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   Welcome to my story.  My hope is for other women to be set free as I am being set free from post-abortion trauma. I also hope that my story will challenge women who are considering having an abortion.

First the statistics, findings and facts....I begin with these because you will see me as one of the women represented in these facts.

What happens after a woman experiences an abortion? I will attempt to answer this by defining the terms most often associated with the after affects, and through presenting facts surrounding the abortion experience.
The two most common labels that are applied to the post-abortion experience are known as Post Abortion Syndrome and Post Abortion Trauma.

Dictionary Definitions:
The dictionary defines syndrome as a group of signs and symptoms that collectively indicate or characterize a disease, psychological disorder, or other abnormal condition.

Trauma is defined as a wound, especially one produced by sudden physical injury; an emotional shock that creates substantial and lasting damage to the psychological development of the individual, generally leading to neurosis.

According to a poll given by David Reardon, leading researcher for post abortion syndrome, 94% of women who went through abortion experienced negative psychological side effects attributable to their abortion. Of the 94%, 73% said the negative impact was severe.

Out of those polled, 70% did report there was a time when they denied the existence of any negative reactions after their abortions. For some this denial stage lasted only a few months. For others it lasted ten or fifteen years. Many women suffer from chronic depression, anger, bitterness, loneliness, or low self-esteem, yet never realize it until undergoing therapy that these problems stem back to their repressed abortion experience.

The most frequently listed reactions of PAS are guilt, depression, a lowered sense of self-worth, and self-hatred. Guilt is what an individual feels when she has violated her own moral code. There is little consolation to offer the woman who has transgressed one of nature’s strongest instincts: the protection a mother extends to her young. This inner voice of self-condemnation begins playing a repeating tape in the mind that accuses, "You are defective. How could you have done this thing? You are a desperately wicked person." It is also normal for many post-abortion women entering therapy to verbalize their belief that any unhappy events that have occurred since the abortion were inevitable because they "deserved it." Most of the remaining symptoms that follow are a result from listening to that tape day in and day out.

Anxiety, depression, guilt and loss of self-esteem often lead to self-destructive behavior. 62% of the women surveyed described themselves as having become "suicidal" as a direct or indirect result of their abortions.

Other self-destructive behaviors include heavy drinking after abortions; an amazing rate of nearly half of post-abortive women have participated in some form of drug use and abuse.
Chronic anger, resentment and rage at others and at themselves hit the abortive women. Interpersonal relationships become difficult or impossible to handle.

Many report that they have been unable to put their abortion out of their minds. Depression on the anniversary of the abortion of the would-have-been due date of the child is often felt. Nightmares about their experience, the loss of the child, the feeling of abandonment is a repeated occurrence in post-abortive women. Others experience detaching themselves from their children who were "chosen" not to be aborted; while many women yearn to replace the child they lost by trying to get pregnant again, only to find themselves back in the abortion clinic. It has been noted that nearly half of all abortive women have had more than one abortion; some have had multiple abortions as they become "numb" to the experience. Much like other ills of our society, after you’ve done it once, it becomes easier the second time, and so on. Even more so because we live in a country that supports abortion and claim it’s a woman’s choice, because it’s her body. The fact is, the "tissue" has it’s own DNA structure and is a completely separate being from the time of conception. The only difference between an 8 week-old "fetus" and a newborn child is time. The newborn baby was given a chance to grow in it’s mother’s womb.

The psychological damage caused by abortion is practically impossible to quantify. When a woman chooses to abort her child, she is not only the cause of the loss, she brings upon her own pain and loss. There become two victims - the child, and the woman; the woman becomes her own victim of pain and suffering as a consequence of the freedom that she chooses. She becomes in bondage to her own guilt and emotional trauma.