I had two children and suddenly I was pregnant for the third time. But I had to end his life. I had no other choice. Believe me, it happens.
It turned out that abortion is a paid service. And it’s pretty decent. Of course, many women argue otherwise: surgery saves them from problems, and it really can be paid for. But for some reason it seemed paradoxical.
Anyway, I went there, to the gynecology department of the hospital. A few years ago, I was lying here with my first daughter, on preservation. I remember talking to other future mothers about abortion. We said that some of us find it difficult even to get pregnant, someone can not bear a child, but does not lose hope, and they do not lose hope. Yes, so that we… Never! And now this “never” happened to me.
Usually, abortion women wait for surgery in a special ward, separately from the «moms». It’s easier for everyone. And this time there were four of us in the room. And next door, three. That’s seven. Then I tried to calculate: operations are done every working day. Suppose there are two hundred such days in a year. How many people are being killed in this unit? How many in the country? It is one thing to read statistics and another to learn from experience.
My roommates were a woman about thirty-five, another slightly younger and very young, about twenty, a girl. The procedure was postponed and we talked. It turned out that everyone had their own, in their opinion, very good reasons to come here. The first (let’s call her Larisa) already had a child, a boy of five years. And she didn’t want any more kids. “How else to grow it, feed it,” she said. But for some reason she did not seem poor, on the contrary, she was well dressed, she was wearing expensive jewelry, and in general she looked very elegant. The second (let there be light) the first child was born recently, less than a year ago, so the second, according to her, while “to give birth early”. The third, a young woman, went for an abortion for the second time. She hasn’t had children yet. She and her husband recently bought an apartment, but have not yet had time to repair it. That’s why she didn’t want to give birth yet.
We sat on beds, talked, even laughed. But I did not leave the feeling of savagery, absurdity of what was happening. Here are four young women. Everyone has their own reasons, in their opinion, are very important. But that doesn’t change the fact that we intend to commit murder. And we can laugh at it. Man is a strange creature full of contradictions and contrasts.
The doctor came, told about the operation, about what medications to drink after it, and about the complications. She was calm and businesslike. It was another working day for her. Then came the nurse, an elderly woman, simple and somewhat rude. She told us to make the beds so that later it would be more convenient to put us insensitive, not detached from anesthesia, from the gurney, and told us how we should be in the operating room. It was noticeable that for her it was also a familiar, quite ordinary business. If she condemned us, it was only for the «negligence» that put us in the abortion clinic. She was concerned about the domestic side of the issue, not the moral side.
Then we were left alone again. It was very hard to wait. And the point is not even that because of the upcoming anesthesia, we did not eat anything in the morning, but that we wanted to get rid of all this as soon as possible. To take some time, I talked to Natasha, a young woman. It turned out that she would actually like to have a child. She and her husband have been married for six months, but they postpone it a second time, because it’s still not time while there are other things to do. She didn’t even tell her parents anything because they would have forced her to keep her pregnant. But once she and her husband decided, they decided. And she also talked a lot, like she was persuading herself. I tried to explain to her that repairing was not the right reason to have an abortion, but I knew I had no moral right to convince her that I was better than her. But if I had a little persistence, one life would have been saved.
But here we go. First, they operated on women from another room. We just heard a gurney ride down the corridor. And then I was amazed again. Everything happened very quickly. The tiles sounded every five minutes, if not more often. That is, it turned out that the procedure takes only two or three minutes. What is this compared to the whole life that this unborn person could have lived?
They started calling from our room. I saw the women leaving and being brought back, being put on the bed, putting an ice pack on their stomachs, covering them with a blanket, and I was horrified. No, it was not the fear of pain or anything else, but the horror of what was happening before my eyes.
They called me. I crossed the corridor, went into the operating room, lay down on the table. The doctor turned away, she was preparing the instrument. The nurse came over to anesthetize me. And then I was shaking, I was shaking my whole body, so that it became noticeable. The nurse asked me what was wrong. She had no time to talk, but she could not ask. And then I realized, I understood. I realized that I would never, ever, under any circumstances, no matter how bad they were, be able to kill my child. It’s beyond my power. That’s impossible. «I don’t want to,» that’s all I could say. I knew I’d be anesthetized for a second and I couldn’t change anything. But I did, I saved him.
I went back to the room and burst into tears. Crying with happiness that my child is with me, he is here, I know that he is in me and that he is grateful to me. And I cried for all those who could not save their own. About those women who were with me and those who were before me and will be here, on this bed, later.
And then Natasha screamed. The anesthesia went through and she was already conscious, but not yet fully conscious. What she was trying to hide from herself. She begged for her baby back, and she would rush across the bed, and she would try to get up and follow him. And that was probably the scariest thing I’ve seen in my life. A mother crying for a child she killed. She needed it, but by submitting to false ideas about what is right and wrong in this life, what is important and what can wait, she lost it. I couldn’t forgive myself.
And my baby is four months old. He can turn from his back to his stomach and sit down. If this seems too easy for you, I have to assure you that for such a child it is a major achievement. And I probably love him a little more than the rest of my kids because he’s a hard worker.
The Holy Land Charitable Foundation
Soul investment!
Orthodox stories from life
