(The Daily Signal) Katelynn Perry sat in her bathtub doing Google searches on her phone. Was there a way to save her unborn baby?
She had taken the first chemical abortion pill that day and had decided she was not going to take the rest.
After visiting Planned Parenthood, Perry says she “knew that taking that first pill was wrong,” adding, “I shouldn’t have let them influence me.”
Perry already had four kids when she found out she was pregnant with her fifth child, and given the financial struggles she and her husband were facing, she had decided to visit Planned Parenthood to discuss her options.
“When I tried to ask questions, they were kind of shot down. They weren’t really answered in full,” Perry said of her trip to the clinic. “They used a lot of medical terms that I didn’t understand.”
After taking the first abortion pill at Planned Parenthood, Perry was instructed to go to her local pharmacy to pick up the other pills to complete the abortion, but she decided she wouldn’t do that.
Her Google searches led Perry to Heartbeat International’s Abortion Pill Rescue Network website.
She called the number and spoke to a nurse who told her it was possible that her baby was still alive and could be saved. The nurse connected Perry with a pregnancy resource center about an hour away in Lynchburg, Virginia. When she arrived, the first step was an ultrasound to see whether the baby was still alive.
“We do the ultrasound; she still has a heartbeat,” Perry said of her baby. The medical staff at the pro-life center explained to Perry how the abortion pill reversal works through a 12-week hormone therapy.
Today, Perry’s baby girl, Aubrey, is just over a year old, healthy and “the sweetest little girl you would ever meet,” her mother says.
Editor’s note: This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reprinted with permission. Heartbeat International manages the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) and Pregnancy Help News
Actress Jamie Lynn Spears has spoken out again regarding the pressure that was put on her to have an abortion when she was just a teenager. In an episode of “I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!”, the now 32-year-old actress told her fellow contestants about how it felt to be pregnant at 16, and how the adults around her told her an abortion was her best option.
“When I first got pregnant,” she said through tears, “… They didn’t want me to have the baby.”
Spears was the star of Nickelodeon’s “Zoey 101” when she became pregnant while dating her then-boyfriend Casey Aldridge.
She continued, “After I finished ‘Zoey’, I had the love of my life, what I thought, I decided to keep the baby. I was 16. The whole world was like, ‘You’re a s**t, you’re horrible, your life is over ‘… Because I got pregnant young and I was on a kids’ show.”
She said her parents had a “lot going on” at the time and were “sad” that she was pregnant. “I had to go hide away for a long time because they were relentless.”
Spears moved to Mississippi and “literally hid” she said. “I had paparazzi on me every day, they wouldn’t leave me alone. I just wanted to be normal. I wanted my baby to be normal.”
Spears successfully stood strong against the pressure to have an abortion. Her baby girl, Maddie Briann Aldridge, is now 15 years old, and Spears and her husband Jamie Watson have since welcomed a daughter, Ivey Joan, who is five. Spears recently filmed the sequel film to “Zoey 101” and is a regular on the Netflix series “Sweet Magnolias.” She also recently made her musical debut.
This isn’t the first time Spears has spoken out about the pressure she faced to abort her daughter. In her book, “Things I Should Have Said,” she explained that people from her inner circle “… came to my room trying to convince me that having a baby at this point in my life was a terrible idea… ‘It will kill your career. You are just too young. You don’t know what you’re doing. There are pills you can take. We can help you take care of this problem… I know a doctor.’” She added, “[E]veryone around me just wanted to make this ‘issue’ disappear” and “everyone was certain that termination would be the best course of action.”
She said what mattered most to her family and those in control of her career were her image and her income.
Her sister Britney was also pressured to abort
Like Spears, her sister, singer Britney Spears, also became pregnant unexpectedly when she was dating fellow singer Justin Timberlake. However, when faced with pressure from Timberlake to have an abortion, Britney agreed. She said the pregnancy was a surprise, but for her, “it wasn’t a tragedy.” She said if it had been “left up to me alone, I never would have done it.”
She added, “But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.” Britney underwent the abortion in secret at home, “crying and sobbing until it was all over.”
Of the abortion, she said, “To this day, it’s one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.”
Abortion trauma and coercion
The pressure both sisters faced to have an abortion is unfortunately common. Sixty-four percent (64%) of women who have undergone an abortion have said they felt at least some form of pressure to abort — whether that was from the boyfriend or family members, or was due to educational or financial pressures. In addition, a study of women who have sought post-abortion counseling found that nearly 74% of those women felt some form of pressure to have an abortion. This disputes the idea that abortion is about freedom of choice.
Research shows that women who undergo abortions can experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. One study found that 20 percent of women struggled with clinical depression after an abortion. A study from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, “Effects of Pressure to Abort on Women’s Emotional Responses and Mental Health,” found that women who reported being pressured into an abortion by either their male partner or a family member reported statistically significant levels of negative emotions surrounding the abortion, interference with daily life, intrusive thoughts, abortion flashbacks, feelings of grief about the abortion, and increased levels of stress when answering questions about their abortion.
By Nancy Flanders | January 9, 2024 LiveAction.org
I don’t even really know what to write here, as you can see from the title I’m 11 weeks and 2 days into my pregnancy. The day I found out I never thought I’m not going to have a child straight away it was “I’m going to have a baby how the hell am i meant to do this?”
God has a plan for us all.
Two years ago my virginity was cruelly taken away from me, however i was yet to loose my faith. It started disappearing slowly i began blaming God for what happened and finally i lost my faith all together. However the day i found out i was pregnant I turned back to the Lord realizing that he alone could save me, he alone had written this all in his plan, i realized I’m not in control God is and he was given me this amazing blessing a chance to bring life into this world to raise my beautiful child give her/him a chance to live, a chance to do good and all i felt was love and that’s what i feel now since returning to my faith.
My Ex tried to get me to have an abortion i even went to the first appointment but I already knew this was my child and I told the lady I didn’t want to do it, she sent me to get an ultra sound and watching the lady try to hide the screen and the measurements from me was soo hard i just wanted to scream this is my child let me see them. She spoke as though abortion was soo natural the easiest thing in the world that it would be better for me because I was only 19 I left telling myself I would never enter that place again even with the pressure from my Ex and also to some extent my Mum.
I never did.
I have a life filled with hope, a baby growing inside of me. Friends who are happy for me, a church where they love me.
and the biggest thing of all
I have God’s love and forgiveness.
A baby is always a blessing.
Don’t let anyone persuade you because it’s the easy option just see Love. your love for your baby and the love that everyone has for you. Ignore the negatives always focus on the positives.
This all started a little over three years ago. I was sixteen, a virgin and – quite frankly – sick of it. I was always the party girl who was labeled as a “cock tease” and I constantly “led lads on”. Well, one day I decided that I wanted to have sex…and I did. In my mum’s bed, I have to add. It was a lot less than romantic, not that I expected it to be in the first place. Who can say that a one night stand is romantic in any way, shape or form? That night opened the floodgates. A week later, I found myself in bed with a different lad and in very different circumstances. It was a party atmosphere; alcohol had been consumed, drugs had been done (not by me) and inhibitions had been lost…by everyone. By the time that everyone was “tired” it became obvious that I was going to sleep with someone. I wasn’t on the pill. He didn’t have a condom. We were unprepared but we did it anyway. Three weeks later and my period didn’t come – weird. I put it down to exam stress and told myself I would take a test in a couple of days. A couple of days came and went so I wandered down to the store, flinging a test on the counter and practically running out of the store as soon as I had paid. This might sound weird but as I hid the test in my bag it felt like it was burning a hole through the material and everyone could see my dirty little secret. I took the test the next morning – negative. Again, I put it down to the stress of end of year exams. I pushed the thoughts aside even though I had a little niggle at the back of my mind. Four days later and I was still late. I decided to go buy another test. This time it was easier to do. I wasn’t nervous, I wasn’t embarrassed; I simply felt as if I was disconnected from my body. This couldn’t possibly be happening to me. I took the test the next morning – positive. That was when my world shattered.
I sat there staring at the test for five minutes, convinced that the second line was wrong; that it was an evaporation line; that the test was faulty. Anything but the truth that was blindingly obvious. The first thought – and many afterwards – was please make this go away. That was a chant that ran through my mind for several days. Almost a week, in fact.
Turns out, someone was listening. They made it go away. No one told me about the pain though. Not just physical but mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I had a miscarriage on the 25th November 2010. I thought by world had shattered when I found out I was pregnant but that was nothing compared to this.
Still in denial that anything was wrong, I didn’t go to the doctor that day; that week; that month. I simply didn’t go. I hoped and prayed that everything would be okay without having to tell my family or my friends. It took a while but it looked (and felt) like everything eventually went back to normal.
Now I just feel like there’s a piece of me missing – lost out in the universe somewhere. There isn’t a day that passes by when I don’t think of what could be right now. What should have been. I blame myself for what happened. It was like I wished that baby away with the power of my thoughts. Who knew they could be so powerful?
I’m 15 and I’m having a baby. I’m scared, and I don’t want to mess this up. My baby is due May 27. I don’t know yet if I’m going to keep the baby or give the baby up for adoption. I hope I make the right choices…..
Thank you for all you comments! I have made the choice to keep my baby.
Kaya Jones, a former singer for The Pussycat Dolls, said the abortions she had when she was younger still haunt her to this day. Pussycat Dolls singer shares abortion experiences, warns, ‘You will regret it your whole life’
‘I was completely enchained and bonded to the devil,’ the singer said
Jones told Christine Yeargin, host of Students for Life’s “Speak Out” podcast, that she’d had three abortions before she turned her life around and started following Jesus Christ.
She explained how she had her first abortion as a teenager when her birth control medication failed. She recalled how she became pregnant again while in the Pussycat Dolls and was told to “get rid of it.”
Jones described growing up in an “abusive” music industry that left her with little self-esteem and led her to make “poor choices.” She said her third abortion happened after she was raped by an old boyfriend. Even though she wanted to keep the baby, she said she decided to terminate again due to stress and complications.
“After the first one, you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. It’s been normalized and what is a line until you’ve crossed it. You don’t know what a line is. Once you cross that line, it’s a very slippery slope to continue to cross those lines,” she recalled.
But she said her conscience was triggered when she saw two little girls looking up at her during a concert after she had an abortion.
“Nothing on me in that moment said, ‘Caution, this is a lie,'” she recalled. “There was nothing beautiful about me. I was tainted. I was destructive. I was destroyed. I was completely enchained and bonded to the devil, or the enemy, or the realm of death if you will, where I was living in my worst self.”
Jones said she understands the pain and anger some women go through but warned them not to make the same choices she did.
“I’ve gone through it all. I will assure you, you will regret it your whole life. Nothing – even if I become a mother tomorrow and happily married and all is well, I’m still going to regret the three children I did not have,” she said.
Jones said she was compelled by “the Holy Spirit” to share her story about abortion regret.
“It is very painful. There is a lot of anger. There’s a lot of frustration. There’s a lot of lack of knowledge. There’s a lot of regret. And nothing can make that go away but God himself when you lay it at his feet and ask for salvation,” she said.
“What you’re showing men is that you don’t value yourself or your seed or their seed and in return they don’t value us as women because we’re willing to do these things to ourselves and to our children,” she argued.
Jones said she wasn’t trying to take anyone’s rights away, but she wanted to show other women who’ve had abortions that there is healing and forgiveness.
“You can still be a mom, you can still fall in love, you can still be valued. You can leave that at the foot of God,” she said.
