In a video released by March for Life UK, a post-abortive woman named Natalia recalled how she became pregnant at age 20. She and her boyfriend initially decided to abort. But as time went on, Natalia began to feel attached to her baby and didn’t want to have the abortion. She said:
[I] kind of felt this kind of attachment, this kind of love for my child that I didn’t even know. But at the same time, I didn’t want to get comfortable with the idea, because I knew the baby’s father was so against me having it … It was almost like I was scared to talk and stick up for what I thought. Every time I brought it up, I was always shut down… [H]e’d be like, “Well, if you keep it, I’m not going to stay with you.”
Not only did Natalia’s boyfriend insist on the abortion, but her friends did too. She said her friends, who’d had abortions themselves, told her that having the baby would ruin her life.
Natalia went twice to an abortion facility, only to break down sobbing as soon as she walked in the door. Each time, she left without having the abortion. Finally, on her third visit, Natalia went through the “counseling” process. She wasn’t given an ultrasound. Instead, the abortion workers just estimated that she was seven weeks along, and said she was eligible for the abortion pill.
Natalia couldn’t bring herself to take the pills at the facility, so the workers gave them to her to take home.
She said:
I was never told about the risks that there are emotionally and physically. I wasn’t aware of them. I was never offered a scan, so it was never like they actually knew how far along I was. It’s just crazy now that I look back on it, and I just think how I was even able to take those tablets home. I mean, for all they know I could’ve been so far gone [that] it could’ve caused some serious damage.
Natalia kept the pills for several weeks. Finally, a group of her friends cornered her and insisted she take the pills.
She recalled:
My friends were telling me that I just needed to take it. Looking back on it, it’s like, I can’t believe I listened to them. It’s almost like I was manipulated into it. I don’t know why they didn’t stop me. Why they couldn’t see that I was hurting? I remember saying so many times, “don’t make me do it. I don’t want to do it.”
They poured water for her and kept up the pressure until she swallowed the first abortion drug. Later, she took the second.
Alone in her room, Natalia suffered through the abortion process. The pain was agonizing, but she said, “Really, in the grand scheme of things, the physical pain is nothing. It’s nothing to do with that… Of course, it’s painful… It feels like you’re being stabbed in the stomach. …It was unbearable, the pain.”
READ: ‘I thought I was dying’: 3 women share their abortion pill horror stories
But the worst part of the abortion was seeing her baby in the toilet. She said:
[I] looked down, and I saw him. It wasn’t like a heavy period. It was like a baby… It’s a child. It’s not like a bit of blood…
[I] flushed it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I remember just falling to my knees. Everything gets so blurry. I got into my bedroom. I [was] throwing up again. I’m taking all of these Codeines, but they’re just coming up. And then I just lay in my bed. And I was just bleeding through the mattress. And I just lay there for about three days on my own, not wanting to speak to anyone.
Natalia now deeply regrets her abortion, saying, “I would tell that poor girl to leave that guy straightaway. I wouldn’t question if I was going to keep the child or not.”
“It’s not just a group of cells,” she said. “It is actually a baby because I’ve seen it. It’s not what they tell you it is. It is a life.”
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