Posted on 05/09/2003 8:21:56 PM PDT by miltonim
Making the Wrong Choice Is 'the Worst Feeling in the World'
Vera Faith Lord says that one of the worst things a person can do to a post-abortive woman is to try to make her feel better. She maintains that many of the most strident pro-choice activists are post-abortive women, because they are trying so hard to convince themselves that what they did was right.
"They try to justify loudly and vehemently what they did," she says.
"I was 34 years old when I killed my son. He would be 21 now."
A victim of an abusive marriage and addicted to cocaine, Ms. Lord thought (and was told) that abortion was the right choice to make. Now she believes, "It's all a lie — every word of it. Mother Nature shows up big time in the form of the strongest instinct — the maternal instinct."
Once she was asked by a student in the audience, "I'm Catholic. When does it legally become a baby?"
"I told him, it depends on the lady the baby is inside of. If she doesn't want him, he's not a baby and has the same status as a piece of the hamburger she had for lunch. But if she wants him, he's a baby from the start. The student said, 'That's not right!'"
"I am nobody's anything. I was the only child of an only child. I'm nobody's aunt, sister, cousin, niece, wife, or mother - but there is a 21 year old guy at my side every time I speak on this subject."
Lord says that many Christians are "emotionally pro-life but politically pro-choice, which makes them nothing." She told of being interviewed by a journalist from the Chicago Tribune, who tried her best to get Lord to say that she thought abortion should be legal, but without success.
"Our society tells us one thing: 'It's your body, and your right to choose' - and so the law says it is but no one tells you what's going to happen after you make that choice," she said.
Post-Abortion Syndrome
When Vera Faith Lord spoke to the Harvard Law School Society for Law, Life, and Religion May 3 about post-abortion syndrome, there was a profound silence as the audience took in her story.
"The night I got him, I also got a black eye, a broken rib, and a broken jaw. I was in a dysfunctional marriage, and I was abusing cocaine. I was the poster child for a justifiable abortion.
"I heard this from everyone: friends, co-workers, even from - God help him - a clergyman. They all said that the kind thing to do is to terminate this pregnancy and send this little child back to Heaven where he belongs.
Lord said that any mother, if she were faced with the choice, "Shoot me or shoot my child," would choose to shoot herself. When a woman has had an abortion, "There is one awful moment when every cell in her being knows what she has done. She has committed the most unnatural act. She has killed her own offspring. It is the worst feeling in the world."
Ms. Lord said that when a woman has a miscarriage or her baby has died, people naturally respond with sympathy.
"'Poor Mary, her baby died.' Society rallies around her.
"What does society say to the post-abortive woman? 'Baby? What baby?'"
Lord told the audience that post-abortion syndrome takes the form of migraines, eating disorders, "the inability to bond," and susceptibility to diseases, but most often a post-abortive woman feels the need to be "superwoman."
This "superwoman" is a driven person with a tendency to perfectionism. "She is compensating for what she did so many years ago," says Lord. "Either that, or she is suicidal and self-destructive."
Lord said, "Post-abortion syndrome affects every aspect of your life and everyone around you." The good news is that there is a way out.
The Way Out
Ms. Lord maintains that the first step on the way out of post-abortion syndrome is "Being forgiven by God."
She said that in the years after her abortion she tried "every ashram and every self-development religion, but I had never been in an Orthodox Christian church." After converting to the Orthodox faith, when she made her first sacramental confession, she mentioned almost as an afterthought that years before she had had an abortion.
"When I looked up, there were tears in Father's eyes," she says. "I asked him why he was crying. He said, 'I'm crying for your baby."
At that point she realized, "Maybe this is what has been ruining my life."
She maintains that the abortion industry, "and that's what it is: an industry," has a financial interest in keeping the facts about post-abortion syndrome covered up, but that in fact there are nine books and 21 national organizations that exist to help post-abortive women.
"The abortion industry, which has very deep pockets, does not want you to know about them. But when I found them, I realized that I wasn't crazy!"
Lord says that when a woman has an abortion, "The baby isn't the only one who dies. Big parts of the mother die, and she keeps on dying. But society tells you, 'You did the best you could at the time.'
"If you are a woman and you have reached the age of 43, there is a 43% chance that you have had at least one abortion. We are everywhere. We are in agony.
"We seem to be doing so well. We are so far in denial.
"People will ask, 'Why do you want to dredge up all that pain?' The fact is, we ARE in pain!
"How you feel intellectually about the abortion - whether you feel guilty or not - makes no difference! Remember Susan Smith and Andrea Yeager, who drowned their children?
"What they did was NOTHING compared to what I did. I PAID someone to dismember my son, who probably felt every cut, and pull him out of the safest place in the world: his mother's womb.
"Often people say, 'What about cases of rape and incest?' Well, you know what?
"It's not the baby's fault! Carry it for nine months and then give it to someone who will love it! Just because a horrible crime has been committed, why commit another horrible crime?"
Lord is part of a group called Silent No More, in which post-abortive woman speak out on the horrors of abortion. Actress Jennifer O'Neal is their spokeswoman. "There are many more movements like that coming out now," Lord says.
Vera Faith Lord can be reached at (412) 851-9310. She swears that she does not have a made-up name and that it is also true that she lives on Baptist Street.
So if someone decides to kill a child, we should just ignore it. Nice.
You mean that society should stay respect her decision to speak out about the truth about how women feel after having an abortion? I think we can agree on that.
It sure is funny how so-called 'pro-choice' people were there before the abortion to tell her to throw the baby away, but they werent there to help her handle the guilt and pain afterwords.
I don't quite understand your form of logic here; help me out. Does not Vera Faith Lord's own words deserve consideration in the debate?
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