Live Action’s Can’t Stay Silent campaign is giving a voice to the countless number of women who have suffered abortion trauma and regret, before later finding healing. One of these women is Ginger, who shared her heartbreaking story in an interview with Alternatives Pregnancy Center through its “My Choice, My Story” platform.
“I would say I was terrified, heartbroken, and hopeless feeling,” Ginger says of the time surrounding her abortion. She noted that while time heals a lot of wounds, the wound of abortion does not subside, saying, “If anything, I think it gets a little bit harder as time goes on.”
Ginger was in a very abusive relationship when she got pregnant. She said that when she told her boyfriend she was pregnant, he immediately assaulted her. “When I told him I was pregnant that night, he punched me in my stomach and he told me he hoped that killed the baby,” she recounts.
She also faced intense pressure from both her boyfriend and her mother to abort the child. “Two people that I loved very much, that I cared what they thought, they were both telling me, ‘Go get this abortion.'”
Feeling like she had no other options, she succumbed to the pressure. “I was not listening to the Lord at that time, I was listening to the world,” she explains. “And the world was telling me, this is not the right time; this is going to be too hard.”
Ginger recounted going to the abortion facility and having a “cold” experience. A doctor gave her anesthesia so that she would be unconscious during the procedure. “When I woke up, I felt so sad,” she said through tears, “because I knew I couldn’t go back.”
“It’s just something I think about almost daily, really, because I think, well how old would my baby be, and was it a boy or was it a girl? It’s just heartbreaking, the fact that I could go through with it. It’s devastating, to say the least.”
After the abortion, Ginger became addicted to alcohol and also did drugs to numb herself and self-medicate.
Finally, she felt compelled to become substance-free — and as she did, she came to know the Lord, and received His forgiveness. “I decided to get clear headed and get off everything and be substance free. And that’s when I really felt the Lord working in my heart, and just speaking to me. And the Holy Spirit was just convicting me.”
“I surrendered to the Lord…” she said. “I started understanding His character, His love, His forgiveness, His grace, His mercy… It freed me, and it transformed me.”
“That’s the beautiful thing about Jesus,” she concludes. “You just have to call to him and He’ll be there.”
