My Abortion Story

   I will never forget the night that Tina called me.

              Her voice was completely calm and matter of fact. “I just wanted to let you know I scheduled an abortion for tomorrow. Don’t try to talk me out of it. I already know how you feel. I just want to ask you a couple of questions”

              I immediately began praying and begging God for wisdom. I was hoping for a sign, a miracle, something to say, some way to take away all of Tina’s pain, and help her make a different decision. All I came up with was,

              “Ok.”

              “Well. My father says when babies die, they go to heaven. Is that true?”  

              “Yes. I’m sure God welcomes their souls into heaven.”

              “Good. I did coke last night. My life is hell. I don’t want my baby living in it with me. Nobody wants to adopt a black coke-addicted baby and I don’t want my family raising another kid in their hell.”

              As Tina spoke, all of my defenses and the strategies I had been taught about how to counsel her out of having an abortion went out the window. My mind was screaming a frantic prayer begging God to give me magical words to say to fix this situation.

I found none.

After a long, awkward silence, I believe I had a second of clarity from God. I felt a compelling need to simply love her in her anguish at that moment.

“God still loves you.”

“He sure has a funny way of showing it.”

After another long awkward silence, she said, “My father once preached a sermon and said that God could not forgive a woman who aborted her baby. Do you think that’s true?”

“No. God will forgive anyone who asks.”

“I doubt I will ask. I doubt I will forgive myself…(long pause) You know I wanted to be a mom like you. I think it’s a girl. I’m glad she is going to heaven.”

I cried. I wanted to say something, but all I did was cry.

“Sorry I’m making you cry. I just wanted you to know. Will you pray for me?”

“Yes of course. God, please be with Tina, let her feel your love…”

“Not right now. I don’t want to hear it…Just pray. Maybe someday I can be different.”

Click.

I cried and prayed most of that night. The next morning, I woke up to my own children jumping in my bed wanting to know why I was sleeping in. As I looked at them, I heard Tina’s words echoing in my mind “I wanted to be a mom like you.”

I knew part of Tina’s story. I knew how she had been abused by a leader in her church. I knew her shame. I knew she was using drugs to numb the pain. I knew the drug dealers were standing on every corner in her neighborhood but arrested if they set foot in my apartment community. I saw how tough her schools were. Our apartments were close to her neighborhood and I moved across town to make sure my kids didn’t go to that school. She never had that choice. Even before I moved, my apartment community was fenced in and had security guards to protect us from the crime in her neighborhood. I knew how hard it would be for her to rise above her situation.

I knew the guilt she felt. The shame. She had been abused. She didn’t value herself. She numbed her pain with drugs but somehow through it all, she still had a beautiful heart. In her world, her love for her unborn child was so twisted that she was willing to live in her own hell and never forgive herself rather than bring a child into that world. If that logic makes no sense to you, then you should thank God for the blessed life you have.

I’ve never told anyone Tina’s story. Not even my family. I was afraid of how people would reject me for not trying to talk her out of having an abortion. I was afraid to share it with people I went to church with. I felt guilty. I was ashamed that I didn’t say the right words and fix her story. I was ashamed that I didn’t lead her to accept Jesus as her savior and then have all of her problems fixed (cause that is what I thought was supposed to happen if I had enough faith.)

I stuffed that story for decades. I think I was also afraid to wrestle through all of the lessons I needed to learn from her story. I wanted a simple answer to the horrors of abortion, a law to make her story never happen again. I was afraid to consider how many systems and people had failed Tina right up to the day she called me. Her church cared more about its reputation than her abuse. Her father cared more about his career than her mental health. The school system didn’t educate her. The neighborhood didn’t protect her safety. She was surrounded by people who failed her. And because of that, she was most likely correct in her assessment of what life would have been like for her child.

I’m sure wherever she is, she still carries around a lot of guilt and shame. But when I think of all the systems that failed her, this abortion story isn’t just hers. It is mine too. It is yours. It is ours. It is the story of our society and what is happening all around us.

As for me, I’m done with looking for simple answers to complex problems. I’m done with divisive politics that don’t deal with any of the real issues. I’m ready to empower different stories.