I Didn’t Know

About twenty-five years ago my girlfriend at the time asked me to give her half the money to get an abortion. I didn’t know what an abortion was, not really. I had planned to finish school, get married, and have children, especially a daughter, but I didn’t have time to think about that. Susan, my girlfriend, had decided what she wanted to do. I didn’t want to make her decision harder than it was, so I choose to support her, to be a loving, caring boyfriend.

I went to the bank, withdrew the money, $200.00, I remember the amount, and on the appointed day took her to the hospital. I had planned to take her home, but she told me not to stay, so I went to work. The next day I called her. She was angry that I hadn’t waited to take her home. I sometimes wonder if that was the only reason for her anger. I had done everything that she wanted. I gave her the money, I took her to the hospital and… I left her there. Was she mad because I hadn’t spoken up, that I hadn’t made her decision harder? Was she mad because I didn’t protect her and our baby? I didn’t know.

I didn’t know what abortion was. I didn’t know that someone was going to reach inside of my girlfriend and pull our baby apart piece by piece…from what should have been the safest place in the world.

I had paid someone to kill our baby!

In recent days I have sought God’s forgiveness and I now know his mercy is boundless. There is still pain, but God’s grace sustains me. There are others out there who feel the loss, men and women, but don’t understand the slow, numbing feeling of emptiness. We have been told to get over it. Men are told it’s not our choice, so we shouldn’t feel anything. Keep your feelings to yourself. Be a Man! Well, that’s the problem, I wasn’t a man. A man would have spoken up. A man would protect his baby and her mother. But I didn’t know.

I watch an old movie I hadn’t seen for a long time. A Raisin in the Sun starring Sydney Poitier as Walter Lee. In the movie the family is poor and Walter Lee’s wife is pregnant. She plans to get an abortion and asks her husband what she should do. Walter Lee’s mother tells him to be a man. She says, “…say we’re a people who give children life, not who destroys them.” And Walter Lee says…nothing.

When a woman comes to her husband or her boyfriend and ask what she should do, or has already made her decision and she tells you she’s going to get an abortion she is asking what she should do. She is asking you to be a man!

I didn’t know what abortion was, so I said… nothing.

Sometime later my girlfriend who is now my ex-wife called to tell me that she had to have a hysterectomy and that the only child she would ever conceive would be the child we killed through abortion.
Through the healing process I have not only sought the forgiveness of God, but that of our baby, my daughter, and I know that for all these many years the Father comforts her in a way I never could, and she waits for me with open arms. I have seen her smiling face in my dreams and I praise God. Thank you, Jesus.

This is my story and this is why I now choose to speak up. To help people, but particularly men, to know what abortion is, because I didn’t know. Abortion is a lie.