Exchanging pain for God’s peace

What news would you guess someone received if they described their feelings using these words: devastated, trapped, alone, scared, embarrassed, ashamed.
 
You probably would not have guessed it was good news based on those words. The six women on the Post Abortive Ladies (PALS) panel used these words describing how they felt finding out they were pregnant.
 
The PALS offered their perspective through two public presentations in Minot in April sponsored by the Dakota Hope Clinic. Each had walked through the doors of an abortion facility and ended the life of their unborn child. Their ages, backgrounds and circumstances all differ, but what connects them is their journey of hurt, pain and grief to healing and hope.
 
This panel of North Dakota women speaks publicly to share their powerful message to those hurting from abortion as well as to educate and mobilize the Church and the public in response to the negative effects of abortion on individuals and society. They come before the public audience to weave their stories of a traumatic experience and offer hope in finding the redemption of forgiveness. They desire all those who hear them will leave with two things: being prepared to reach out to women facing an unplanned pregnancy and equipped to support someone who has been through an abortion.
 
Two women’s stories
 
On this panel, six women offering their story. Two highlighted here—Ruth and Jeanne—each grew up on farms in North Dakota, part of Catholic families and lived the faith starting from a young age.
 
Fargo residents, Ruth and Jeanne, and the four other women on the panel shared vastly different circumstances surrounding their abortions. They have anguished with their decision some 20 years ago to kill their babies.
 
Ruth was as a senior in college in Minot and single mother of a one-year-old daughter. She grew up on a dairy farm in North Dakota in a “big Catholic family” being involved with the Church until she went off to college. As soon as she saw her positive pregnancy test, she knew she couldn’t financially support another child and didn’t want to further disappoint her parents.
 
For most of the women on the panel, the baby did not represent joy like a pregnancy typically does, instead, it was a “problem” that needed to be gone. Each woman also described how people around them—trusted friends and fathers of their babies—encouraged them to choose themselves over their child and get rid of the problem that each woman, at the time, had determined to be a financial burden, threat, embarrassment, intrusion, etc.
 
Jeanne was a 34-year-old married mom of two young children when she found out she was pregnant with her third child. Unlike some of the other women, the baby did represent joy, but she knew immediately that her husband would not want the baby. She realized she was pregnant early on and was told that she had to wait for 30 days until an abortion could be performed. So, she spent that time “praying for a way out” hoping for a miscarriage so the problem would go away on its own. But, she didn’t find one and her husband wouldn’t accept any other option than abortion.
 
Clinic experience
 
One by one, each woman went on to describe how the appointment for the abortion was made and what they felt when they arrived at the clinic.
 
Like several on the PALS panel, both Ruth and Jeanne traveled to Fargo for their abortion. The clarity of their memories of this part of the journey varied greatly from vivid to vague. Some recalled passing by the pro-life advocates who prayed and kept vigil outside the clinic. For some of the women, the words shouted by the advocates—such as, “don’t kill your baby” and “you don’t have to do this”—seared into their memories.
 
Once inside the clinic, Ruth remembered filling out some paperwork and the nurse asked her why she was seeking the abortion, to which she bluntly replied, “I don’t want it.” She said she felt frozen and compelled to follow through with the procedure once she entered the clinic.
 
When Ruth used the word “frozen,” a few of the women on the panel nodded their head in agreement. Jeanne was one of them. “I wanted control in my life. I was going to march through this and gain some sort of control.” She recalled looking at her husband sitting with her in the clinic waiting room after they had driven all that way and spoke not a word. She was seeking a way out, but still couldn’t find one.
 
Both North Dakota farm girls, Ruth and Jeanne said they felt like cattle because the nurse calls out a number in the clinic waiting room instead of a name when it’s your turn. “When they called out my number, I thought about the cows on the farm and how they are identified by the number on the tag in their ear,” Ruth said.
 
Jeanne had the same feeling as cattle known by their numbers. “It’s dehumanizing, like farm animals. I was crying because I realized there was no way out.”
 
Ruth, too, was crying and shaking before the abortion procedure began. In a heart-shattering moment, the doctor inquired why she was shaking asking what was wrong with her. She replied, “I can’t do this, I’m Catholic.” To which the doctor said shockingly, “It’s okay. I’m Catholic, too.”
 
Ruth said, at that point, she physically and mentally shut down. “I just kept thinking, I’m going to hell…I’m going to hell.”
 
The aftermath
 
Even though the abortion was over and their children are gone, the adjectives the women used to describe how they felt when they found out they were pregnant didn’t go away. They couldn’t undo it, and they describe that their personal hell was just beginning.
 
Ruth said there wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to numb the self-hatred she experienced after her abortion. It was the beginning of a downward spiral of promiscuity and reckless behavior, brought on by guilt and self-loathing. “I thought that God would strike me down and he would punish me by allowing harm to my child,” she said referring to her one-year-old daughter. Her reaction was to become an extremely overprotective mother which she is certain harmed her daughter’s development. “I was in a dark hole for 16 years,” she added.
 
Jeanne, too, entered a long, dark period after her abortion. She explained that she had put her kids to bed in the care of a trusted friend before her husband and she traveled to the clinic in Fargo. When they returned, she said, “My kids woke up to a different mom.” Just like Ruth, she was terrified that God would punish her for what she had done and something would happen to her children. “I lived with my secret for 17 years,” she admitted.
 
Though many post-abortive women experience self-loathing, shame, guilt and deep despair, many, like the women on the panel, also have suicidal thoughts. Even if there was a chance for forgiveness, they didn’t feel they deserved it.
 
In hopes of avoiding this same torture felt by post-abortive women, the PALS bring their eye-opening message to the public as often as they can. “We share now to bring the good news of the Gospel and the healing and forgiveness to those in need of restoration,” the panel moderator and post-abortive woman said.
 
And, deeper, is an even greater desperate need to spare the life of unborn children at risk of abortion. They implored the audience to be the support and refuge for a woman who comes to them with news of an unplanned pregnancy. They urged everyone to encourage that woman to get an ultrasound to see the life inside her. There’s help available through life-affirming clinics such as Dakota Hope in Minot, Connect Medical in Dickinson and FirstChoice Women’s Care Center in Bismarck.
 
Coming to peace
 
Although it took many years, more than 20 for some on the panel, each woman dug herself out of that dark hole, but not without deep scars and a whole lot of self-sabotage when it came to marriages and relationships. They knew Satan, the father of lies, spoke to them before the abortion telling them that “it’s harmless” and now he was whispering to them, “it’s hopeless.”
 
But, slowly and eventually, light entered each woman’s life. Each spoke of coming to peace with what they had done—exchanging pain for God’s peace.
 
The panel moderator said that many live in self-made prisons hating themselves for what they have done. She spoke of a deep and abiding sense of justice in our society that innocent people shouldn’t suffer and guilty people should be punished. “We know it. We murdered our child. We’re culpable,” she said as each woman on the panel nodded their head in somber agreement.
 
Even though society doesn’t punish them, they do it to themselves. After 17 years, Jeanne was ready to release her guilt by telling her secret. Her husband continued his career as a doctor and her job as a mother was ending as her grown children went off to college. She decided to enroll in college, too. It was there that she confided in a friend about her abortion. That friend offered much-needed support and immediately called a priest she knew to offer what Jeanne needed to cope.
 
One by one, each woman shared how she found peace through a deeper understanding of what Jesus did for our sins.
 
Ruth consulted with her brother who is a priest. Asking for “a friend,” of course, she wondered how someone who had an abortion could begin to return to the Church. He recommended a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat, a post-abortive support system offered to help women recover from the trauma of abortion. She found that weekend retreat to be very beneficial in her realization that Jesus died for our sins, including her sin of abortion.
 
The love a mother has for her child—even one who died unjustly—is beautiful. It speaks to the heart of God’s love for all of us.
 
“Instead of going to hell,” Ruth said after deep reflection on what she had done to her unborn baby, “I kept thinking that I just want to go to heaven and meet my child.”