my abortion appointments

Ever heard the saying, "Facts tell, stories sell." I suppose it's a marketing ploy —but there is some wisdom to it. We are wired to encounter truth through experience or the shared experiences of others. We can tell our children, "Human life is sacred and inviolable at every stage and in every situation…" But they crave context —they crave the grit of human experience. Can we blame them? We do, too.

This month, the country seems to talk about abortion more than usual—the upcoming anniversary of Roe v Wade ensures the conversation is heated, especially since Dobbs v Jackson. Knowing that personal experiences help to put "truth" into context, I share again my own story of an unplanned pregnancy and three abortion appointments as a teen below….

But first….As we continue our series on the USCCB’s Pastoral Plan for Pastoral Activities our Pray, Grow, Serve this week shares the powerful story of Blessed Marianna Biernacka, who sacrificed her own life for that of her 8-month-pregnant daughter-in-law when Nazi's invaded their home. Marianna lived the Truth that human life is sacred at every stage and in every situation.

My story.

My story is simple and not so simple at the same time. It is about the complex simplicity of sin and the complicated mess of our brokenness. It is about the beautiful, underserving, profound mystery of God’s presence in our lives and the gentle ways He wraps His arms around us. 

While this is my story, I believe that it is also the story of hundreds of thousands of other women.

It is a story of stumbling into motherhood.

After graduating from a Catholic high school, I set off to college thousands of miles away from my family to study Aerospace Engineering. My plan had been the same since I was a little girl: I was going to be a pilot in the United States Air Force. I fought hard for my position at the university, earned a significant scholarship, and stepped into a dream… 

However, college was filled with temptation, and I embraced many of those temptations with open arms. I turned my life and my heart from God and anchored them on the material world around me, a world that promised to chew me up and spit me out if I allowed myself to be all in… It didn’t take long. After Christmas break, during my sophomore year, I took a pregnancy test. It was positive. I was 19.

I remember sitting on the bathroom floor, feeling desperately ashamed. Desperately alone. 

While I was pro-life, in theory, the only solution I could think of was abortion. It filled the computer screen when I frantically typed “unplanned pregnancy,” it fell from friend’s lips when I shared with them the news, and it was the only “resource” on a small scrap of paper the health services at the university offered me. 

Abortion consumed my thoughts. And soon, my thoughts turned to action. 

When I arrived at my abortion appointment, the woman across the desk greeted me, asking for my name and payment. As I slowly counted my money, she could see the struggle on my face, and in a misguided effort to make me feel better, she said, “It’s okay, honey, not all of us are made to be mothers.”

Not all of us are meant to be mothers…

I stared at her, put my money back into my purse and walked out. 

I walked out in frustration because my struggle wasn’t over me not meant to be a mother; it was over me not wanting to be a mother anymore. The latter is an entirely different matter — the latter is the ugly truth of what I was there to do. I was there willing to hand over a wad of cash so that I could leave the broken and lifeless body of my son in one of her back rooms… The latter was an entirely different matter altogether.

I wish I could say that I walked out of that abortion facility jolted by the insanity of what I was about to do, but I didn’t. I left because my pride needed the woman taking my money to not fluff me with lies. 

I was broken. Broken pieces don’t often make sense.

The following week, when we pulled into the parking lot of the second abortion facility for my new appointment, there was a group of people on the sidewalk praying. Their lowered heads and clasped hands forced me to think about the one thing that I had been working very hard to not think about until this point — God. 

When I left for college, I had closed the door on God. I knew He probably had a poor opinion on some, okay many, of my life decisions since I reached college, and I had no interest in hashing it out with Him. As a pregnant teen desperately procuring an abortion, I didn’t think it was the optimal time for a reckoning… We sat in the car, willing them to go home.

When they didn’t, we did. 

The following week, we silently drove to our third abortion appointment. At this point, I was numb. I felt like a robot going through the motions. I remember watching the clock as we sat in heavy traffic; we were in danger of missing our appointment. I could see the abortion clinic about 100 meters away, yet we sat stuck behind a row of cars that had not moved an inch in the past 20 minutes. Staring ahead, I realized what was staring back at me… It was a Choose Life license plate on the back of the truck in front of us. 

After pointing it out to my boyfriend, not much needed to be said, we turned the car around and headed home.

We got married on May 4, 2002, and on October 10, 2002, our son, Nicholas Tolman, was born. Choosing life for Nicholas wasn’t easy. We both dropped out of school, my husband enlisted, and the rest of the road has been filled with its own heartache of war, deployments, and goodbyes. But, there has never been a moment when I wasn’t grateful for becoming a mother and for all the other beautiful fruit from this (unplanned) life change.

The part of the story that absolutely wrecks me to tears is when I look back over this difficult time to see Christ, whom I had closed a makeshift door on, who I had disinvited from my life, who I had treated as inconsequential and disposable, standing before me, wiping my tears with His precious pierced hands.   

I am humbled with feelings of overwhelming unworthiness to see His steady hand guiding my heart. At the first appointment, He used my pride to pull me from the abortion facility. At the second appointment, He stirred strangers to action; listening to His command, they said “yes,” and He placed His disciples before me. At the third appointment, to break through the last vestiges of stone in my heart, He displayed the actual words “choose life” before my eyes through the simple “yes” of a man willing to pay the extra money for a pro-life message on the back of his vehicle. 

It didn’t matter how far I had strayed. He was there. He is always there.

Over the years, as I thought about God’s hand over us and how He used strangers to save our lives, It didn’t take long to realize that He was asking me now to do the same for others. I embarked on a lifetime journey of pro-life ministry that now has me perched at The Pelican Project, where I pray to stay for decades to come.

I am not a pilot, but my journey has taken me to places a plane could never reach. Praise God for His mercy and goodness!

-Kelly

Crystal and I pray that this story and this week’s PGS offer the opportunity for important conversations with your children about the sanctity of human life this month. My Three Abortion Appointment(s) is available here as a Teen Life Focus Guide.