“I was nearly aborted, but I escaped, I must give my baby the freedom to live.”

The night before her abortion, ‘Jackie’ stayed up all night, and kept asking herself if she could go through the abortion. "My boyfriend has lived with someone else for three years, and has been seeing me on the side. I can’t have a baby whose father lives with another woman." In the early morning, she looked at the dawn and thought "I must go through the abortion, it would be very inconvenient for my boyfriend if I have this baby. His girlfriend will hate me for having his baby..."

For the millionth time ‘Jackie’ studied the abortion forms that her doctor had given her. She asked herself: "What if my mother had got these forms and aborted me?"

Going to the clinic, she saw some people standing outside, and thought that the clinic was busy; lots of women were coming out... As she got closer, she saw that they were praying, and thought: "This is my sign. People are praying that I won’t have the abortion. They are praying for my baby..."

Jackie came to our centre for detailed counselling and to make plans for the help she would need to keep the baby. At the start of our time together, she said, ‘I might still have the abortion. It doesn’t feel right having five kids on my own, with no father around.’ We talked about her own family background, and how her father had been a very mercurial figure, coming home for times but living with other women when he felt like it. Jackie’s mother had still had ten children by him – “twice as many as I’ll have if I keep this one” – said Jackie. Jackie had been her mother’s tenth pregnancy, conceived before her father left them for good.

“My mother was really desperate when she was having me, she had nine small boys at home, and my father had beaten her. She was bringing us up on her own with so little money. She nearly aborted me when she was heavily pregnant with me, but she trusted in God and asked God that I would be the child that would look after her. When she was dying, I was the only one with her.” This was very painful for Jackie to talk about, but she conceded, “I can go to the clinic, and get someone else to get rid of the baby, but if I don’t walk in there, the baby will live. You can pretend it’s not you that’s doing the abortion because the doctor signs the forms and the nurse knocks you out, because you’re still the mother who is handing over your baby. I was nearly aborted, but I escaped, I must give my baby the freedom to live.”

May we ask your continued prayers for ‘Jackie’.

Mary O'Regan