“I was very frightened … not for my sake but for the child’s.”

Catherine of Abortion Alternative Information and Support writes:

… I really wanted to keep the child.  But I was very frightened, because I had been abandoned by all around [me] and because bringing a child into this world seemed such a huge responsibility — not for my sake but for the child’s.  I tried, in my naive way, to create the conditions I thought the child needed — principally a father and support for me — but they were not forthcoming.  I think at that moment it was as though the life within me did become “just tissue”; that is to say, because it was not conscious, I had to absorb the suffering of having it destroyed, since no one welcomed it, and me as the mother.

Many influences and events had gone into creating such thinking, of course, such terror of the enormity of imposing a life of suffering on a child.  I can only tell you that as a decision it was absolutely immense, and it destroyed me.  I had an immense need to have my fear reassured, to meet with support and love at that time.  …

To some degree or another, many abortions are like this.  As I try repeatedly to explain, they are so often (I believe) not really about selfish, immoral women but really about vulnerable women who have never learnt how to validate themselves in the face of pressure and hostility.  Not knowing how to do this, they crumble… taking their own child with them.

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