Dear Christine,
I AM writing this letter to you with the hope that it will help women out there who might be contemplating having an abortion. Christine, I am not asking you to respond. Just please allow me to share.
I was 19 years old and my boyfriend and I at the time had just broken up. Soon after I started going out with a guy whom I had met while my boyfriend and I were seeing each other. We had maintained a platonic relationship all along and were still seeing each other as friends.
One night my ex called and said he wanted to talk. I agreed to see him. Christine, the talking led from one thing to the next, and before long we were having sex. That night he also did something he had never done before. He purposely refused to withdraw. I was angry, and I told him I would never see him again.
I had not yet started an intimate relationship with my friend, but within weeks we became intimately involved. I told my ex about my friend, but he still would not give up even though he knew that we broke up because of his constant cheating. However, we never had sex after that night.
About a month after our last encounter, I discovered I was pregnant. Christine, I was not sure who the father of my child was, and in those days it was not a case of going and having a DNA test done.
I told my ex, however, that I believed he was the father of my unborn. I also told my current boyfriend about what had happened. He said he understood and would not hold it against me, since we were not intimate at the time.
My ex and I decided that I would have an abortion. All I knew about an abortion at the time was that if a young woman missed her period and felt she was pregnant, then that “lump of blood” would have to be removed.
I’m now 53
I honestly never really sat down and thought that I was killing an unborn child. I just knew that I wanted to have my cycle back and that I did not want to be stuck the rest of my life wondering who the father was.
The doctor I went to was known for performing abortions, but as I left his office that day, I felt like a part of me had been literally ripped out. Yet, I continued with my life.
About three years later when I went to have a pap smear and I asked my doctor about the possibility of becoming pregnant, he told me there was a problem with my cervix (as a result of the abortion).
The bottom line was I could not get pregnant.
Christine, I am now 53, and I have gone through life not with any deep sadness of heart (I am now a Christian, married, and I have asked God to forgive me for the wrong I did); but I sometimes wonder about that child – that human being whom I robbed of a chance to live. Though I felt then that I was doing the right thing, I found out later that I had committed a great sin.
I sometimes wonder if my child was a boy or a girl, and what he or she would have grown up to be. At that young age all I thought of was about myself and that I had more years ahead of me to have children. I was wrong.
I’ll like to tell those thinking about having an abortion that the guilt does not go away easy. It takes a long time, and God’s forgiveness.
I believe, Christine, that wilful abortion is wrong, and that abortion should only occur if it’s a matter of life and death. To take a life for selfish reasons is wrong.
I am now much older and wiser, and yes, I have had to learn my lesson the hard way. I don’t want others to take that route. Give your unborn child a chance at life.
– C.C.
