Cynthia's Story
I was nineteen, a freshman in college and pregnant from my first boyfriend. A friend told us to go to Planned Parenthood. It was January of 1973 – same month, same year as Roe v. Wade. The counselor from Planned Parenthood sat across from me and said, “You can go to Washington, DC and get an abortion … abortion will be legal and safe pretty soon.” What I found out was that just because abortion is legal does not mean it is safe.
At the abortion facility, I was placed in a room with 40 other women. An empty fetal model was held up for us to see. The force of the suction was severe, and I began to bleed heavily. There was no doctor-patient relationship. I never saw the abortionist before the abortion, and I never saw him again.
Within a year I was diagnosed with fibrocystic breast disease, deeply depressed, full of guilt, and drinking heavily and using drugs. I left college after my sophomore year and began a destructive lifestyle of promiscuity, pain, and aborted pregnancies. Abortion hadn’t solved my “problem,” it added to my pain.
During one abortion, part of my baby was left inside me. Planned Parenthood had referred me to an abortionist who did menstrual extractions. I was given no anesthetic. After crying in deep pain, with my arms grabbing the wall, the abortionist looked at me in fear. He told the nurse that I was too far along. He told me to get up, get dressed, and get out. I continued to bleed heavily for days. I was admitted to the hospital for an emergency D & C to remove the rest of the baby.
For years, I denied that abortion was the cause of the pain and deep loss in my soul. I thought: The government made it legal, so it must be okay. I was never told that abortion could be damaging my body or that I was taking another human life.
One year after marriage, I miscarried our son, Peter. His death in my womb was due to the scarring in my uterus from the abortions.
When my son, John, was eight-years-old, he said to me, “Mom, I feel there was somebody else before me … .” Abortion does not end on the abortionist’s table. Abortion affects the generations to come.
Abortion hurts women, children and the families of Louisiana and this nation. Women deserve life-affirming alternatives for both mother and child – no matter how a child is conceived.
