My two Mothers shared gifts of life and love,
Each in her own way.
One mother shared her life with me,
My other Mother gave me life.
Two unique and beloved women,
Both said, “Yes”,
Though they never met,
Their lives became forever intertwined.
I became the connecting fabric of this Tapestry they began,
Lovingly and intricately continuing to be added to, day by day.
Fashioned to reflect the beauty and generosity My Two Mothers.
Though both have passed,
I thank the Good Lord for the gift of My Mothers,
He must have known that one was not enough,
And so, he gave me two.
Written by Diane
August 3, 2024
Jen grew up to be a stunningly beautiful girl. When she was in junior high, her mother began to reveal the circumstances of her birth. Jen’s mother was twelve years old when she was raped. All Jen knows about her father is that he was a neighbor. Her mother didn’t know him. It was several months before she even knew she was pregnant.
When her family found out, they decided that it was impossible for her to keep a baby that was conceived in such a way. Although they were “personally against abortion,” this was a situation that justified it. Rape is unacceptable, and pregnancy just put one terrible experience upon another. She was a child herself. There was no way she could raise a child. She would have to have an abortion.
Jen’s mother was hurting and humiliated from her recent experiences, and all the adults were telling her that this was the quickest way to forget about the rape and get on with her life. She didn’t even feel like it was a baby inside her. All she knew was that she wanted her memories erased. She wanted to start clean.
However, as the scheduled abortion drew near, she felt a growing dread. It was as though her heart was resisting. As much as she wanted to end the pregnancy, a deeper instinct, some deep down emotion, told her to hold on to her baby. She didn’t know why.
The day of the abortion came. Jen, who was already a healthy little baby inside her mother, was happily unaware of the kind of death prepared for her. She was probably doing her little exercises or sleeping peacefully when her mother was admitted to the clinic. The abortion was a saline injection. Perhaps Jen tried to swim away from the needle as it probed for her. Perhaps she cried as her skin began to burn, but no one heard her. The doctor injected the burning salt, gave her mother some pills and told her to come back the next day.
Jen’s mother went home in tears and spent the day and following night in a waking nightmare. Being handled and probed in the clinic made her feel sick, so soon after her assault. Images of death kept haunting her mind. “I’ve killed my baby,” was all she could think. She also felt excruciating pain in her lower abdomen, and bled on and off. Sometimes she prayed that she could turn back time. Sometimes she despaired.
The next day, she went back to the clinic. “I’m sorry,” she was told, “the doctor isn’t in yet.” While she was waiting for the doctor, some nurses gave her an examination. She was numb from pain and exhaustion when they brought her some unexpected news. “You’ll have to come back later this afternoon. The abortion didn’t work.”
Jen’s mother sat in the clinic, stunned. Perhaps she would be able to give birth to her baby after all! From that moment on, she felt that she’d been given a second chance. She went home and demanded to keep her baby. When her family saw that she was determined, they gradually let go of their abortion idea and left her alone. She began to do what she could to take care of herself and her baby.
Jen was born a few months later, a tiny, beautiful baby with blue eyes and black hair. The only harm from the saline was some mild scarring on the skin on her side and back. Her mother never found out why Jen was spared from the effects of the injection. Perhaps the nurse administered the wrong dose, or the doctor miscalculated where to inject.
Jen grew up to be a stunningly beautiful girl. When she was in junior high, her mother began to reveal the circumstances of her birth. Jen forgave her mother and the two have a remarkable friendship to this day. They are united by their passion for spreading the message of life.
Jen is the result of a botched abortion. Today, Jen is a mother with children of her own. The failure of the abortionist was the success of a beautiful life. So many people are against abortion personally, but believe “it must be legal for cases of rape and incest.” When Jen tells her story, few people can hold onto this position. To suggest that victims of rape should have abortions is to suggest that Jen should not be standing in front of them. It is to insist that Jen’s mother should have gone through life haunted by her abortion, and without Jen, who is her best friend. It is to insist that Jen’s life doesn’t count.
Jen’s life is a powerful counter-message. Even though she was conceived in rape, her birth was the beautiful flower growing in the ghetto of her mother’s past. She maintains that children that may result from rape are the “other victims”. Like their mothers, they are innocent victims of a violent crime. Her mother feels that giving life to her daughter has truly “turned back time.” It was her daughter’s love that healed her memories of the sexual assault and enabled her to start clean.
(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
WATCH VIDEO INTERVIEW
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 with a positive pregnancy test!
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, I opened the floodgates. A week later, I was 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 everyone was “tired,” it had become 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, 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, 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, and that the test was faulty. Anything but the blindingly obvious truth. The first thought – and many afterward – 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 physically but mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I had a miscarriage on the 25th November 2010. I thought my 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?
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