We know their rhetoric by now. Women “need” abortions. They “need” to be able to have sex without any side effects (like having to take care of babies), a la men. But the pro-abortion crowd rarely discusses any woman suffering from a coerced abortion.
It makes for an awkward fit. If abortion is a good, isn’t it a good thing to be forced into one? Of course, that’s nonsense. So then, does this mean that there is something wrong with abortion?
MEET GAYLENE
Gaylene was coerced into having an abortion at the age of 14.
She did not inform her parents of her pregnancy, and instead turned to her high school counselor for guidance. He convinced her to go to Planned Parenthood to procure an abortion.
She would go on to abuse drugs, attempt suicide, be promiscuous, and be kicked out of multiple schools.
She recounts her story, in first person, in Dr. David Reardon’s book, Aborted Women: Silent No More
GAYLENE’S STORY
“Every Tuesday a scheduled bus picked up students from all the area high schools and took them to the Planned Parenthood clinic. The bus had posters extolling the virtues and ideals of Planned Parenthood—have small families, intelligent people have two children, etc. School counselors arranged for the visits and provided the students with passes to be excused from school for the entire day…
“When it was my turn to go in, I was greeted by a doctor and nurse, who told me that my urine would be tested for pregnancy, and then they would phone me with the results. They were all particularly careful to find out when my parents would not be home, so as not to ‘embarrass’ me or cause me any kind of ‘family problems’…
“When they called and told me I was pregnant, they said I could return to the clinic the following week, and that they would ‘go from there.’ The word ‘abortion’ was never used, nor was any reference made to abortion…”
She says two days later she visited her high school counselor. He was “sympathetic and understanding.” She says he said they ought not worry her family about the pregnancy. He painted a bleak picture of teenage motherhood and said her best option was “to abort the fetus so that no one would be hurt.” She says her high school counselor did not suggest talking it over with her parents.
THE DAY THE COERCED ABORTION OCCURRED
Gaylene remembers being on Planned Parenthood’s bus to the clinic to have her baby killed. She looks back, “But still today, I feel like I did not decide to have the abortion.”
When it came time for the coerced abortion itself, she recounts, “I didn’t even know what they were going to do to me or my baby.”
She was given no anesthetic and the “procedure” was very painful for her to endure. “I wanted to get back to school and put all this behind me, because the school counselor had said that everything would be all right after it was over. I just kept repeating to myself what the counselor had said.”
“I went to the hospital for two weeks [following her second suicide attempt] and finally came to terms with why I was trying to destroy myself: I had killed my own child, so I felt I didn’t deserve anything.
Gaylene says the counselor wrote a fake detention slip to give to her parents upon returning home late from school that day of her abortion. She says she lied to her parents about her whereabouts, not mentioning she had just had their grandchild killed.
THE FALLOUT
She says following the abortion she turned to drugs, trying purposely to get wasted. She used LSD on a few occasions, even. She says she was kicked out of her high school after being caught dealing drugs, skipping school, and also being an accomplice to a robbery.
Gaylene says she was sent to a probationary farm for nine months. The strictness there helped her in her academics, but she kept doing drugs and having sex. As a teen, Gaylene attempted suicide for the first time, trying to overdose on aspirin.
Sent back to her high school, she was kicked out once again and sent to an “alternative” school with few rules. She says she spent that time high as a kite, and drinking booze. Relatives tried to intervene, but to no avail. Later, she began living out of her car.
Years later she married but found she was unable to become pregnant due to scar tissue in her uterus. Saddened by this, she drank heavily for six years. She attempted to take her own life once more, with a gun this time. Thankfully, a friend found her before she pulled the trigger.
REDEMPTION
Eventually Gaylene found forgiven from Jesus Christ and began to turn her life around. She and her husband went on to adopt two older children.
“I went to the hospital for two weeks [following her second suicide attempt] and finally came to terms with why I was trying to destroy myself: I had killed my own child, so I felt I didn’t deserve anything. I know now that my Father in heaven has the same love for me as [H]e has for my child.”
—Gaylene’s testimony is found in full on pages 36-40 in the chapter titled, “Coerced Abortions” (all italics emphasis original; all bold emphasis my own).
IN CLOSING
Isn’t that so sad? Years of substance abuse and promiscuity stemming from a coerced abortion?
After reading Gaylene’s story, I wonder how anyone can claim that abortion is a woman’s moral “right” to choose to do. Defying the Natural Law so egregiously as to have one’s own child killed leaves an everlasting effect on the soul.
Also, think about the devastating effect abortion causes on teenagers. That is a decision they must carry with them for the rest of their lives. And to think, so many co-called “counselors” coerce so many young girls into the life-altering decision to abort.
Thank God, Gaylene is recovering, having found her faith.
Let us also not forget to mourn the loss of her baby, among the often-forgotten people in the abortion debate.
Lastly, did you know Planned Parenthood has sponsored buses to round up promiscuous high school students each week to take them to their local clinic? Are you surprised? Is there anything Planned Parenthood can do or say that can shock you anymore?
YOUR TURN
Do you have any experience with a coerced abortion?
What are your thoughts on Gaylene’s testimony?
What do you make of Planned Parenthood’s buses?
Please share below.
