Whatever you do, never say you’re sorry

My favorite uncle passed away a few months ago. He once teased that he was only my favorite uncle by default, as he belonged to my favorite aunt. They had been happily married 41 years. She mourned very deeply for weeks. Although she seems much better now, we who love her do understand that her mourning period is not over. Autumn will bring with it his birthday. Then will come her first Christmas without him, not to mention next spring reminding her of the days she spent by his hospital bed before he finally died.

I think of the state my aunt is in now. She isn’t on the constant verge of tears; she laughs and jokes…I recognize her again. It would, however, be inconceivable for her to now share how easy it has been to recover from the loss of her dear husband. She knows these things take time, and come in waves. No one can safely say, after a few days or weeks, how an experience has permanently affected them.

With this understanding in my pocket, I took a trip to I’m Not Sorry.net. As I understand it, this site is the pro-choice response to Silent No More (or here in Canada). Both of these offer women’s stories of past abortions.

I can safely say that two-thirds of the testimonies I read on I’m Not Sorry were by women who had undergone an abortion within the last year; most shared their stories a day or two after the fact. Wisely, a pro-choice organization has decided to publish these stories, which don’t usually lack emotion, but do often lack any sort of full perspective of what the abortion experience is really like, long-term, for a woman.

Some of the women’s stories enumerated the following sentiments:

• “I am still unsure how I feel about everything, although I know what’s done is done. I am unsettled, but I am starting to feel better.” Amelia; 2 days later

• “It has been two weeks, and I haven’t cried in days, I have slept, and I know my baby is in Heaven, and one day when I know I can do it, and provide a better life, I will.” Ashley; 2 weeks later

• “Checking my phone for a missed call from him [the father] hoping I could tell them [the clinic] to keep the $400.00, and make my way home with my baby… He wants me to feel bad and terrible [now] and I never will.” Ashley D.; the next day

• “I have no idea what this will bring me in 20 years. But it has brought me relief. No regrets.” Kayla; the next day

• “I do not regret the first abortion that I had…but I do not want to do this to myself again.” Nadia; 1 year ago

These are the portraits of women who escape ‘unscathed’ from the abortion experience. No words.

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Andrea adds: Some of the best testimonies against abortion are found when pro-choicers let women express themselves openly. “It has been two weeks, and I haven’t cried in days, I have slept, and I know my baby is in Heaven, and one day when I know I can do it, and provide a better life, I will.” This is a good reminder of what happens in an abortion. A baby dies. Now we can look and say–there are reasons for that, or these situations are complicated, or I couldn’t tell her what to do, or “who are you to say, Andrea Mrozek, that she would have been better off keeping this baby?” But I am going to stick to my guns and say this: We are always better off when we keep babies, when we let them live and when we don’t give women like Ashley–so poignantly describing her tears and how she is now sleeping again–that choice. “My baby is in Heaven”? Your baby could have been right here on earth.

Remember Emma Beck when you begin to think abortion is compassionate… her babies were in Heaven and she went on to join them prematurely.

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