My personal journey from pro-choice to anti-abortion...

I’m really nervous about publishing this post as it is the most personal thing I’ve ever shared and not even my husband or family members know the whole story. I’m sharing because I think there are a lot of people who have all kinds of feelings about controversial topics that they are afraid to share. I want to show them, and especially my kids, that it’s okay to talk about things that mean something to you. If you lose friends because of it, I think that’s a good thing in the end as who needs “friends” who can’t accept you for who you are, with all of your complex thoughts and emotions that make you YOU?
​Be forewarned, it’s a very long story.

Abortion has been legal for most of my lifetime. I was 3 years old when Roe v. Wade was decided, and as I was coming of age, I was pro-choice by default. Of course I’m for “women’s rights.” What woman wouldn’t be, right? I knew girls in high school who had abortions and I also knew girls who had unplanned pregnancies and decided to raise their children or give them up for adoption. As a teen, I didn’t fully grasp the gravity of the issue, but it was something that we were all aware of. I was mature for my age, mature enough to ask my mom to take me to Planned Parenthood to get on the pill when I started thinking I might be ready to become sexually active, but I was still a normal teenager incapable of thinking through all of the complexities of the abortion debate. Besides, it was so taboo and it really wasn’t discussed openly, at least not the morality of it. I got most of my information from my friends…my fellow teen-aged friends who were equally as incapable of fully grasping the issue. At that time, I was in the “I’d never choose abortion, but I wouldn’t want that choice taken away from OTHER women” camp. Basically, I knew it was morally wrong but didn't have the balls to take a stand.

Fast forward several years to when I was married and became pregnant with my first daughter. Our first child was planned. I was about to graduate college and we decided that we were ready to start a family. We were a little more fertile than expected and conceived sooner than we thought we would, so I was about 8 weeks pregnant when I graduated. It was difficult going through finals and everything else while also dealing with morning sickness and all of the hormonal changes going on in my body, but I sucked it up and did what had to be done. That’s when I really started to realize that I am a lot stronger than I had ever given myself credit for and that I am capable of so much. I was still fairly young, just 21 when I became pregnant, and I was trying to establish myself in my career and be a good wife and prepare to be a mom. It was tough and I don’t think I appreciated or enjoyed my pregnancy as much as I should have. It was just something to endure to get the end result…a healthy baby girl. We were overjoyed to welcome her into this world, but we struggled financially. My husband worked two jobs while I focused on my career and tried to prove myself in order to earn salary increases and promotions. My family helped me make my student loan payments and sent lots of care packages. We managed to barely scrape by, but we were happy and our home was full of love.

Settling into our new normal of working hard and raising our daughter, we were a little lax on our birth control and were surprised to learn we were expecting Baby #2 right around the time our oldest was turning a year old. We continued to do everything we could to provide for our growing family, which meant making a lot of sacrifices. Again, we were just trying to make ends meet and I didn’t fully appreciate or enjoy my pregnancy. We struggled, but with encouragement from older friends and help from family, we were able to buy our first home and move in shortly before our second daughter was born. We were completely unprepared for how much harder it is to raise two children than it is to raise one, but once again, we sucked it up and did what had to be done. We were blessed with the joys that come from raising kids and we just rode the waves as they came. And still, our home was full of love.

Fast forward almost another 2 years when, yet again, I realized I was pregnant. It was not a good time. I was taking a CPA review course that required me to sit in a classroom for 8 hours every Saturday and studying to sit for the CPA exam. We were exhausted and not financially secure at all. We were barely making ends meet and things were really stressful with raising two young children already. I was still reeling from having lost my dad earlier that year. He was only 47 years old and his death was sudden and unexpected. I summoned the courage to tell my husband the news and his immediate reaction was anger. We argued. Here we were, 26 years old and facing a third pregnancy when we could barely take care of the two kids we already had. I was devastated. In my time of crisis, I felt like all the blame was being placed on me and I felt completely unsupported. In those moments of anguish, fear and desperation, I allowed the thought of abortion to creep into my consciousness. I even looked up abortion providers in the phone book. Ultimately, I gathered my strength and decided that even if I had to do this alone, I was not going to kill my baby. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was a major turning point for me. I had an innocent human being growing inside of me and I would have done ANYTHING to protect it. Nothing else mattered. I would figure it out just like I had always figured everything else out. As it turns out, God had other plans. A couple of weeks later, I started bleeding heavily. My doctor sent me for an ultrasound and I saw my baby’s heartbeat at about 8 weeks’ gestation. Unfortunately, there was a sac of blood surrounding the fetus and the prognosis was not good. A few days later, I miscarried in my doctor’s office. It was the worst experience of my life. My doctor tried to comfort me as best she could, sharing her own miscarriage experience and providing me with statistics intended to make me feel less alone. She left the room with my deceased baby sitting in a specimen cup on the counter and told me to take as much time as I needed to say goodbye. It’s been over 23 years and I will never get that image out of my head, nor will the pain feel any less raw. No one will ever be able to convince me that what I saw with my own eyes was anything less than a baby. At the time, I was convinced that God was punishing me for having considered aborting this baby. I sat there tearfully apologizing to my baby and begging for forgiveness from my baby’s soul and from God. I believe in a merciful God and I no longer think I was being punished. I’m still not convinced, however, that it was not meant to be some kind of lesson. I can’t hear someone say that first trimester abortions are fine because the baby doesn’t feel pain or it’s too small or (insert justification of the moment here) without feeling a pang of heartache for the baby I lost.

Picking up the pieces, I did what I’ve always done. I sucked it up and went about my busy life doing the things that needed to be done. I had two beautiful girls who needed me and we were working hard to provide a better life for all of us. Imagine my surprise a few months later when I became pregnant yet again. For those who are wondering…yes, we do know what causes this and no, we weren’t always trying that hard to prevent it. It’s amazing the difference a few months can make. Things had started to look up for us. I had taken the CPA exam and had started moving up the ladder at work. I was thrilled to be given another chance at motherhood. In all honesty, though, the biggest change was my mindset. I finally understood the gift I had been given and took the responsibility seriously. At about 11 weeks, I started bleeding again. I thought to myself, “This can’t be happening again!” I prayed my little heart out and luckily it turned out that there was no cause for concern. Having a different perspective with this pregnancy and feeling blessed after suffering such a devastating loss, I really bonded with this baby in utero and took the time to fully appreciate every aspect of the pregnancy. My older daughters have often accused me of favoring this one. While I honestly don’t love any of my kids any more or less than the others, I do know that I took the first two for granted when they were young. Once my third was born, I was so happy to have three healthy and happy little girls that everything else took a backseat in my life. I finally had my priorities straight.

A little more than 2 years later, as our financial situation continued to improve, we welcomed our fourth and final child into our family. It was a difficult pregnancy. I went into pre-term labor at 26 weeks and spent the next 10 weeks taking drugs to stop my labor and getting weekly ultrasounds to monitor my amniotic fluid levels. This was a blessing in disguise and solidified my views about the humanity of the preborn. I literally got to watch my baby boy grow inside of me for 10 weeks, witnessing the rapid growth and development along the way. What a joy to witness the miracle of life inside the womb with my own eyes! How sad and horrifying it is to realize that many states still allow abortion for any reason at this point in the child’s development. Once he was born, we decided our family was complete and took the appropriate measures. Life as parents hasn’t always been easy, but being a mom has been my greatest accomplishment and my greatest blessing. I have no regrets.

So how does this all fit into my anti-abortion stance? For years, I remained silent and just wished that we lived in a world without abortion. Honestly, I didn't give it a whole lot of thought. I told myself that it’s none of my business what other people choose to do. There are women I love who have had abortions, and I don’t love them any less for having made that choice. I understand that there are many factors that go into the decision and that we can never know what anyone else is experiencing. There are also women I love who have faced their unplanned teen or very young adult pregnancies with grit and determination to succeed as moms. Some of them did it almost entirely on their own. It wasn't always easy, but their children have always been well cared for and immensely loved. I have so much respect and admiration for them and their choices. To me, that is empowerment in its truest form. My life experiences have shaped my opinions, and I have done an awful lot of research on abortion. I have read testimony after testimony of women who are post-abortive and are now pro-life, many of whom were forced or coerced into their “choice.” I have read testimonies of women who have been pressured to choose abortion and have resisted that pressure. I have read testimonies of abortion survivors and those who were conceived in rape. I have read testimonies of men whose children were killed against their wishes. I have watched videos and read articles from former abortionists describing the procedures. I have also read testimonies of post-abortive women who have maintained that they made the right choice. Here’s the thing for me, though…the bottom line is that I see it as a human rights issue. And for me, the most basic human right is the right to life. Nothing is more valuable than a human life, no matter the size, stage of development, environment, degree of dependency, usefulness or whether or not that person is “wanted.” As a mother, having endured a traumatic loss and also having been blessed to carry four amazing children to term, feeling them grow and move inside of me, I will never understand how anyone can deny a preborn baby’s humanity.

I have watched over the last few years as the Democrat Party has become more and more extreme in their abortion stance. There is absolutely no justification for a late term abortion or infanticide and yet the party is embracing it and lighting public buildings to celebrate the passage of legislation allowing it. It has lit a fire within me, and I just can’t continue to remain silent. Just like I hope I would not have stood by silently and watched other human rights violations throughout history like slavery, the holocaust, lynchings or other civil rights atrocities that were tolerated at the time. I have researched the abortion procedures used at various stages of gestation and they are all brutal and violent, no matter how much the abortion industry tries to sugar-coat it. The pro-choice crowd will tell you it’s about women’s rights, or healthcare rights, or reproductive rights, or the right to bodily autonomy or any other number of euphemisms that are carefully crafted to hide what it really is. It is the ending of a human life in a violent manner. If you support abortion in any way, you are saying that you believe there are things more valuable than an unborn human. I vehemently disagree. I respect your opinion, but I will stand against that viewpoint as long as I am alive to do so. Why is it any of my business? Because I do not want to live in a society where we devalue the weakest among us to the point that we justify killing them. Being inconvenient or unwanted should not sentence a person to death. Wanting what’s good for society is noble and I’ll never be ashamed of that. Imagine the world we’d be living in today if nobody stood up and stopped the human rights violations I mentioned earlier.

I have been pro-choice, and I’ve bought into a lot of the pro-choice arguments over the years. I’ve not heard one yet that justifies taking an innocent life. Circumstances are temporary, but death is permanent. I know what it’s like to face an unplanned pregnancy and be scared of what the future holds. I know that pregnancies can come at inopportune times. My own pregnancies didn’t come at the most ideal times. But I think it’s terrible that society tells young girls and women that they are incapable of choosing life and achieving their goals. How is that in any way empowering? I can show you example after example of young women who have defied the odds and shown strength nobody would have thought was possible. There are many resources available to help women in crisis pregnancies who want to choose life, whether they want to raise their children or place them for adoption, but abortion advocates don’t want women to be told about them. I believe in empowering women by telling them the truth. Like many others in the pro-life movement, I see this fight as a cultural one rather than a legal one. I long for a society that considers abortion unthinkable and instead chooses to put its resources into the prevention of unplanned pregnancies and helping those who find themselves in that situation to work through the situation without having to sacrifice an innocent human being. Telling women they are too weak and pushing the “easy fix” of abortion is not the solution. Women deserve better than that. Society deserves better than that...

I’ll wrap up with a quote from Cicero that perfectly reflects my thoughts on abortion:

“What is permissible is not always honorable.”

#lovethemboth