Sarah hesitated as she held the pill just an inch from her mouth. Her doctor had instructed her to “go ahead and take it. Everything will be ok.” But something inside her made her pause. She asked herself if she was making the right decision. But the time just wasn’t right for her to have this baby. The circumstances weren’t right. If she was going to keep her boyfriend, she had to get rid of the evidence of what happened during their time apart. The other relationship. “This is what I must do,” she assured herself.
They had reassured her the abortion pill RU486 would be a safe private abortion—the easiest way out. But Sarah was not prepared for the nightmare that awaited her. As she drove out of the clinic that day, she second-guessed her choice. She broke down, sobbing as she kept her eyes focused on the road ahead.
“It’s too late now,” she thought. “Can anyone help me?”
Sarah was sure no one could, so she returned home, and she waited, distracting herself with cleaning and mindless TV, until time to take the other pill 24 hours later. She braced herself for the unknown and gulped it down.
A little later the cramps began.
Why hadn’t they described the pain more accurately? Curled up for hours in a fetal position, Sarah soaked her pillow and sheets with tears, afraid she might bleed to death. Crawling back and forth from her bed to the bathroom, each time she caught herself in the mirror she asked the image, “What have you done? What kind of person are you?”
Her home and safe place had become a nightmare.
Hours later, her uterus contracted and she passed a massive blood clot. She was scared to look because she knew in her heart, “That was my baby.”
At that moment, life as she knew it had ended, and her life would never be the same. She cried and cried, asking God to please not let this be real.
Sarah waited two weeks for her follow-up appointment at the clinic, praying that somehow it hadn’t worked—that somehow there was still a baby inside her. She sat alongside many other women in the clinic but felt completely alone. She felt like her life was on death row.
* * *
Michelle looked down at the pregnancy test in disbelief. “I can’t be pregnant now. What about my plans, my dreams? My husband and I just aren’t ready right now.”
It seemed she had no choice. She had only one option. Picking up the phone, she made one call—to the abortion clinic for the RU486 abortion pill.
It seemed easy enough. Take a few pills, and she could just move on as if nothing had happened. She could squeeze in the appointment as she headed out for a weekend getaway with friends. She could go to the clinic on Friday and get back home to take another pill after her getaway, and it would all be over before the end of the weekend. “We can have children later, when we are ready,” she thought.
When she arrived at the clinic, she didn’t see a mass of people standing outside picketing. That was a relief.
But there was one man quietly praying who spoke up and said, “I’m praying for you. God loves you and so do I.” This simple gesture caused her to stop and reply, “Thanks, but I’m OK.” Michelle would remember and treasure those words in her heart, but her mind was already made up. “I have to get in and out of here,” she thought to herself as she rushed into the building.
She left the clinic several hours later with her little bag containing the second pill. The bag was pink—the color one would choose for a baby girl. How very ironic. She jumped into the car and headed off. That first pill had already begun to cut off the blood supply between her and the baby. Many emotions began to rise up inside of her. She put them aside and prepared to party.
Twenty-four hours later, the alcohol she’d consumed helped to numb the pain, but she had no idea what awaited her. Arriving home, she took the second pill, and a few hours later the horror began.
“What is happening to me?” Michelle cried aloud to the then empty house, as she hemorrhaged, wondering what was normal and what was excessive. She had never seen so much blood or cramped like this. She spent hours running to the bathroom until finally, the massive clot of blood hit the floor. She knew that it was her lifeless baby and cried out to her husband who thankfully had come home, “I can’t look! Just take care of it.”
She got into the bathtub, sat down with her head in her knees, and closed the shower curtain. Her husband did just as she asked, and they never talked about it again—until the day she walked into Alpha Alternatives for post-abortion support, less than one year later.
Both Sarah’s and Michelle’s stories are true. Their names have been changed to protect confidentiality.
As a host for a group that meets to talk about experiences related to abortion, I hear many stories. They all break my heart. Our post-abortion support team is seeing that the RU486 pill opens a whole new trauma. Although all of the ladies I counsel have had traumatic abortion experiences and have expressed feelings of living in “darkness, shame, and self-destruction,” the abortion pill brings the day of darkness to their own home to be haunted by it every day.
To combat these painful images, many have bought new furniture or redecorated their homes, and some have even moved away. More than one person has shared that in order to remove themselves from their regular routine, they were dropped off to a neutral location to take the second pill and endured the whole experience alone. As a result of this strategy, they would walk into a place that reminded them of where they were dropped off and were then plagued with anxiety attacks and flashbacks.
In our post-abortion groups, we typically see women who have spent 10, 20, or even 30 years since their abortion in secrecy. However, with women who took the abortion pill RU486, what we have experienced is that they have reached out for support in the first year or two, maybe not even knowing what they needed.
I too have experienced an unplanned pregnancy. I too was scared and all alone. I too know the pain of abortion. But the pain of RU486 has more layers of grief and scarring and pain.
With RU486 readily available, the abortion industry has put the entire burden on the woman. It is now the woman who takes the pill and is left to deal with the carnage afterwards.
In a traditional abortion, there is some separation between the decision of having one and actually performing it. Another person does the abortion to the woman, and it takes place in a clinical setting. With the abortion pill, it is now in the hands of each woman to deliver her abortion, often in her own home, and dispose of the remains on her own.
The abortion pill is sold to women as a quick and easy fix to a complicated problem. However, abortionists aren’t giving all the facts or properly preparing women for what they will experience.
Women are finding out it is not just “a heavier period.”
One woman I encountered had already experienced a form of the abortion pill while enduring a miscarriage. She said she had already “done this before,” so she could do it again, not realizing that ending a viable pregnancy is quite different emotionally than completing a miscarriage of one that is not.
Maybe this is the reason for the new trauma.
It is apparent to me that many of these women are even more traumatized by the abortion pill than traditional abortion, and yet, as with surgical abortions, there are still some who seem unfazed by it. The reasons for the differences are likely related to how people cope with trauma. There are many who shut down emotionally and push the negative thoughts to the back of their minds. They make a decision to “never think of this day again.” Others live in a state of denial as to what really happened. Maybe it was early enough that no baby was detected in the remains, and it seemed to them as a “clump of tissue.” Some channel the negative energy into positive energy, driving themselves to be better at their careers or hobbies.
With Sanctity of Human Life Sunday approaching, our church pews will be filled with people who have taken RU486, had a surgical abortion, or even experienced a miscarriage, and we honor and remember the millions of babies lost. According to Guttmacher, as many as 43% of women and men in our churches might be post-abortive. We have families who have experienced loss due to hard decisions they felt they had to make at each end of life.
On this Sunday those choices and regrets are stirred up again. They are reminded of the grief and heartache. Some choose not to attend that day because the pain is too much. Others who have experienced loss have come to cherish that day as a memorial, a time to think about the lives of those who are not with us. In order to honor each of those families and lives lost, we acknowledge Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.
Let us who are so well acquainted with this loss help our pastors understand the grief of those sitting in their pews and encourage them to speak tenderly and sensitively to those in their flock who are wounded. “A broken reed, He will not break, and a smoldering wick, He will not snuff out. In faithfulness, He will bring forth justice.” These women and men need to drink deeply from Jesus, who is the fountain and water of life, especially on this Sunday.
If you would like more information about RU486 and the new trauma that it has unfolded, the author of this article can be reached through Sparrow Solutions Group. Please call or email us and we will get you in touch with her. Also Sparrow can be contacted about RU486 and how it ties into medical histories.
Heather Hawkins
Mobile Operations Manager
Alpha Alternative in Hopkinsville, KY
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