First of all, thank you Ev for requesting this site. It has been many, many months since I have visited Curezone, but I suppose God has brought me back for a reason....

I am really not even sure where to begin....Was it when my mother was "raped" by her husband, my father, and I was conceived, as she was to yell at me when she was kicking me out of her house as a young adult? Was that the reason I felt that she had always hated me and our relationship had been the more distant one of any of her four children? Was it when she sent me to the psychiatrist when I was 13 because I "was so depressed"? My psychiatrist, after several years of seeing me off and on, begged my father to get me out of the house, as I would be "in and out of psychiatrist's offices for the rest of my life if he didn't". He believed I was a good barometer for a dysfunctional family, the scapegoat. In the meantime during my teenage years, my mother attempted suicide when I was 14. Prior to this she had told me that I would feel very guilty if anything ever happened to her. I followed her example when I was 15 and only then did my father wake up and send me away to school. I feel I would not be here today if he had not done this. (My brother did not make it - he completed suicide in 1989 at age 34). But by the time I got there, so much damage had already been done.

Long story short, I was attracted to the wrong sort of man. I was young and naive. I was carrying on a sexual relationship with a man who was five years older than myself (I was 21 and still reeling in shock at the news of my mother coming clean about me having been conceived in rape and trying to attack me physically), living by myself with little or no family support and trying to negotiate with this older alcoholic, drug addict and very abusive person about birth control. He was bound and determined that I was going to use the pill and I was bound and determined that he was going to use a condom, or I was going to use a diaphragm, or an IUD. Needless to say, I tried all of these and he was not happy with any of them. He wanted control. He wanted me to use the pill. Even though he never stayed with me through the night after we had sex, etc., etc. He went back home to his grandmother so he could go to church the next morning. And I was never good enough for him or his family and he was sure to tell me so, and I was never pretty enough either.

I was working full time supporting myself and taking 9 hours in school, which was a lot for me. I pulled a 4.0 He was so mad, because he failed the same math course we were both taking; and he and his mother just could not understand why I could not tutor him to make a decent grade. I told him you have to study, but he never applied himself, so it became my fault. Shortly thereafter, I had another friend over visiting and this "boyfriend" busted my door down. He often resorted to physical force that was just short of percievable violence. My other friend left and one thing led to another. I was so tired of fighting with him. I was exhausted from school and work. I got pregnant. It has taken me many years to realize this was his way of trying to hold me back, because he saw me applying myself and maybe having some sort of future, in spite of the hell of my childhood, and he was just a lazy floundering bum. He was jealous.

I did not think much; I just panicked. My only counselors were a rare friend who had already had 2 abortions and she assured me that this was okay. My little sister had also had 2 abortions before she was 17, so I considered this to be my only option. I knew my parents would not and could not help me and I did not want to go back home to a physically abusive mother. I live in the middle of the Bible Belt and the company I work for would have had a hayday with this information. They were always looking for people they could put down. I was not about to marry into my "boyfriend's" abusive family either. With my family history of depression and suicide and my mother telling me I had been conceived in rape and the horrors of our relationship, I had little or no discernible maternal instincts, so I aborted.

I think this was when my life really started going downhill, if you can imagine that. My relationship with my "boyfriend" got worse. I kept trying to break it off, but I was dependent on him. I was so unimpressed with the Christians I had known and their hypocrisy that church support was not an option for me. After all, my "boyfriend" and his family went to church and took communion EVERY Sunday.

I got pregnant the second time several years later when bringing another man into the picture to try to get rid of this very sick "boyfriend". He decided that my punishment should be physically forced sex again, i.e., rape. I did not get pregnant from this, but I fell into the arms of this other man without any reserve whatsoever and got pregnant again in no time. I was working the night shift (I had taken this night shift position because it was in a locked environment and I was safe from my "boyfriend" stalking me at work), again no support, and I again chose to abort.

My counselor at the Crisis Pregnancy Center thought I was suffering from a type of post traumatic stress disorder and not thinking straight the times I got pregnant. I did not see her until I lost my only full term baby to stillbirth, 21 years after the first abortion. I went through many months of counseling for both of the abortions.

Looking back, I suffered from Post Abortion Syndrome for many years. I wouldn't let anybody get close to me. I isolated. I drank alcohol to excess. I became promiscuous. All the classic symptoms.

Abortion can do horrible things to a woman. I still grieve the loss of all of my babies, 2 aborted, 2 miscarriages and one stillbirth, but I am looking foward to Resurrection Day when I hope to see them.

And I praise God for leading me to such a wonderful man as my husband who sympathisizes with me regarding my sexual/reproductive horrors.

We now attend church where the people have very large families. Some of the elders and their wives prayed over us that we would conceive, but nothing has happened so far - I am 48. One of the women prayed specifically that I would be delivered from the "spirit of child death" in light of my miscarriages and stillbirth. Since then, I have been so drawn to little babies like never before. Even if God does not bless us with a child in this lifetime, it feels so good to feel healthy maternal feelings and to recognize children for the precious gifts they are.

Thank you Ev.