Abortion

 

Second in series: “After adoption, an abortion – and regret”

By Dave Andrusko

Meg Perez

As we wrote in “Set to abort, mother who changed her mind says without her son, ‘I wouldn’t have had a purpose yet,’” The Cincinnati Enquirer, no hotbed of pro-life sentiment, ran a series of six stories headlined “Abortion: The most important decision of her life–How six women, who each considered abortion, made their decision.”
Our first post was on Brittany Davis who had intended to abort but by mistake wound up in the parking lot of a CPC. She realized she really didn’t want to have an abortion and now is the proud and happy mother of Liam.
This second story is about Meg Perez and was written by Carrie Cochran and Chrissie Thompson.
The headline is apt—“After adoption, an abortion – and regret” — but only begins to capture her complicated and tragic decision and the “bumpy” road to self-forgiveness. It is a long story very much worth reading in its entirety.
Perez was a newly single mom with a three year old son. When she became pregnant, her boyfriend wanted no part of raising a child. There were work pressures, financial pressures, plus “I had no support,” Perez said. She calls it “emotional chaos.” Moreover

“I felt like I couldn’t reach out to my family with a second mistake in 20-some years, and I didn’t want to burden anyone with it. … It was another dose of shame, layered over me.”

Her first “mistake,” we learn was that “She’d given up a baby for adoption when she was 18, a boy conceived while she was serving in the U.S. Marine Corps in Spain.”
Reading her story the pain is almost palpable. Here are just a couple of examples:

“It’s almost like this darkness just descends, and your spirit is completely dead when you walk out of there. You’re just dead inside because you’ve just done this horrible thing, or been a part of it.

“For me, that’s how I felt. I felt dead.”

________________________

At home, Perez tried to use routine to ignore her emotional pain. She found herself sitting at her desk, calling clients. “There was no relief,” she said. “The moment that you allow that abortion in your body, there’s a cage that comes over you. And it’s a prison cell of shame and regret and darkness.”

Perez wrestled with regret and remorse and guilt over the next five years, which she described as “the darkest night of my soul.” Even though she confessed her abortion, she could not forgive herself until she found what she needed from the evangelist Billy Graham:

“Christ suffered so that I wouldn’t have to. I truly was forgiven. … I feel complete joy now.”

Perez later made contact with the son she had given up for adoption but his support for abortion has meant that “their relationship has been rocky.”
Cochran and Thompson end their story on this powerful note:

Perez, now 50, believes if she hadn’t had an abortion, she’d be the parent of a daughter, one she calls Gabriella because the name reminds her of angels.

Despite her fears at the time about navigating life with another baby, “It would have worked out.”

Source: NRLC News