Ten years ago, Maria thought that aborting her unborn baby was her only option for getting out of a very difficult situation.
The South African woman, whose name has been changed, told Health 24 News that her boyfriend abused her and pressured her repeatedly to abort their unborn baby.
Maria gave into the pressure and had her unborn baby’s life destroyed, not realizing how the decision would haunt her.
“I still remember how I struggled to make the decision. But my boyfriend kept on saying ‘We are not ready,’” she said. “The termination still affects me very badly.”
Maria said she refused the recommended counseling before and after her abortion, perhaps because she was afraid of being dissuaded.
Now, she deeply regrets aborting her unborn baby. Maria said she often wonders what her child would be like if he or she was alive today.
Here’s more from the report:
One decade later and Maria still wonders what would have happened if she had made a different choice. Her child would have turned 10 years old this year.
“Every time when I look at girls I become emotional. When I did the termination, the foetus was at such an early stage that the gender couldn’t be determined. But these days, never having had a daughter, that termination still affects me very badly,” she said.
Maria recently was admitted to the Tshwaragano Hospital in South Africa with depression, according to the report.
Many women like Maria are not told how an abortion can affect their lives as well as their unborn babies’. Numerous studies have found that women who had abortions have a higher risk of mental health problems including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal thoughts.
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The abortion industry tells women that there is nothing to grieve about. It says an abortion is not a big deal. It’s just a medical procedure, health care. But it is not uncommon for post-abortive women to wonder what their baby would have been like or to grieve their loss. An abortion is the loss of a child, and women should be allowed to grieve their child’s abortion death even when they were the ones who caused it.
Many pro-life pregnancy centers offer counseling for post-abortive women to help them work through their grief and pain. The program Rachel’s Vineyard also offers weekend retreats to help families work through the pain of an unborn child’s death. These programs assure women that they are allowed to grieve their child’s life and forgive themselves for their part in it.
