Letter from the Archives: anguish of abortion

Voice for Life's National President, Bernard Moran, was contacted by a medical professional recently who had a patient seriously traumatised by her abortion several years ago.

When the patient had expressed her anguish to other medics she had been told that she likely had earlier mental health problems and basically should just “move on”.We  recommended that the patient could be put in touch with the online website The Buttons Project, where NZ women tell their stories.To illustrate the pain, guilt and crippling grief that some post-abortive women endure, here is the text of a letter sent to the late Marilyn Pryor when she was president of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) in 1988:28 September 1988

Dear Mrs Pryor,I am writing to you regarding the topic on which you are talking tomorrow night. I would like to be present, but would probably dissolve into tears because I murdered my first baby 12 years ago.I have three children now, but not a day goes past when I don’t think of what I did. Only my husband (the father) knows, as it was all done in secret.I am increasingly in need of someone else to listen to me. We are well known in the community and the outsider looking into our family would not believe that we have done this.It was just so easy to get past the counsellors at the clinic and I lay part of the blame on them for the guilt I’ll now carry every minute of every day for the rest of my life.I am leading a two-faced life and I feel I am deceiving people because they think I am so good and all is ‘sweet’ within our family. It cost $100 to ruin my life and another precious life.I admire you for your work and you not only save a baby, but you spare the mother from the wretched pains I now suffer.I will finish now in case someone comes in and catches me crying.This isn’t like any other ailment, it can’t be cured.Thank you for reading this and I hope you won’t mind receiving it.I sign as “A”.