978. Roe v. Wade had been legal for five years

Looking for someone to talk to, I noticed a young lady sitting across from me who didn't look much older than I. I asked her if she had ever had an abortion, she said "After today, this will be my fifth abortion." I tried to draw some assurance, but I have never forgotten the look in her eyes. It was the same look that many of the Jewish Holocaust survivors had after just being liberated at the end of World War II. It was the look of death.

Shortly after that conversation my name was called. There was much waiting as the nurse left me for a long time, and then would return to the room and repeat, "How far along are you?"  Everything within me wanted to get up and run, but I felt like I was in a trap and could not get out.  Then all of a sudden I heard the sound of generator, and within just a few seconds, I was experiencing some of the most excruciating pain of my life--so excruciating I passed out. When I awoke, I was covered in so much sweat, it was as if I had taken a shower.  When I looked down there was blood everywhere.

By the time my husband arrive to pick me up, the sun was going down. To this day, I have very little recollection of that time.

For the next three days I bled so heavily, I had to get a neighbor to watch my son. For the first time in my life I experienced a kind of shame I had never known before, and a part of me wished I had died, on that abortion table.

My relationship with my one-year-old son changed, and I started to loathe my husband, but most of all I loathed myself. I kept thinking that if I could just get pregnant again, the aching in my heart would go away.  Two months after graduating secretarial school, I gave birth to another son.

Within seconds after his birth, disappointment set in. Not at him, but that the longing and the ache in my heart did not go away, and a depression set in that I carried for the next 22 years, until one day I heard a woman with an organization (The Justice Foundation) talking on national TV about her abortion.

After that program I found the courage to pick up the phone and talk to someone for the first time about my abortion. That phone call became the turning point in my life, and did two things for me: (1) It brought me out of the shame and silence, and (2) It began my healing journey.

I can honestly say that I have forgiven myself and others, and have honestly looked at the many factors that led me into the abortion clinic that day.

Tissue? I now know that my baby was 14 weeks, and had fingers and toes, had a brain and could feel pain. He just needed to grow. I also know that miraculously I survived an abortion that should not have been performed in the way it was performed because of how far along I was.

However, surviving that abortion has not left me without physical scars. Physically I was never the same, and my next two pregnancies were difficult births. As a matter of fact, I almost died when I gave birth to my third son.

As I have stated, I have forgiven myself and others, but no one or nothing can take away the memory of that abortion. I will forever live with the knowledge that I never got to know or hold that child, and he never got to know his three brothers that would have loved him dearly.

Personally, I believe I made a choice in ignorance. I was not given all the facts, and never once was adoption mentioned. In 1978 we did not have the scientific knowledge that we have now.

Scientific evidence is now proving that the child is a complete and separate human being apart from it's mother in the mother's womb, and has it's own DNA.

By the way, that look of death I saw in the young woman's eyes at the abortion clinic, I recognized in my own eyes as I looked in the mirror the next day after my own abortion. Just because it is legal, doesn't mean that there is not a price to pay within your own heart and soul.

My abortion experience was one of the most horrific and haunting experiences of my life, and I say that as a mother who buried a 21-year old son, 4 years ago, and then had an 18 year old son going to war in Iraq 1 1/2 years later.

Abortion was not a quick-fix solution for me. I think as a woman you owe to others and mostly yourself to get both sides of the story before you make a life-altering decision.  

 

writes from Oklahoma. 

 

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