Live Action’s latest video series, “Face to Face,” pairs people who were once on opposite sides of the abortion issue to speak to one another candidly about the toll abortion has taken on their lives and the lives of others. In the latest installment, Live Action founder and president Lila Rose facilitates a discussion between two abortion survivors and two women who deeply regret their abortions.
Emily Rarick had two abortions as a teen. “I never felt OK with what I did,” she told the group. “I always felt a lot of shame… I never denied that my children were human beings; I just allowed myself to dehumanize them and told myself that it was living, but it wasn’t a baby.”
Gigi Davis said she, too, was a teen when she became pregnant, right before she was to leave for college. Fear was the primary motivator behind her abortion. Once inside the abortion facility, she said she remembers hearing the sound of the suction vacuum ending her child’s life. Davis said that shortly after the appointment, she had a dream in which a baby was crying out, “Mom, why? Don’t hurt me, don’t kill me.” Though the appointment was traumatizing, Davis found herself unable to break the cycle of fear and shame she was in, undergoing a total of five abortions. Finally, after crying out to God for help, she found a pro-life organization that helped her begin along the road to healing.
Both Rarick and Davis now share their stories to help others find that same healing.
“Stop ignoring the pain, the shame, there’s no amount of stuffing,” Davis said in a message to other post-abortive women. “You can’t have another baby to try and take away the loss and the pain of your babies that you have aborted, and so the longer you wait, that phrase that time heals — it doesn’t, if you don’t heal the proper way,” she added, encouraging women with abortion regret to start the healing process now.
Rarick described going through an incredibly difficult time with abortion regret, feeling suicidal before she found healing. In advice to women who say they don’t experience abortion regret, Rarick said, “Even if they don’t regret it, that doesn’t make it ok. Abortion isn’t wrong because some women do or don’t regret it. Abortion is wrong because it is the taking of an innocent life.”
Abortion survivors Claire Culwell and Josiah Presley also shared their stories. Culwell explained that her birth mother was 13 years old when she sought a second-trimester D&E abortion, not realizing she was pregnant with twins. The abortion killed Culwell’s twin, but Culwell survived.
Presley said his birth mother had a failed abortion in South Korea before he was born. He said that though his experience with abortion was on the opposite side of Rarick and Davis, he, too, experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after learning his birth mother had attempted to kill him. He had tied his self-worth into this revelation.
“We see this industry and it so often promises life — like if you’re going to get anywhere in life you have to have [abortion],” he said, adding, “Time and time again, we see that it just leaves broken pieces everywhere.”
Presley went on to describe how he struggled for years to forgive his birth parents, but it was people like Davis and Rarick sharing their stories that helped him to heal from the anger and fully forgive his birth mother.
As the conversation concluded, the resounding message was clear: God’s healing and forgiveness surpasses all human sinfulness, and His mercy is ready to extend to anyone who has been impacted by abortion.
Call on President Trump to pardon the FACE Act prisoners on his first day in office.
