Eight years ago, I was a working mom with an eleven month old little girl and a husband in medical school. To say my life was a bit stressful was an understatement....we were as poor as anyone should never be and rarely saw each other due to his busy schedule. After returning from a business trip, my husband and I stupidly had unprotected sex....a few weeks later I began to feel sick in the mornings and immediately knew that I was pregnant again. After a few agonizing weeks, we decided that an abortion was our only alternative. We were in a one-bedroom apartment and couldn't afford the daycare charges for our first child. How I wish I could go back to that time and listen to our ridiculous attempts to rationalize what we were about to do!

I remember vividly that my husband felt such guilt about the procedure that he couldn't even go to the hospital with me. I had a friend take me...and she held my hand as I cried the entire way there. I have deep memories of the anesthesiologist standing by my bed, holding my hand and telling me that I didn't have to go through with it. When I awakened, I was crampy and the nurses assured me that I "would be fine." To this day I am amazed at the lack of counseling by some physicians regarding the EMOTIONAL aspects of abortion. They fully explain what your body will go through physically, but tell you nothing of how you will feel mentally or spiritually.

We seemed to get through this period okay, but then I began having vivid and horrible nightmares. It was always the same. A small boy with huge dark eyes would come to me in my dream and ask me over and over...."Mother, why did you kill me?" I would wake up screaming night after night. I realized that I had never gotten over the mental pain of the abortion. It was many years later that I came into contact with a wonderful minister who counseled me on the wonder of God's love and forgiveness. I never actually told him the crime I had committed, but he assured me that there was absolutely nothing that God could not forgive.

Since that time, I have given birth to four beautiful and healthy little boys....and each one of them reaffirmed to me that God had forgiven me. I still ache inside for that "lost" child....my daughter often asks me why she never had a sister, and I often wonder about the sex of that baby. I will never completely heal from that experience. I have always been "pro choice" in my thinking.....but now I am completely "pro life" in my own personal heart. I wish someone could have counseled me then on the lifelong consequences of my action. I think I will go to my grave feeling ashamed and guilty, and feeling that I can never do enough to make up for what I did.