By Sarah Terzo
Author and post-abortive woman Teresa LeGault tells her story. She was in college when she got pregnant. It was 1974, a year after Roe vs. Wade was decided:
I knew nothing about terminating an unwanted pregnancy or about the development of a life within. I might have been a university student, but I was quite dumb and gullible…
I was afraid and alone. There were no alternate places to turn for help and advice. My parents were in the Middle East, consulting a counselor or church was a foreign idea at the time, nor were crisis pregnancy centers yet in existence…
I also hadn’t picked up on the devastating change that took place in my dorm roommate after a quiet, but alternating, decision between her and her boyfriend.
That’s probably because I had not yet reached the point where I could recognize what self-devaluation, emotional breakdown and the posture from bad decisions look like.
Blithely, I drove in the direction of Corpus Christi, Texas. There I went without much thought about what I was doing or what was going to happen; all I knew was that it was going to cost $45 to get the abortion. Amazingly, it took less than one year to make abortion a mindless practice for women with a pregnancy…
I was lying on the table with the doctor and nurse working on the other side of the sheet, discussing a local high school athlete, when suddenly the doctor announced, “Oh! There’s another one.” What? Two? Everything inside me cried out “No!” but not a sound or movement came from my horrified body and soul.
Not until that very moment, did I realize I was killing life, my child, actually two children, and my mind was racing. How can I stop this? But I just allowed one to be removed and now they were removing the second.
There was consternation afterwards… Soon after, I saw my old boyfriend at the restaurant where I worked, sitting with a girl who looked a lot like me, and I instantly ran to the restroom and spontaneously threw up. I didn’t throw up because I was “hurt.” No, all feelings were gone; I threw up because I saw the whole picture and knew the error of my ways.
Next, I proceeded to quit my job, quit school and aimlessly drove to California, living a truly “stupid” life for a while, because basically what was the point of anything, anymore, after abortion?…
The full truth about a pregnancy is intentionally withheld from girls and women who are having abortions, as of hiding the realities makes it okay.
We don’t talk about it because to do so now is against the accustomed practice, the mainstream and those voices of certain women we are supposed to herald. But harm was done to me then, and it continues for other girls now.
Teresa LeGault , 2020 Sentiments of an American Woman: The History and Future of Women and Abortion (100X Publishing, 2020) pp.14 – 16.
Editor’s note. This appeared at Clinic Quotes and is reposted with permission. Sarah Terzo is offering a short, free pro-life eBook that exposes the pro-choice movement. Click here to get.