A Vacuum Aspiration Abortion at
8 weeks Gestational Age (6 weeks after fertilization).
An African proverb states, "What the old see sitting down, the young can't see standing up." So I never pass up an opportunity to learn from older people. I was recently talking to an older woman who has seen life as evidenced in her full head of gray hair. As a wise person myself who is always trying to gain more wisdom, I never ignore or trivialize the wisdom of the old when it is shared with me, so I listened intently with my ears wide open.
Many years ago, in the late 1960's this now older lady was a young African student in England. She had gotten married to a man she met there and had had a child. However, her child was such a cry baby who was always crying all the time and often didn’t settle down to the dismay of her parents and child care providers. When she began nursery school/kindergarten, the staff would be by the door waiting for her to return to pick up her child, telling her what a handful her daughter had been all day and that they didn’t know how much longer they could keep her, while she clung tightly to her mother.
Due to her baby distracting her studies, she sent her 9 month old baby to her parents in Africa to enable her to focus on her education. Unfortunately, a couple of months later, she got pregnant again. She felt frightened and didn’t know what to do knowing she had recently sent her child home to her parents to have time for her studies and had now burdened herself again by getting pregnant again. Her husband told her the best thing to do was to have an abortion, so she wouldn’t disappoint her parents by having another baby, distracting her education and not earning her degree. Although she felt bad about it, didn’t refuse because she was young, naïve and didn’t know the consequences of her actions. So with her consent, they decided an abortion was the best option.
Abortions weren’t legal at the time, so her husband arranged for her to have an abortion carried out by an acquaintance that was at best, a quack doctor. She was driven to the man’s house where he pumped some substances in her. The baby vigorously fought for its life by moving vigorously in her womb as the poisons attacked. After a while the baby became still in her. She then began to bleed and was taken from the man’s house back to her house in another city. On the way driving there, the baby came out of her in the car with other fluids and much blood. The man and his friend put the fetus in a bag and threw it into the woods and drove off. When they got home she continued to bleed. The doctor was called. He came over and said she had to be taken to the hospital to have immediate surgery.
She was taken to the hospital where she lost consciousness. When she came to, she was being slapped in the face and hearing her name being called by the nurses so she could regain consciousness. They had had to clean out her womb and stabilize her. She was later questioned about what occurred to land her in the hospital, but she had been counseled by her husband to say she knew nothing because if she told the truth they could all land in jail. However, complications were still ahead as she couldn’t urinate because the quack abortion affected her kidney. She had to carry her urine around with her in a bag while in the hospital. She was then transferred to another hospital and attached to a kidney machine as her kidneys had packed up. She stayed in the hospital for about a month and was on the kidney machine for two and half weeks. Then she was discharged and sent home where she gradually regained her strenght. However, she still has physical scars to show for the ordeal, but the invisible emotional scars she endured were known by her only.
Since she had missed school, her husband went to the school to explain that his wife was “ill,” so they let her finish her school work later. She later went back to school, graduated and went on to have two more children, even though she had to endure extra pain from the complications of the previous abortion and the kidney problems that ensued, while having the last two. She then went on to live her life, and the physical pain is long gone, but she still bears the emotional pain and is always she asking God for forgiveness. She says God has told her several times that he has forgiven her. Daily she still feels guilty, frustrated, confused, grief and sadness when she thinks of her aborted child. She also often wonders about the gender of the child that she never carried to term and was thrown away into the woods.
This is not a new story; many manifestations with slight modifications abound. However, I believe this lady I have known for so many years, shared her story with me because someone else somewhere needs to hear it and learn the lesson. Truth be told, this woman is lucky enough to be alive to tell her story and have other children. So many other women, who had abortions, died during or after the process which was performed by an unqualified/quack doctor. In some cases, the women can't have more children for the rest of lives. However, regardless of if they can have more children or not, women who have committed abortions if they are alive are quick to say that even though they believed that once they got rid of the baby, they were home free, the truth is that they think of and grieve for the baby daily. Many women who have had abortions have shared this reality with me. However, this fact is often not shared with women when they are considering having abortions.
With so many readily available methods of contraception/pregnancy prevention including abstinence, it’s best not to have an unwanted pregnancy at all, but if you do, having an illegal abortion performed by a quack doctor isn’t the best solution. So if you are considering having an abortion, take the time to think it through, and consider the other options available to you.
A word is enough for the wise…Peace be upon you!
For more on abortions read below:
Abortion, when induced in the developed world in accordance with local law, is among the safest procedures in medicine. However, unsafe abortions (those performed by persons without proper training or outside of a medical environment) result in approximately 70 thousand maternal deaths and 5 million disabilities per year globally. An estimated 42 million abortions are performed globally each year, with 20 million of those performed unsafely. Forty percent of the world's women are able to access therapeutic and elective abortions within gestational limits.
Induced abortion has a long history and has been facilitated by various methods including herbal abortifacients, the use of sharpened tools, physical trauma, and other traditional methods. Contemporary medicine utilizes medications and surgical procedures to induce abortion. The legality, prevalence, cultural status, and religious status of abortion vary substantially around the world. In many parts of the world there is prominent and divisive public controversy over the ethical and legal issues of abortion. Abortion and abortion-related issues feature prominently in the national politics in many nations, often involving the opposing pro-life and pro-choice worldwide social movements (both self-named). The incidence of abortion has declined worldwide as access to family planning education and contraceptive services has increased.
---Source Wikipedia
For more visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion
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