The feelings women feel after abortions are real, I know. I know from personal experiences with friends and from the experiences of seven other women who gathered with me at a Project Rachel support group.
Since February 12, 2002 I have attended weekly support group meetings at Project Rachel. Project Rachel is a ministry of the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock, which reaches out to women who are suffering the aftermath of past abortions. I believe the groups' value is their feelings about abortion. Feelings kept secretively, feelings of pain, feelings of betrayal, suicidal feelings, and regretful feelings.
Paula, our singing Baptist sat staring at the dancing flame of the candle. The candle upon the table was to represent the light of Christ and his presence with us. She seems so far away or maybe she's just thinking of what she'll say as her time comes. Her hair is prematurely graying and she has the biggest brightest blue eyes that are trying desperately to hold back the tears as she prepares to tell us about the day she had an abortion. She begins by telling us she is thirty now and she was in college about ten years ago when she had her abortion. Her and her fiancé lived together for two years before she became pregnant. They were both attending college full time and working full time. She hurried nervously through her story as if she were to take any longer we might interrupt and interject our opinions. She said they weighed all the options and just couldn't see any other way besides abortion. Paula says, “I paid for it alright, and now I see it as a stupid young girl who panicked.” She told us that her and her fiancé split up a couple of years later. She is now happily married and has a three-year-old daughter. She paused for a moment to gain her composure and said, as her voice quivered, that a year ago she lost another child, a girl, when she was 8 months pregnant. I was stunned! I felt like hugging her because I know the feeling of loss! I felt like crying! I hated to ask to ask Paula if the baby girl was stillborn but the womanly curiosity got the best of me, so I asked. She said what we all did not want to hear the baby was stillborn. As I looked into her eyes I felt so bad because I knew my question caused her to have a mental picture of her stillborn daughter. I thought to myself, as I wiped my eyes of the tears, “I wonder if that was a question that I had no business asking? I just thought the answer probably had an impact on how she felt about her abortion.” She says she realized, while trying to deal with the loss of their daughter, she was still hurting over her abortion 10 years ago and wanted to deal with it in order to move on.
I learned though that we all have the same feelings of loss and betrayal, but to different degrees. As I wondered how the others felt about abortion, I studied Brenda. Brenda gave me a printed version of her story that she submitted for publishing in the Arkansas Catholic newsletter on January 21, 1990. In our group meeting and the Arkansas Catholic she says on her feelings about her abortion:
The nurse called me at work to give me the results- positive…. I tried to calm myself with thoughts that maybe it would all work out- maybe this was for the best…. That evening, I told Sam. After a long silence, he said: “What the hell do you want from me?” My immediate reply was: “Nothing.” He said: “We both have all the kids we can handle. Isn't there some kind of pill or something you can take?” I said I wasn't aware of any, but I would check. I was devastated.
The next day she made an appointment with a reputable doctor who performed abortions but also delivered babies during the week. Brenda asked a minister's daughter to go with her because she had an abortion herself. She continued on by saying:
I felt as though I was cornered with no other way out. I had spent the last four years doing my best to be an exemplary mother to my daughters. I couldn't fathom a way to explain a baby with no Daddy. I was so gripped with fear of rejection from my kids and family that I couldn't seriously consider any other alternative.
After the initial consultation, the doctor inserted a painful dilating device which she claims felt like a small wooden stake. In her attempt to make sense of her actions not yet taken she confided in us:
