Mother Forces Abortion

When Tonuya Rainey, 38, learned of her 16-year-old daughter’s pregnancy in early March, she felt her daughter’s stomach and told her she didn’t feel a baby, according the Miramar police search warrant application.

Despite her daughter saying she wanted to have the baby, Rainey said she was too young and needed to get an abortion, the warrant said.

Rainey later crushed white, round pills and placed them into hot tea she gave her daughter, the warrant said. The daughter said she couldn’t recall how many pills her mother gave her or for how long she took them, the warrant said.

The daughter was at school March 5, when she felt sharp abdominal pain, prompting her mother to pick her up from school early that day, the warrant said.

At home about 3 a.m. the next day, the daughter felt more pain and gave birth to her baby boy as she sat on the toilet.

The baby fell into the toilet, with the umbilical cord attached.

After calling for Rainey, the daughter took the baby from the toilet and carried him to her bed, where she said she saw him moving his hands, heard him breathing and saw his nostrils moving, the warrant said.

Rainey used her cell phone to take a picture of the baby and sent it to a friend, the warrant said.

The daughter said Rainey’s friend showed up at the family’s home three hours later, cut the umbilical cord, and accompanied by Rainey, carried the baby into the bathroom.

One of them closed the door, the warrant said.

A short time later, the daughter said both of them reappeared, and Rainey told her, “The baby is not going to live because he was born too early,” the warrant said.

She said she saw Rainey’s friend place the placenta into a plastic bag to throw it away in the garbage, the warrant said.

Rainey’s and her daughter’s accounts of what happened to the baby differ, the warrant said.

In a police interview, Rainey said she placed the boy in a bag and dumped the bag in the garbage, which was taken away by the garbage company, the warrant said.

Meanwhile, her daughter said Rainey dressed the boy in some kind of clothing and placed him in a box with decorative hearts, on which she wrote the names of her daughter and the would-be father, the warrant said. She said she didn’t know what happened to baby afterward.

A tipster prompted police to start investigating.

In a March 10 police interview, Rainey said the boy wasn’t born alive, the warrant said.

Rainey said she took her daughter on March 5 to a “clinic in Miami,” where a doctor prescribed two pills to cause an abortion, the warrant said.

However, Assistant State Attorney Eric Linder told the judge Friday, “We don’t know where she got these pills from.”

He said Rainey working at a hospital “causes the state even greater concern based on the allegations.”

Judge Hurley ordered that the mother not have contact with her daughter and set bail at $200,000 when she was charged with unlicensed practice of health care and child abuse, among other things.  “I believe that what has allegedly occurred is tantamount to murder,” Hurley said during the hearing. “So I’m going to set a bond in that regard and consistent with my feelings.”  Defense lawyers plan to appeal the Broward judge’s decision.

Rainey, a mother of eight children, two of them college-age, has worked the past six years at a local hospital as a “tech,” the assistant public defender representing her said.

Miramar police spokeswoman Yessenia Diaz said the state Department of Health also is involved in the investigation. She declined to say whether Rainey’s friend – described by Rainey’s daughter in the warrant as the one who cut the umbilical cord and disposed of the placenta – will face charges.

Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com 6:01 PM EDT, March 20, 2009

Anything But A Heroine

My friend recommended this site to me. She said that it helped her heal from her decision, and although mine was almost 10 years and 8 months ago now, time, and pro-life advocacy groups have done nothing for the wound.  I guess my story starts on the second worst day of my life. June 26th 2015.

I was taking a few summer courses to assist my goal of early graduation, and leaving a study group late I was attacked and sexually assaulted. I was in shock, I never thought that something like that could happen to me.  I never put myself in the situations where that was a risk.  I didn’t report for a week.  I thought if I just stayed inside until the bruises faded enough to be covered by make-up and went about my world it would be like it never happened.  I told no one but my priest, who tried to assure me that it wasn’t my fault and that my purity was not in question before God, and things started to return to some form of normal.  My priest talked me into reporting, and I was seeing a catholic counselor, things weren’t okay, but it was starting to feel like it was going to be.

Than my world began crashing down to the paramount worst day of my life.  It started when I noticed that I was having some pretty strong mood swings.  I dropped a jar of apple jelly I had just bought and sat on my kitchen floor and cried for an hour over it.  My counselor told me not to worry, those kinds of mood swings are normal for sufferers of post traumatic stress, so I brushed it off.  Then my lower back started to hurt like…well it hurt bad.  I brushed off the pain as pre-period cramps.  I had gotten them in the past, and my doctor wanted to put me on birth control to ebb them, but being a roman catholic that was not an option to me.  Then I had pain in my hips, like someone was pulling me apart.  I excused that as my body reacting to the massive ramp up in my workout, my way of dealing with the trauma of the attack.

Pregnancy didn’t even hit my thoughts until July, 18 2015.  I got up as I usually did and made my routine cup of Irish Breakfast Tea, sweetened with a little honey, and softened with cream.  The moment I picked up the cup to take a drink and the smell met my nose, I dropped the cup on the kitchen floor and ran to the bathroom.  At first I thought it was a stomach bug, but when I was perfectly fine a couple of moments later the thought of pregnancy hit me like a sack of bricks.

I called a friend, who called a mutual friend, and they came bearing ginger ale, Snickers minis, and a pregnancy test.  We sat up all night talking about the possibilities, and the options.  It was nice to not be alone the following morning, but it was still the worst day of my life when I saw the test line practically glow before the control line started to form.  And that’s the worst day of my life, July,19 2015.  That’s the day where on the bathroom floor, crying so hard I couldn’t pick up my head, for six hours considering the “options”.

I spent the next three days trying to come up with justifications and explanations for each one.  Keeping the baby was not an option.  Where on one hand I knew this child was half me, weighing so heavily on the other was it was also half my attacker, and the sight of it would be a constant reminder of everything that was taken from me almost a month ago.

This is all I can write for now, I am going to drown my keyboard if I keep going.  I hope this helps someone.  If it impacts you please let me know.