My Abortion Testimony

DC Testimony                                         January 24,  2011 March for Life

My name is Karen Williams from Phoenix, AZ.  I was 21 years old when I made the worst decision of my life.  With a pre-meditative will and without reservation, I took the life of another human being who was innocent, vulnerable and unsuspecting.  I was never held accountable for the life I took because of what a previous Supreme Court determined was legal and now praised as reproductive freedom.

I was a junior at Michigan State University in when I visited the East Lansing Planned Parenthood clinic in 1987.  For weeks I had agonized that I might be pregnant and the stunning confirmation of this fact was delivered to me while I stood in a hallway surrounded by strangers.  Life as I knew it, had just changed for the worse.  Through hot, angry tears, I sobbed that I could NOT be pregnant. I would have no part of a baby-limited future.  I was in a disconnected panic as I concluded that my promiscuity had finally caught up to me. How could a nice girl like me end up in a predicament like this? How could I deliver this news to my parents, family, friends, and floormates where I was a Resident Assistant. I felt alone, scared and out of options. I reached for the only conclusion that could deaden the pain.  Abortion was not the ideal, but it was a solution…an easy way out that could be kept secret.  A choice.

A very attractive clinic employee clad in business attire reassured me that I need not feel afraid or guilty for choosing abortion. She herself had multiple abortions and was grateful for having the power to be able to control the size and spacing of her family.  This was my final edification. Even though my boyfriend agreed to marry me, I would make the final, fatal decision for our baby. I chose my body, my plan and my convenience over his life.

Numbed by twilight sedation, my conscience in self-inflicted exile, I allowed my accomplices – the abortionist and his nurse-witness – to rip from my uterus, my tiny, 10 week old son. His small frame captured on ultrasound only a week earlier was now in pieces in a plastic container.  They tell us that Abortion is good for women; that it is necessary.  That it prevents us from being punished with unwanted children.  Let me tell you that this is a bold-faced lie. The sights, sounds and smells of that day in January still haunt me.  The images are as fresh today as they were 24 years ago.

The years following my abortion included inexplicable depression, anxiety, alcoholism and addiction; and divorce from the baby’s father in 1990.  I am a living statistic. But thanks be to God and His grace working through people just like you, my story does not end there.

I found miraculous grace, healing and recovery from our Great Physician, Jesus Christ and the Sacraments of His church.  Telling my story, first in the confessional and later to others whom I trusted thrust my secret out of the dark cavity of numbness where I had placed it and into God’s marvelous light where I could find forgiveness and healing.  The dirty little secret of abortion must be exposed for what it is – it is a failure of Love. A failure with fatal consequences.  We deserve better for our mothers, our sisters, our nieces, our neighbors, daughters, sons and brothers…. 

Members of Congress/Justices of the Supreme Court: The great state of Arizona wants you to know that The American People deserve better than the lie that is abortion.  That is why they sent 13 of use here to stand before you today.  Because of my first hand experience, I am responsible for speaking the truth in love about abortion and its countless victims. Because of our Constitution, you are responsible for promoting a just society where the most fundamental rights of our littlest brothers and sisters are protected.  In the name of all that is Good, please hear us and act upon this most urgent need of our day….let us work together to end the killing.  May we all be a light and witness to others so that the horror of abortion will exist only as a sad and futile relic of a bygone era in our nation’s history.

That is why I am Silent No More.