Molly White had never thought about abortion — but when she became pregnant as an unmarried 21-year-old, she remembers the doctor telling her not to worry; she could safely terminate her pregnancy and “get on with her life.”
White told Live Action News, “The doctor planted a seed, providing me with an easy way out of having to tell my parents. I told myself that if abortion was legal that it couldn’t be killing a baby. After all, the doctor assured me it was a common procedure.”
She called the abortion facility the doctor recommended and drove to Austin with a friend to get the abortion. On the way, she struggled to justify that she was about to do was morally right. “My maternal instincts kicked in and I was having doubts,” White said. “Yet I trusted my doctor to guide me in the right direction. After all, I was only in the first trimester of pregnancy.”
Arriving at the abortion business, White asked a staffer about fetal development so she could ascertain what her baby might look like. But she was just given the canned response: it was just a clump of cells no larger than a pencil point. White said, “I was told I was going to be ‘cleaned out’ and it would be like having a period. I would be in and out in no time. They made it sound so routine.”
She was offered a pill to sedate her. During the procedure, she felt a tremendous tugging and pulling sensation inside her uterus that made her anxious. “I cried out to stop, please stop, but I was admonished to quiet down so I wouldn’t scare the other women,” White said. “It was agonizing, not only physically, but also mentally. Afterward, I began bleeding profusely.”
White was escorted out the back door into an alley and had to walk around the building to where her ride was waiting. It was the beginning of a turbulent time marked by drug and alcohol abuse and promiscuity. “I was living recklessly on a fast track to destruction,” White said. “I had always wanted to be a mother and now, I was grappling with guilt, shame, and regret. I couldn’t believe what I had done.”
Stillbirths plunged her into deep depression
Within a year, White was pregnant again, this time with triplets. It was a difficult pregnancy, but White was in love with her new husband and ecstatic at becoming a mother. But sadly, two of the babies were stillborn, plunging her into despair.
“When I was told my two baby boys were stillborn, I was shattered,” White said. “Guilt and trauma washed over me. I felt the life draining out of my body, wondering if God was punishing me.”
White felt like she had failed somehow at her inability to give birth to live babies. Yet she had a surviving son who needed her love and care. But she was “messed up” emotionally and struggled with establishing a bond with her child. She divorced and returned to her partying days.
“I was attempting to numb the pain while trying hard to be a good mother and hold a job,” White said. “But within a year, I was pregnant. My parents pressured me to get an abortion. They were furious with me and didn’t want to be saddled with another baby while I was out on the town.”
Ironically, the abortion was scheduled at the same facility where her triplets were born. As the doctor was inserting the laminaria stick to prepare for labor induction, White yelled that she didn’t want the abortion; she had just buried two babies.
White said, “The doctor told me it was too late. That I was going to lose the baby anyway. I left the clinic that day as a walking dead woman. I completely shut down my feelings. I was just a shell of a person.”
A spiritual awakening results in a wondrous new beginning
Years later, White met a loving man who had a son and married, blending the two families. But she couldn’t shake the depression that gripped her, often entertaining suicide. At the time, White worked in health care and was visiting a client who was watching a religious TV show.
“The love on her face and in her eyes when she talked about Jesus affected me,” White said. “I went home and told my husband that I wanted to go to church. I answered the call to repent and gave my life to Jesus. My dark world was now filled with light. I could see color for the first time.”
In the years following her transformation, God worked in glorious ways, using White to tell her story of abortion. After hearing Sydna Massé of Focus on the Family speak at a local pregnancy help center event, White faced her grief for the first time. She eventually attended a post-abortion recovery workshop, and as her healing progressed she felt God calling her to the pro-life movement.
White said, “My life went into a direction I never would have imagined. I traveled to DC to attend the Shake the Nation Back to Life event hosted by Janet Folger Porter, became a grass-roots lobbyist at the state, national, and international level on pro-life legislation and now serve as the legislative and Texas leader of Operation Outcry.”
She launched Women for Life International (www.women-4-life.org) and leads international lobbying teams to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women Conference to discuss the harmful effects of abortion on women. White has hosted her own radio talk show, “Redeemed for Life.”
“The pro-life issue is an international one,” White said. “Women everywhere need to know that nothing good comes from abortion. It’s a lie that abortion doesn’t hurt women. So, we need to fight as a unified front on global scale and offer life-affirming solutions.”
Whenever White utters the prayer, “just tell me, Lord, what is it you want me to do? I’ll go where you want me to go,” she says God provides new opportunities to speak about abortion and its devastating consequences.
White said, “I’ve been recently speaking at high schools, and I think teens appreciate my directness and honesty about abortion. You’ve got to keep the conversation going at all levels and remain steadfast in this pro-life battle. It’s vital that women everywhere share their powerful testimonies.”
