“If I help you do this, promise me you’ll never do this again.”
I promised. After all, I wished I wasn’t having to make this decision in the first place. I left the social services office with four coupons to pay to give me back my life by ending the life of another. At the time, I couldn’t see how I could ever end up being one of the millions of women who chose to have an abortion. But here I was. Pregnant in my senior year of high school.
Earlier in the year, my dad had been sentenced to prison for molesting and raping me. The Jehovah’s Witness religion had silenced me for years by telling me God would kill me for bringing reproach on his name if I told the authorities. At 16 I decided to be brave and told my mom that my dad was abusing me. She acted immediately and my justice was swift and final. Finally, something was going my way and now I had deliberately messed everything up by choosing to get pregnant in hopes of healing all my broken pieces.
I hoped I would have a son. I hoped to make him feel loved in all the ways I didn’t feel loved. I hoped to give him a loving and stable home where he could dream without the limits of religious dogma. He could have friends who believed differently than him, play sports, go to college, and choose any profession he wanted. I had so many hopes for my unborn child and myself too. Those hopes were soon replaced by terrifying thoughts of what would happen to me, and consequently, my baby, if my family abandoned me. Wilful sin was grounds, in the Jehovah’s Witness religion, to cut me off from all communication with my family. Why I didn’t think of this sooner I can’t explain.
It has been 21 years since I decided to end my unborn child’s life. I didn’t do it because I felt I deserved to have a life and my baby did not. I hated what I was doing then and I regret it to this day. I chose to have an abortion out of fear of the unknown. I wish there had been one more step before the woman handed me those four coupons. I wish someone would have educated me on my baby’s development, how amazing my body was to be able to grow a life, and all of my options other than abortion. I knew my baby’s life mattered. What I didn’t know is that my life mattered. In a single moment, all of my broken pieces came crashing down severing an innocent precious life.
As I reflect on my experience I believe one thing could have changed everything for me and my baby all those years ago – Love. I needed someone to take the time to tell me I was loved, show me what love looked like, speak life into me, and over me so I could then show love to others, especially the one life who was depending on me to love him. This is not easy for me to talk about but if it helps even one woman to believe she is loved before making the same decision I did then it was worth the pain and tears that it took to tell you about my undelivered hope.
About the Author
Amanda Zarate is the global author of Fighting For Me and Founder of Fighting For Me, Inc., a non-profit organization focused on providing free professional counseling to men, women, and children affected by sexual abuse. She spends her day leveraging partnerships to advocate for survivors, educating parents on how to protect their kids from sexual predators, and sharing how her worst nightmares turned into her greatest blessings. Amanda has overcome many struggles and has a gift for speaking life into others with the firepower that burns down fear and sets ablaze the desires of their hearts. She lives in Dana Point, CA with her husband and four boys.