The ‘Outing’ of a Pro-lifer : When a decades-earlier abortion is reported, a public person must explain a most private decision.

It was nearly 5 a.m. when my husband walked up the stairs and handed me the newspaper. I had drifted in and out of sleep the entire night, after receiving the call informing me that the article would be in the morning paper. Even now, as I begin to remember that morning four years ago, I can feel a knot forming in my stomach. I was so worried that my mom would wake up early and get the newspaper first. After all these years, I still couldn’t tell her. Just my luck, the View section that day wrapped the entire paper. Maybe it always did, and I just never noticed before. I couldn’t believe the size of the picture or the length of the article. Did they have to make it so big? My best friend and husband, Bill, and I scanned the piece first and then slowly I read and reread that article over a dozen times, always hoping that it really didn’t say what it said.

The headline was so bold: “No More Denial.” For 13 years, I had been the media spokesperson for the Right to Life movement in Southern California, constantly working with the media on any story pertaining to abortion, whether it was a Supreme Court decision or a demonstration in front of a clinic. So it was not surprising when a Times reporter called to interview me. As I quietly lay in bed, I remembered that horrible day 21 years ago. The drive to the abortion clinic, the waiting, the other women. In those last seconds of consciousness before the anesthesia set in, lying alone on the gurney before the abortion I had undergone as a pro-choice college student years ago, I remembered placing my hands on my stomach and inwardly screaming, “I’m so sorry.”

Then the phones started ringing, first reporters, then friends. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. It wasn’t that my abortion was now public, although that hurt. But my deep pain came in reading about the unnecessary death of a child--my child. It was like reading an obituary. I knew by 9 a.m. that the story could not be contained, it was just too juicy: the voice of Right to Life having undergone an abortion herself. I kept thinking, I was pro-abortion then. Why is this so fascinating? After all, it’s not like I had an abortion after becoming pro-life. Who knew better than I the pain of killing?

My husband took our daughters to school. It was time to go next door and face my mother. I walked in and handed her the newspaper. I couldn’t look at her. I just said, “I didn’t tell you 21 years ago and since Dad died without ever knowing, I had hoped you also would never find out. If you have any questions, I’ll be at home.” I didn’t see her the rest of the day, and though we remain extremely close, we’ve never spoken about my abortion since.

Next, I took press interviews, all separate. I couldn’t face a group. But surprisingly, each interview became a healing catharsis. By noon I felt I would survive the day. Friends came over and support poured in from everywhere. I was truly touched. Then 3 o’clock rolled around, school was out, and it was time to tell my girls, then 6 and 11. I took them out to dinner away from the ringing phones and TV reporters. I had always intended to tell them, but I wanted to wait until they were old enough. I wanted to choose the time and place. Now that had been taken from me. I’ll never forget my elder daughter’s response. She sat quiet for a few moments and then said almost matter-of-factly, “Mom, you knew I always wanted an older brother or sister, so why did you kill them?” I had no answer.

Other memories are kinder, like the hundreds of letters I received over the next month from women I would never meet. One said, “I never told anyone in 30 years about my daily pain, but when I read your story, it was mine.” I know millions of women across this country feel as I do about abortion. We all somehow know deep down inside that we alone made a horrible decision and no coined phrase about choice and rights or the denial of biological and fetal facts can ever erase the truth. For we as mothers instinctively know during those moments of aloneness, that we ended the lives of separate human beings growing inside us. I guess I am blessed, for I strongly believe in an afterlife, where I will someday be reunited with my child, the life that was destroyed in my womb.