My Decision

Author: Jeff
Birth Date: November 1993
Abortion Date: March 1992

For 15 years, I was too ashamed to tell anyone what I had done, except, my best friend.  My wife and I never talked about it, we did not grieve together, and we hid it deep in the recesses of our mind. It was nearly 17 years later when our marriage began to unravel, and through extensive counseling, we realized how much of our struggle had come down to the decision to end the life of our first child.

We began to deal with our own shame and guilt and feelings we had harbored unconsciously for years. We realized the extent of the mental and emotional trauma it had caused, on so many levels. We dealt with feelings of resentment, un-forgiveness, and feelings abandonment, all revealed, as we dealt with the reality of this decision many years earlier.

I hid and suppressed the realization that the only reason our oldest daughter was not alive today and missing from our family picture, was due to my own cowardice decision to go to my wedding, pretending to be an upright moral young man, with a bride dressed in white. She was a beautiful bride and we looked great on the outside. No one could see the brokenness we were both hiding so well on the inside.

Now as a father of 4 beautiful children and through God’s grace, my wife and I have now been married 20 years. However, there is not a day that goes by that I don’t regret my decision. After all, any good father would jump in front of a train to save the life of their child. The life of our first daughter, Sara, should not have been any different.