Testimonies

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It was the classic story. I had just had sex the one time, and was pressured to do so. I didn’t even want to have sex, I was only 18, but he told me if I really loved him, I would prove it. When I hesitated he stomped out the door and said we were through. He was testing me. Dramatically, he waited in his car for me to come running after him and beg him not to leave me, which I did. I was young and naïve.

I acquiesced, and that one time changed my life forever. I became pregnant. I was underage, and it was illegal in our state at the time for an abortion (sadly, how things have changed). The boy laughed and denied that it was his baby. I could not imagine how to raise a baby on my own. My mom had just passed away, and my dad was a very severe German that I was pretty certain would disown me. After asking friends at school, I was directed to counsel with 3 “men of the cloth”, a rabbi, a priest and a Baptist minister. No, this is not a joke. They held a meeting in a local church to a standing room only crowd of young girls in my same predicament, unmarried and pregnant. They counseled us for a few minutes and then offered “the only obvious solution…abortion.” They never counseled us to keep our babies, or even to offer them up for adoption. Instead, they had come prepared with airline information and hotel accommodations in Mexico, and even recommended the doctor, saying that they referred all the young girls to him. Again, so sad. How many times has these supposed men-of-God partnered to end innocent lives of the unborn and impact the lives of these young women?

As if in a daze, I followed their instructions, after all they were clergy, right? I scraped together the nearly $1000 for the procedure, which today would be the equivalent of $10,000.

I flew to Mexico City and there in a desolate medical clinic, I allowed the events that took place there to rob me of the life within. I participated in murdering my own unborn child. How could I! What kind of person had I become? In the crudely sparse recovery room, the nurse shook me to waken me from the anesthesia, “Time to go, time to go…. Next”. Oh, how I wished I could tell the girls waiting in the other room not to do it… but I kept silent. The doctor told me as I left to enjoy my sightseeing trip in beautiful Mexico city. Sightseeing? This was not a vacation… And little did I know that just because I destroyed the evidence of my pregnancy, my heart would always know what I had done. No, it was not over…

It would never be over.

How could I ever forgive myself............

(To be continued)

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