I started this post months ago, over the summer when I was about 6 months pregnant with the twins. I never posted it, I think I just got busy. I read it again tonight and felt like it was time.

My girls are two months old now and this post means so much to me still. It’s heavy and it’s personal, but I hope you get something from it anyway.

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There’s a confession I’ve been sitting on for the last few months. If you’re a regular reader you’ve probably guessed I’m not against talking about my personal life when I feel like it might help someone. I do consider how much I reveal and there are a lot of things I’ve held back, but this one I feel repeatedly called to share, as painful as it will be for me to write this.

Before I tell you what I did, you have to understand what led me there. The first week of April this year I found out I’m pregnant. I had been very sick with both of my previous pregnancies so I was understandably nervous about what was coming, but I had no idea how bad it would get. A week after I found out about the baby (babies, as it were) the morning sickness got so bad I went to the ER because I hadn’t been able to keep down any food or liquid in nearly 48 hours.

Fear

Over the next couple of weeks I lost about 20 lbs. and continued to cycle in and out of the hospital every few days for the next two months. The first week of May I had reached a sort of rock bottom, but it wasn’t the kind of bottom where you know you’re at the lowest point. That kind of bottom offers its own brand of hope, saying it can only go up from here. My kind of rock bottom was the kind where, in my mind, every day was worse than the last and I had no reason to believe the next day wouldn’t be worse still.

Because I was always running back and forth to the ER and couldn’t function even when I was home, I had sent my 4-year-old daughter to live with relatives for about a month. I saw her on weekends but couldn’t do much but hug her once or twice before she went back. I felt worthless as a mother because I couldn’t care for her.

It all sounds so pitiful now but in the moment I was so weak I couldn’t see anything else. It hit me one morning when I woke up at 5:00 in the morning to a nurse wanting to weigh me. It took all of my strength to get out of bed and onto the scale. I felt like I weighed 20 lbs. All I was living on was what they gave me in the IV line because I still hadn’t been able to hold down much of anything.

I couldn’t go back to sleep and and it was too early to try to call for breakfast. As I lay there I just remember tears falling from the sides of my eyes, but I wasn’t actively crying, if that makes any sense. I didn’t even have the muscles to cry but my spirit was making it happen. I had tried praying and felt no clear encouragement to go on. Not that it wasn’t there, but I just wasn’t in a place where I could have heard it. Doctors offered no hope, telling me I just had to wait it out — and by the way, it might last through the length of the pregnancy. I had even offered my own suggestions based on my past experience (steroids had done the trick with my daughter). They wouldn’t hear it, said it wasn’t worth the risk, as though they knew what it would be worth to me.

So lying there that morning, weak as I’ve ever been, and spiritually drained of life, I mumbled to a nurse checking my IV, I can’t do this anymore. I’m against abortion but I don’t know what else to do. I think I was saying it to myself, but she heard me and a few hours later came back to counsel me about it. She was kind and did the best she could with her pro-life routine, but the fact is I said it and in the moment, I meant it. I actually considered killing both of these babies who, at the time I believed were killing me. It wasn’t a rational thought, was totally based on fear, and was probably just a meek cry for help, but it was there.

I kept thinking about my daughter and what would happen to her if I did die from this — many women do. I didn’t dare pray for a miscarriage, but talking abortion was just the same. I couldn’t choose between my daughter, myself, and the babies — and I couldn’t care for any of us.

Hope

It was shortly after this when a new doctor, a consulting OB, came to see me. She said she had done some research on my steroid idea and hadn’t found sufficient risk to take it off the table. She watched me vomit twice, patiently waited for me to clean up, and went on to tell me she didn’t see how anything could be much worse and it was in fact worth trying.

As you can imagine, I fell into a stupor of relief and gratitude. I don’t even remember much of the conversation after that. For the first time in months someone was offering me hope. She was sure to tell me it might not work, but she could see my pain and wanted to do whatever could be done to help. It was this moment when I realized what I had said about the abortion. It was like I came out of that place and saw myself from the outside. That one little bit of hope had brought me back to reality.

Of course, I didn’t — and wouldn’t have actually gone through with it, but it was there in my mind, and now was a force of guilt. At the same time, I was brought back to my original abortion in ‘95 and remembered what drove me to it. It was the same sickness, the same hopelessness from the medical community who told me the illness (hyperemesis) could be life-threatening and I might want to consider my options.

I’m doing well now with medication and lots of rest. I haven’t been sick in a couple of months and the babies are healthier than me even, growing normally somewhere around the 70th percentile. In many ways no one remembers me ever being sick at all, though it will stay with me for years, I’m sure.

My lack of faith has actually come to strengthen my faith

Although I felt abandoned by God for a time, I do know that wasn’t the case, that it was just a feeling. Today my faith is stronger, partly because I’m in good health, but because I’m mentally now in a place where I can see the good God really did in this case.

After my abortion in 1995 I was devastated and sunk into a depression for years until I found Christ. And when I got married, though I knew I was technically forgiven, I didn’t really believe God would allow me to have children. When I gave birth to my daughter I felt redeemed, though still broken by the piece of me still missing in that aborted child from years before.

Every time I went through the ER and went through the interview, it always went something like this:

Nurse

“Is this your first pregnancy?”

Me

“No. It’s my third.”

Nurse

“So you have two children at home?”

Me

“No, just one.”

Nurse

“You had a miscarriage then?”

Me

“Um… no…”

This conversation happened about 8 times this pregnancy and 3-4 the last time, each time me having to explain how I’ve been pregnant one more time than I have children to account for.

It’s been five years since I had my daughter and for the last couple of years I had come to believe God had given me such a gift in her that it was unfaithful of me to ask for more. By the time I got pregnant I believed He wouldn’t allow me to have another child, but every month I’d get a little more sad as the pregnancy test was negative and I felt rejected again.

Gracious as the Lord is, He not only gave me another child, He gave me two. As I sit here feeling a kick in my abdomen and have no idea which little girl is kicking me, I smile, knowing there might only be one baby in there and how blessed am I that God not only found me fit to have one more but two!

A plus… I can now say I’ve been pregnant three times and I have three children. It’s a really minor thing among everything else, but in my heart that has been broken for 12 years, it’s a small blessing I’m not about to take for granted.

Yeah, and your point is?

As hard-core pro-life as I am today, it’s not in any way a blind religious support of a baby. As much as any woman considering abortion, I know the anguish behind the decision and the complete lack of hope that leads them to it. I’m a woman with a body and a desire to protect that body. I’ve been a teenager with a future to look forward to and no one to help support a child. I’ve been the married mother in a financial bind and so sick that abortion becomes the last resort, but a resort nonetheless.

All this is to say I have a tremendous heart for the woman facing the choice between herself and her unborn child. Whatever the circumstances, there aren’t many girls or women who make the decision flippantly. Most all of them agonize over it and I believe there should be more support for these women and less blind religious condemnation.

If you know someone considering an abortion, or someone who has gone through with it, hug them. Tell them it’s okay and there are other choices — do whatever you can to give them hope. This is especially relevant to those who are politically pro-life. It’s not about politics; it’s about people.

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If you made it this far, congrats, you made it through my deepest post here. In all seriousness, abortion is an important issue to me, not just in a blind “fight to end abortion” kind of way, but in a “there has to be a better solution” kind of way. I see so many women broken by their decision to go through with it (including myself), and I know that given the right combination of financial resources and emotional support, most women wouldn’t choose that. Unfortunately too many feel pressure from family or from their empty bank accounts and end up giving in to what they feel (in the moment) is the easy route.

A wonderful reader, Reese Spykerman, turned me on to Feminists for Life last year and I’ve found a group that really works hard in just these areas of support for women. They go to colleges and set up hotlines for counseling, they set up child care for women to continue school, and in some cases they even set up housing for these women to have a place to live with their baby. Instead of just shouting about the baby’s rights, they recognize a woman’s needs and they go to great lengths to help women into a position where they never have to even make the choice at all!

After posting this last night, I stumbled upon this post this morning (Feminist Blogger Refers to her Unborn Baby as a Parasite and a Tick), about a feminist woman who clearly doesn’t fit the description of my sympathetic abortionist, and yet, I still feel sad for her. And, while I agree with Kim, it’s bloggers like her that I hope are seeing women like this as needing help and support more than condemnation. It’s no wonder this woman feels the way she does as she complains that around every corner I am faced with people who believe that the life of this fetus is worth more than [mine]. She even implies that it’s our fault as pro-lifers for pushing her to hate her unborn child, and frankly, I don’t entirely disagree with her.

Likewise, I don’t believe showing people pictures of aborted children is doing anyone any good.