What Post-Abortive Care Looks Like at Alliance

I was 19, working at a restaurant in Ohio, when I found out I was pregnant. I grew up in a Christian home. I knew abortion was wrong, and I said so, right up until I got an ultrasound. I saw the heartbeat on the screen, and I remember thinking, I can't end this life, it's already a person.

But the father wasn't interested in staying, and I was terrified of holding him to something he didn't want. So, after wrestling with my choice for a few weeks, I made my way to an abortion clinic for a surgical abortion. 

I don't remember the name of the clinic, but I do remember the pain. I also remember trying to sit up to see my baby, some instinct in me needing to see. Then. I was pushed back down by the staff.

What I remember most is what came after. I spiraled for almost two years. Drugs, alcohol, unhealthy relationships, anything that would help me forget, even for a moment. I knew intellectually that God would forgive me. I just didn't believe in my heart that I could ever come back from what I'd done. There was a stretch where I genuinely didn't care if I lived.

I share this because I know exactly what it feels like to sit in that kind of silence, believing you are too far gone to be reached. And now, every week, I'm the one sitting across from a mom carrying that same weight. What I've learned, from my own life and from theirs, is that healing needs a few specific things to actually take root. Here is what I needed back then, and what a mom finds when she walks into Alliance today.

I needed to know I could still come back, no matter how long it took. At Alliance, we tell every woman up front, before she ever makes a decision, that if she goes through with an abortion and finds herself struggling, our door stays open. Our nurses send a check-in text in the weeks after, so she knows she hasn't been forgotten. Some women respond right away. Some take months.

One of the moms I have walked with didn't reach out until four months after her abortion. She'd already missed a few of her own appointments before that, but when she was finally ready, we were still there.

I needed room to go slowly. Healing didn't come for me all at once. It took months of small, ordinary conversations before anything actually shifted in me. That's why the center of our post-abortive care isn't a single event, it's a relationship. I’ve walked women through post-abortive recovery books one chapter a week, one hour at a time. This produces honest conversations about scripture, about grief, and it gives a mom room to actually feel what she's feeling instead of being rushed past it.

I needed a way to start before I was ready to commit to anything. Weekly, one-on-one meetings can sometimes feel like too much to ask of a woman who isn't sure yet whether she can trust us. That's why sometimes the best thing to offer is something lower key; a monthly gathering, brunch, and setting where there is no pressure to come every time. For a lot of women, that becomes the first step, before they're ready for something deeper.

And I needed to actually finish what I started. For many women, we try to close the process out together.  This could be with a small memorial or a retreat, because grief that never gets a place to land doesn't go away. It just waits.

Here is the part I want the people who support this work to understand. Abortion does not resolve what it promises to resolve. I have watched women tell themselves they're fine, no issues, totally over it, but it almost always catches up with them eventually.

I once sat with a patient who came to us after already having one abortion and was considering a second one. I had real hope for her. I met with her again and again. In the end, she decided to have the second abortion. I believe that is what happens when the wound from the first abortion never gets the chance to heal. The same fear and shame leads a woman back to the same choice.

The best outcome will always be a mom choosing life before she ever reaches this point. That saves her baby, and it spares her from ever needing to recover from an abortion at all. That is what we are praying for and working toward every time.

But if she does have the abortion, we cannot walk away either. We have to stay ready to sit with her and point her toward the only healing that actually lasts, the hope that comes through the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is transformative! That is what truly changes the lives of the moms we see in an Alliance clinic.  When a mom finds real transformation, she doesn't end up pursuing another abortion in the future.

It took me years to find that on my own. But I found it in church, spending time in the word with Jesus, and with people who refused to let me disappear. I got there eventually. But I think about how much shorter that road could have been if I had known, the whole time, that there was a place I could go back to, whenever I was finally ready.

It is such a joy to do this work today. I get to be the person I needed at 19. I have the privilege of sitting with these moms in the same grief and shame I once carried. I get to tell them there is a way through it. Every mom deserves that.