Posted on 08/10/2006 4:13:23 PM PDT by Fishtalk
Without the right to live then none of us would have any rights at all! It's #1!
In case this has not been mentioned previously on this thread, Rachel's Vineyard is a ministry to help heal the pain or shame of having had an abortion.
Living with the secret of an abortion is compared to being in a swimming pool and holding a beach ball under water. It can be done, but it must be done continuously, with both hands, which will limit all other things that one might do.
MS magazine might be very surprised to find out what they have released, when many women who were young in the seventies, such as you, address their emotioal stories.
http://www.rachelsvineyard.org/
New book
Rachel's Vineyard announces the publication of Forbidden Grief: The Unspoken Pain of Abortion, by Theresa Burke, Ph.D., with David Reardon, Ph.D.
Forbidden Grief: The Unspoken Pain of Abortion tells the stories and shares the insights that psychotherapist Theresa Burke has learned from the men and women who came to her because they hurt inside after abortion.
Your story moved me to tears. I never had an abortion, but a roommate of mine after college did. I noticed that she had been really down and out of sorts. I asked her if she was okay. She needed to talk to someone, so she begged me not to reveal what she was about to tell me. I promised. She confided in me that she was pregnant, a result of a one-night stand with an acquaintance of hers. I suggested adoption, she thought that was a ridiculous option. She couldn't bear the shame of being pregnant for 9 mos and having the world know of her slip. The guy argued that it wasn't a baby, only a clump of cells and was gallant enough to pony up the money to pay for the abortion. If I'm not mistaken, he drove her there as well. Even called her after she came back to make sure she was okay. What a guy!
My sin in all of this? I kept her secret. I should have told her sister or her mother, but I was an idiot. I was and still am pro-life. For some reason, I felt bound to keep the promise that I wouldn't tell anyone. I often wonder if I could have saved that baby by telling her sister or her mother, then again, they may have thought it best as well. If I had to do it over again, I would have told her sister. I'm sorry I let that baby down.
For your grief, you should try Rachel's Vineyard. They do retreats to help women come to grips with their abortions. I pray for your spiritual and emotional healing.
It must have meant a lot to her and it was obviously also important to you too.
She must have been tremendously brave, as you say.
However, I am sure there are rape victims who are maybe not quite so brave, whose actions in a similar situation might have been different.
Abortion stops a beating heart. In my book, that's murder.
Would you murder your 7 year old child if she were raped by a family member?
If not, then why your 9 month old preborn child?
Please explain this to me?
That's one poll that Ms. Magazine would never take. The fact that so many have such deep regrets tells the real story of what abortion is...and we will be Silent No More!
http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org
I've had this issue addressed to me by others. I have no answers. No answers at all.
If I were to be honest I'd admit that it's all an issue based on pure emotion and that's never a way to make a decision.
But I can see the sight bites now. A weeping woman describes, perhaps on Oprah, how she was brutally raped and now, because the law no longer allows for abortion, so now she must also endure the indignity of bearing her rapist's child.
Over on Larry King we have a 14 year old girl sobbing and detailing incest on her by her own father and again, because the law has changed and abortion is illegal, she has to suffer through bearing a possibly malformed child.
Hey, THIS sort of thing is how abortion came into being anyway. I was around when all that came down. The big thing was women dying from coat-hanger assisted, back-alley abortions.
The big lie with the above manipulation of public opinion by pure emotionalism is that incest/rape abortions are such a small fraction of abortions in this country, perhaps even nil what with the morning after pill and everything.
Hey, it's how the liberals do things. They find some compelling sight bite and play it to the hilt.
Even so, please don't expect me to have answers. Frankly I don't think many of us have all the answers.
But you know what? I'd rather a bunch of us average citizens sit and argue, yell, scream or whatever, than a slew of judges who know nothing or politicos looking for re-election, doing all the deciding here. This abortion issue as it sits all ugly and a great big elephant in the room, is what we get when judges decide things.
Did you know most other countries on this planet, indeed even the socialist ones, have SOME limits on gestation term for legal abortion. Which we do NOT have here in the U.S. because judges, well judges should not be making law, I think we can all agree on this. Thus we have full term babies ripped from their mothers' wombs and God it all just makes me sick as hell.
So I say I am STILL for legal abortion but no, I'm not. 99.9% of the time abortion is not justified. But you can bet that liberals will find that .1% of the time when something questionable or debateable comes up and Oprah will have every woman in this country once again demanding abortion be allowed.
I have no answers. No answers at all. But I do know how liberals operated. And if you really want to win a cause against them it's like any war, you have to anticipate what your enemy will do.
I've been a liberal. I know how they operate.
Thank you for your story and I agree with your points. Don't let people here preach to you as most of them can only say what they THINK they would have done in a similar situation. Similarly, in cases of domestic violence, people can say, 'oh, I would have got out of the relationship early on' but they cannot possibly know how things would have turned out.
I don't disagree with you. I know of two cases of teenage girls who, for whatever reasons, did not trust themselve enough to have been able to confide in their parents. While the stepmom was concerned and to some extent a little suspicious about one of them, it wasn't until the girls were both married and had kids of their own that for some reason they let the stepmom know. Later they told their dad..It could have been the influence of other teens, the biofather ..who knows but at 18.....
The sad thing for both of them is that they each carried baggage from that event into their marriages...While they are wonderful moms and dedicated wives, they have their own emotional hell. My friend did say that once the girls fessed up, though years later, it made things clear as to the behaviours they displayed or philosphies they held.
Fishtalk...our hearts go out to you.
You may not be at the point to agree with our stance that life begins at conception, and should be protected & nurtured....regardless of the circumstances.
...maybe one day you will.
Incest/rape...yes they happen.
..and yes, the percentage is very very small that pregnancy results from this trauma....
..although sometimes it does.
Thanks for sharing your story. I know it must be hard. I wish more women, and men for that matter, would do so. I expect they don't because, like you, they are ashamed of what they did, as they should be, or the pain is simply too great to relive. Women need to hear it though. Somehow, I don't think it will turn up in Ms. magazine.
Would you clarify: you support re-criminalizing abortion except in cases of rape and some other cases, or you support the present abortion on demand regime but would advize most women against such choice?
Here you only argued for the right to abortion after a rape, but on LF you said that you applaud the right to choose an abortion in principle (link at 218).
What point are you trying to make seems to me has no relevance to fishtalk story.
Different set of circumstances
Thank you for citing my LF posts. Would you like me to cite some of yours, Mr Tourette's Syndrome?
You are brave for sharing and I thank you. I think many people have known someone who has experienced the regrets of an abortion. Some are close friends, some are only remotely known.
No one I know in my circle is w/o regrets, and a very close female friend still has some serious issues from her decision of several years ago.
Thanks again. Your post makes me understand her position just a bit better.
Aloha, Fishtalk!! As always, I seem to be late to the story.
I tend to forget about the 'nags' and was never a follower but I do remember their power and their hate during the '70's and 80's and thinking the nags and the movement did much damage to women.
If we were sitting together I would say - don't be hard on yourself! And thank you for getting this message out there and in discussion. This is very healthy.
From reading the posts it looks like you have started something and your life has/will take a new direction.
I know you are up to it.
Good Luck!!!
But don't get so busy you don't have time for FR
Please share your story in a national media publication.
I doubt Ms Magazine will print it.
But you should get published if you can.
I asked you a relevant question; can you answer?
I don't care what you cite of me.
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