In the latest video from Live Action’s “Face to Face” series, an emotional conversation takes place between two groups of people affected by abortion that the media and pro-abortion groups tend to ignore or act as if they don’t exist at all: women who live with abortion regret and people who survived abortions.
Live Action president and founder Lila Rose moderated the discussion, which included abortion survivors Melissa Ohden (who survived a saline abortion) and Claire Culwell (who survived the second-trimester D&E abortion that killed her twin), along with Patricia Sandoval, Gigi Davis, and Emily Rarick, who each live with the pain of abortion regret and trauma.
Each woman shared personal details of their lives and shed tears over the pain abortion has caused them and their families. They also offered forgiveness.
Guilt and Shame
Ohden, who was estimated to be about 31 weeks gestation when she survived an abortion, explained that she deals with survivor guilt. “The guilt of why me and not them — them, the tens of millions of children who didn’t survive.”
She added, “We were someone else’s ‘choice’… Our death was someone else’s ‘right’. And when you live in a culture that then heaps more shame by saying, ‘You know what, abortion survivors don’t exist’ …. Survivors can’t even turn on the news, scroll social media and not face this information.”
The conversation continued with Patricia Sandoval sharing that she had three abortions and was told each time that her baby was just a “clump of cells, sack of tissue.” It was when she began working in an abortion facility that she saw the babies’ bodies and realized the truth.
“They never told me about post-abortion syndrome,” she said of the abortion staff. (Post-abortion trauma and regret often manifest like post-traumatic stress or PTSD and are sometimes referred to collectively as “post-abortion syndrome.”) “After each abortion, I would have mental issues, disorders, emotional. I mean, I was anorexic at one point. I would have nightmares. If I were to see children in public, it would traumatize me. I had so much shame even though society tells you that abortion’s legal, it’s your right, it’s your body, it’s your choice — I just felt so much shame.”
Finding a way to heal
Emily Rarick, who had two abortions, told Ohden and Culwell, “I’m so, so grateful that you’re both alive. But I’m also sad that my kids didn’t survive. I would give anything to be able to go and hold them and tell them that I love them and be a part of their life. So there is just a level of sadness that my children did not survive, but I’m so, so thankful that you’re here and that you’re using your story for good and it needs to be heard. People need to hear this.”
Sandoval shared, “I’m sorry because I was part of the abortion industry. I held those babies that were born into my hands. I had blood stains on my hands. … I saw the anguish in those babies’ faces. I could see their expressions. And that, for me, has been the hardest part to heal.”
Gigi Davis, who underwent five abortions, said she has been focused on helping women find healing from past abortions and educating other women so that they don’t ever have an abortion. But the conversation changed her.
“For me, I am enraged about the silencing of the abortion survivor’s voice, and honestly, not until this round table discussion have I even considered giving a voice to the women I’m talking to. My heart is for women who’ve had abortions to get healed or to stop having abortions or to not even have the first. And so, I just want to say sorry for just focusing on us and not even knowing or giving voice to those we have hurt the most. And so it is my new desire to now show your stories and your testimonies.”
The choice to forgive
Sandoval asked the two abortion survivors, Ohden and Culwell, if they struggled with forgiving their birth mothers for the abortions. Culwell immediately said she did not struggle with forgiveness.
“Obviously, I have a lot of questions. I’ve asked God a lot of questions over the years…. But I was raised in a great home and my parents laid a foundation for me and they modeled forgiveness in our home and faith was a big part of our life,” she said. “When I met my birth mother… I remembered how I was raised and I knew that forgiveness was available to her and I wanted to offer that to her and I knew it would be part of her healing, and she deserved that, because she was 13 years old and her mother was the one that took her to the abortion clinic and made the choices for her.”
Culwell continued, “So even though my birth mother felt like she needed to ask for my forgiveness, I didn’t feel like I needed to forgive her for much. But I did meet her mother [Culwell’s grandmother] the next day, and I had to choose to forgive her too.”
Ohden added, “It really is a choice. For me, there have been moments in my life where it gets hard. When I gave birth to my two daughters and I had to look at them and know that they wouldn’t have lived if that abortion had succeeded in taking my life.”
Though the women came to the discussion from different backgrounds and experiences, Ohden took note that “no matter our abortion experience… we’re all so much more alike than we are different. And for me, that is one of the things I want people to understand. That this is not ‘woman against child.’ That’s what our culture has done. My birth mother and I were not enemies.”
