This is a re-post of one of my first posts. January is Sanctity of Human Life Month, please remember the murdered and the ones they left behind. The following is a true story. It is my story.
It was 1972 and the abortion debate was winding its way through the courts. She was not aware of all the legalities involved. She was not even thinking about an abortion. She was married and had always wanted children. It would be okay, right?
When she told her husband that she was "going to have a baby" he freaked. He told her that if she had the baby he would leave her. The words stunned her and he just kept repeating himself. The next day he told her that she was going to have to "take care of it" and she finally took it in. He wanted her to have an abortion.
She felt trapped. She could not raise a child on her own and she did not want to go back to her mother and tell her she was having a baby and her husband had left her. He took every opportunity to remind her that he did not want a baby. Despite her apprehension and her fear she picked up the yellow pages and went to the "A"s. She found the Planned Parenthood number, called it and made the appointment. She told him what she had done and how much it would be. He appeared to be relieved.
It was Saturday and the sun was shining. It was warmer than it should have been for February. As he parked the car, she stared up at the building and wished silently that it would all just disappear. He actually held the door for her when they went in.
The waiting room was not crowded but there were others there and each woman seemed to have that same blank stare. Each table had packs of birth control pills just laying there. She saw the pills and the boxes of tissues. She knew what was expected of her.
He waited with her until they called her name. The questions seemed endless, but it was only an illusion. The question she wanted to hear would never be spoken. "Do you want to just forget this mess and go home?" No one would ask that question.
She undressed and put on that gown and was led to the table. She lay down and her legs were strapped in the stirrups. She wanted her husband to rush in screaming for her to stop but he never did. The cervical dilation was painful but not as soul wrenching as the pain in her heart. The suction machine had been turned on and those awful noises were so loud. Inside she was screaming to stop, but the words never came. She lay there and happened to see the tube with the canister at the end and she was sick to fully understand what she had just done. A few bold tears trickled down.
Her husband must have paid them while she was having IT done. She sat in the waiting room for awhile and then some woman in a white uniform told her she could go and rambled on about what to do about complications or something. At that point it was all pretty hazy and it was like the volume was too low and she never understood what was said and did not care.
There was complete silence all the way home. As they walked in to their basement apartment she noticed his distance. As she took off her coat she watched him lay on the sofa facing the wall. He may as well stabbed her in the heart with a kitchen knife, it would not have hurt as much as what he said. You would think that after 38 years, the pain of that moment would have been forgotten. She remembers the sights and smells and sounds of that day like it is happening now. What he said will stay with her until she dies.
As she stood looking at him lying on the sofa with his back to her he said, "Why did you kill my baby?"
She never answered his question and the abortion was never mentioned again. It was not even mentioned the next time she became pregnant. It was never mentioned when she left him.
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