40 Years After She Was Coerced Into an Abortion, She Remembers Her Baby

National   |   Leslie Palma   |   Jan 20, 2014   |   7:03PM   |   Washington, DC

Tamah Warren was at church when the text from her sister arrived.

“She told me she had never been more proud of me and that I was the most courageous woman she has ever known,” Ms. Warren recalled. What prompted the text was a photo of Ms. Warren in The Tennessean, holding a sign that said “I Regret My Abortion” during a 40 Days for Life prayer rally outside the Women’s Health Clinic in Nashville. The photo was later picked up by USA Today, so the image ran nationwide.

More than 40 years after being coerced to abort her first child, and keeping the memory buried as deeply as she could manage, Ms. Warren had become Silent No More. Loudly.

tamahwarrenHer first public testimony as a member of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign took place at Rocketown in Nashville in front of 800 people. She had public speaking experience after working as a tour guide for Grand OIe Opry Tours, but she still found it “pretty shocking” to be baring her soul in front of so many people.

Emboldened by that and subsequent experiences, last January she gave her testimony in front of thousands of people at the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. She’ll make the trip again this year.

“It’s amazing how Silent No More can be shared,” said Ms. Warren, now the campaign’s regional coordinator for West Tennessee.

For decades after her abortion at 16, Ms. Warren suffered from panic attacks and night terrors, engaging in destructive behaviors as she tried, unsuccessfully, to banish the memory of that day in 1973.

“I could never get it to stay below the surface,” she said, so finally she wrote a letter to her priest, who connected her with a therapist from Catholic Charities and that eventually led her to a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat, where she found the healing and forgiveness that had eluded her for so long. After that she became involved in the 40 Days campaigns, and that led her to Silent No More.

The passion of the hundreds of thousands of young people at last year’s March for Life impressed Ms. Warren and gave her hope that abortion will one day cease to be a choice that anyone would make.

“The difference between my generation and the generation now,” said the mother of two and grandmother of six, “is that this generation hears the truth” about the child in the womb and the way that abortion affects women and families.

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To see Ms. Warren’s video testimony of her abortion experience, go to https://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/video/video.aspx?testimonyid=6009

To read her testimony, go to https://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/testimonies/testimony.aspx?ID=2280

LifeNews Note: Leslie Palma writes for Priests for Life.