The second season of Live Action’s “Face to Face” series continues, and in the latest episode, brings together two groups of post-abortive parents.
In a discussion facilitated by Live Action founder and president Lila Rose, women who had abortions against the wishes of their babies’ fathers speak about their experiences with men whose wanted children were aborted.
“He begged me not to do it”
Sara Boling got pregnant unexpectedly, and terrified of her mother’s reaction, got an abortion — something pushed on her by everyone around her, except for her boyfriend and his mother. But she “thought [abortion] was normal” and said Planned Parenthood “made it really easy, and said if you don’t tell the father, if you don’t tell your parents, we can help you. [I was] 17 years old. I just said okay.”
The father of the baby was her high school sweetheart, and she thought they would be together forever. “He, along with his mom, begged me not to do it. She told me she would take me in,” she said. “She told me she would help as much as she could. And I was just scared.”
All of Boling’s friends and other trusted adults told her to have the abortion, saying a baby would ruin her life. Meanwhile, the staffers at Planned Parenthood told her the baby was just a clump of cells, not a human being. She was well into her second trimester of pregnancy at the time. It was years later before she learned what really happened to her child.
Now, 20 years later, she still struggles with post-abortive regret, though she said she knows she will see her child in Heaven. She mentors young adults now, so they won’t feel forced to make the decision she did.
“I never really had closure with the father,” she said. “I don’t know how he really feels. After that, it was over. I just — my guilt, I couldn’t allow myself to be loved by him anymore. And I just ended it.”
“I stole fatherhood…”
Melissa Manion was already a single mother when she got pregnant for the second time. And at first, she and her new boyfriend planned to raise the baby together. She said the young man was kind to her and they had planned to have the baby despite having dated for just three months.
“I told everyone, and then I just… I got scared. I thought, ‘I just got on my feet. I have a son that I need to take care of. I don’t love him. I don’t know what to do.’ And instead of speaking to him about it, I spoke to some friends who had had abortions, and in an instant, I changed my mind.”
She called Planned Parenthood and made an appointment for the very next day; when the father came home, she told him directly that she was having an abortion, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“He became really erratic, and was crying and begging me, please not to do this,” she said. “And I don’t really remember a lot of it. It’s – trauma will do that. I just remember, somewhere subconsciously, thinking, this is my right…. I truly gave no thought to the fact that this wasn’t my child alone, that it took two people to create this life. It shouldn’t take one to be able to end it. And so I told him to leave and I have never seen him again since.”
“I stole fatherhood from a completely innocent and kind man, along with ending the life of my child,” she added.
“It’s not your decision”
The conversation then shifted to the men’s perspectives.
Gregory Mayo said he was 18 when his first child was aborted, which he did not want. “I protested, but in the way a scared, unsure 18-year-old kid does. And so when her mom said, ‘Well, this is going to happen anyway,’ I thought, ‘Okay, what does everybody say I’m supposed to do? Well, I’m supposed to go be supportive.’ So I went with her…. I remember the overall feeling of just being scared, and what are we doing, and this is one of those things you can’t undo. And then she came out, and I saw it on her face immediately… something was gone. And then I decided to — not consciously — but decided, I’m just not going to deal with emotions right now.”
That relationship ended not long after, and a few years later, another girlfriend got pregnant. She, too, decided to have an abortion. He tried harder this time, offering to marry her, or even take and raise the baby on his own, but she refused. When nothing worked, he told her was going to drive 16 hours to be there with her, and she said not to bother; it wouldn’t be in enough time to stop the abortion appointment early the next morning.
He went on to have other children, but the loss of his first two children affected him for the next 10 years until he found healing.
“I felt truly powerless”
Sean Corcoran was the last member of the panel to share his story. When his girlfriend got pregnant, he immediately began trying to figure out how it would affect his life, and how they would handle it. “She stopped me and she said, ‘Well, I’m not going to have the baby; I’m going to have an abortion.’ And that was counter to everything that I was raised to believe,” he said. “I argued against it. I can’t remember the exact conversations, but it got to the point where my dad drove nine hours to be there the next day.”
“And the last thing I remember saying on the phone to her was screaming at the top of my lungs, ‘Please don’t kill my baby!’…. [S]he said, ‘It’s not a baby, and it’s not your decision,’” he recalled. “And she hung up, and I was in a panic. I just remember screaming and yelling at the top of my lungs, and throwing stuff around my apartment.”
His girlfriend’s mother also flew in, but unlike Corcoran’s parents, she supported the abortion. His parents offered to adopt the baby, but they remained unmoved, and his girlfriend went through with the abortion, because she and her family thought pregnancy would ruin her chances to graduate from college.
“This was the first time in my life that I felt truly powerless, that there was just not a solution,” he said. “I sat in my dorm room for the remainder of that semester. Didn’t go to class, didn’t go to take tests.” And his troubles only got worse.
“I failed out of college. I ended up in a seven-year methamphetamine addiction. I was homeless, unemployed, and it wasn’t until I was in treatment that I was able, through the counselors, to connect the dots that this is the void I was trying to fill with the drugs, with the addiction, with all the other destructive behavior that comes along with that.”
Cassy Cooke, Live Action znews
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