The following autobiography is a true story. It is a tragedy familiar to anyone who has worked in the pro-life movement and the saddest thing is that it continues and will continue until and unless the slaughter ends. Could an energetic witness to the sanctity of human life and other moral doctrines of the Orthodox Church have prevented this tragedy? And might not such a witness prevent similar tragedies in the future? The unfortunate thing is that we will never know the truth about that until such a witness exists in both the Church and the culture; it is even more unfortunate that that strong witness becomes less probable with every passing day. -- Orthodox Christians for Life.

I have a small ghost who follows me everywhere. He changes. Sometimes he's an infant, sometimes a toddler, sometimes ­ mostly now ­ he's a teenage boy.

I was 34 when I killed my child. If I had allowed him to live, he would have been born in August, just like his mother. There is not a moment of my life that he is not with me. Our relationship has changed. In the past, I always saw him as my accuser or my judge. Today, my murdered child is no longer my judge, but a sad regretful ghost, whose smile I have never seen.

I was 21 weeks pregnant. I had felt movement. There is no easy "it was just a piece of tissue" argument for me. One more week, and I would have been beyond the legal limit for abortion in the state where I lived. There are many so-called "mitigating factors" that led to my killing my baby at 21 weeks of life:

Until three days before the abortion, I did not know I was pregnant. I had had three negative pregnancy tests and thought my growing stomach was a tumor similar to those that had killed several in my family. The movement I felt I dismissed as gas. Having no idea of my condition, I had continued to smoke three packs of cigarettes a day and abuse alcohol and drugs ­ mostly methamphetamines. I was in a dysfunctional abusive marriage and my baby was not conceived in love ­ he was conceived in extreme violence.

I was going to leave out all three of the above, but I have told you about them for a very important reason: The abortion industry would cite any and all of the above as reason enough to kill my child, since they consider any inconvenient pregnancy abortable and, although mine was not life­threatening to me, it went far beyond inconvenient Those who practice abortion would have you believe that all three of these factors absolve me of guilt, and make the murder of my child perfectly all right ­ rather like the extraction of an impacted wisdom tooth ­ painful and regrettable and stressful, but totally necessary.

Well-meaning friends have all at one time or another said things like this: "With all the nicotine, alcohol, and drugs, you would have had a seriously damaged child ­ abortion was the kind thing to do." "Considering who the father was, the child could've been a serial killer ­ better to abort." "It was the result of a near­rape in a violent, abusive marriage ­ better to abort." "You were forced into it by your crazy ex when you were in a weakened condition ­ you're not responsible anyhow." "You did the best and only thing you could do ­ get on with your life."

You see? I have to tell you my story, because, if any case exemplifies a supposed guilt-free abortion, it is mine. I've heard every rationalization ­ every single one. I have lived behind the feel­good, warm and fuzzy walls of public opinion, political correctness, and conventional wisdom ­ and I am here to tell you it is all unmitigated [absolute nonsense].

Every pro­abortion argument is a lie. You probably think that I am about to take all the abortion industry slogans and dissect them one by one, winning each point with flawless logic, like a good political debate­ I don't need to do that ­ You already know. I already knew. We are female. It is our nature to be mothers. Our mothering can vary from cold indifference to smothering adulation, but mothers we are. We cannot fathom the horror of a Susan Smith, who can put her two little boys in a car and push it into a lake. We see her as another species ­ a creature in a horror film.

I have a theory. I have lost many friends by openly espousing this theory, so read on at your own risk. Despite the fact that we are now highly­evolved, computer­using intellectuals, I believe that the primitive part of our brain, the part that is pure instinct, is alive and well. Case in point: At age 13, I developed a crush on a 15 year­old boy. I proceeded to seduce him. No sex, this was 1961, ­ what I mean is ­ I seduced him. All the glances, all the subtle moves, the whole female arsenal. All that ancient primal knowledge was just suddenly there ­ pure gut­level instinct, coming from some part of my brain that had, until that moment, lain totally dormant.

I may as well have started conversing fluently in Mandarin Chinese. I just, inexplicably, knew how. I believe that on the same primal gut level, we all know ­ really know ­ that abortion is murder at its most horrific. Telling ourselves that it is anything else is pure denial. All the careful layers of makeup we blend over it are for naught. We know it for what it is. And that pure soul­knowledge cannot be erased or eradicated by all the feel­good rationalizations on earth.

Self­hatred may be the worst sin ­ I know it is certainly the worst feeling. After I killed my baby, self­hatred became my whole life. Subconsciously, I thought suicide to be too easy an out (much like the notion that lethal injection is too easy a punishment for many really brutal murderers). So I did not kill my physical body as I had killed my child ­ instead I committed emotional and spiritual suicide.

I created a whole new personality. Since then, I have had psychiatrists tell me that what I did was not unusual ­ very similar to child abuse victims, who "split­off," and become another personality in order to deal with the abuse.

During the next 17 years, there were many times when I literally did not know the person in the mirror. Self­hatred colored my every waking and sleeping moment. It was as if I had pushed an invisible self­destruct button. I divorced my husband only to enter into a disastrous marriage with a man I did not love, who I knew to be totally dependent and incapable of honest work, and proceeded to allow myself to be used by him and his family for 13 years. Deep inside, I was convinced I deserved all of it. My self­worth had totally disappeared. All the things I had loved to do in my old life were now off­limits ­ I would not allow myself enjoyment. Dreamless sleep was my only respite, and it did not come often. When I did pray, it was a secret prayer ­ I prayed to die ­to simply cease. I believe in an after­life, and I knew that hell itself could not be any worse than the life I was experiencing.

The pain would lie in wait and ambush me at unexpected times. A scene on TV, a passage in a book ­ always about someone's missed chance at being a mother. I would be overcome by the kind of racking sobs that are more like spasms than crying. I wanted to just lie down and go to sleep and never get up. I lived in this self­imposed hell for 16 years.

Then, in 1997 a heart condition I'd had since childhood became suddenly worse, and I decided to move back to the east coast to die. As always, I was last on my own priority list. My main reason for the move was so that the leech I'd married would have a better chance at getting work after I was gone.

Living again on the east coast and in the same state where I'd had a happy youth was like sprinkling water on a nearly­dead plant. The total change in environment created the first crack in my shell of self­hatred. I slowly began to feel like me again.

In the fall of 1997, came the event that finally set me free. I was taken as a guest to the All­Saints Greek Orthodox Church. Although, in my youth, I had studied nearly every major religion, I had never entered an Orthodox Christian Church. Suddenly, I was home. All the pieces of my life fell into place. Although I really knew no one there except my host, it was undeniably my home. I took instruction with my Spiritual Father for the next 10 months, and on August 28, 1998, I was chrismated. At the confession before my chrismation, I finally, after nearly two decades of wandering in hell, laid down my burden. My Spiritual Father, an Orthodox priest who can trace his priesthood in a direct line to the Apostles, in much the same ceremony performed in the Catacombs, laid his hand on my head, and, in Christ's name, forgave me of the murder of my child. I am free.

Regaining my self­love has led to my regaining something else that I thought was lost forever. I have entered into a loving relationship with the most wonderful man in the world and I am truly blessed. I am indeed free.

Which brings me to the reason I am telling you my story. When I first began classes in the Orthodox religion, I read everything I could about Orthodox views on everything. All that I read said that Orthodox Christians were anti­abortion. I asked when and where does the local Orthodox Right­to­Life group meet? Huge faux pas ­ vaguely akin to a loud burp at a sophisticated cocktail party. I am a very fast learner­ I never make the same social error twice.

I circled warily around the issue, and, by bits and pieces, I learned that the charitable organizations, the food festival committees, the fund­raisers, were all politically correct. Even the occasional weekend retreat at the monastery, as I was in the habit of doing, was just fine. But, abortion? "It's no one's business and each woman's private choice" ­ now tell me again, which food festival committee are you joining?

Excuse me, but it is my business. It is not your private choice to kill your baby, and, if I can persuade you not to commit the same awful life­ruining act that I did, it is my duty to do so.

There is a huge echoing silence from the Orthodox Church on abortion. Strange, but everyone who tells me that "it's a woman's private choice" is a mother and/or grandmother. Perhaps they fear their daughters or granddaughter may be faced with a life­disrupting pregnancy and want an escape hatch.

As it turned out, the baby I murdered was my last chance. I am an only child of an only child, who had me late in life. All of my relatives are dead. I am divorced. I have no legal or biological family. I am 52 years old, and I am no one's daughter, sister, cousin, most of all, I am no one's mother, niece, wife, and at this point, you're probably thinking "here's the part where I'll be asked to join some group, make my voice heard, etc., etc." Wrong.

You've just read my story. I murdered my child. Because of that act, I spent 18 years in the depths of hell itself, and did a pretty good job of murdering my own soul. And yet, the first time a dearly­valued friend said to me, "it's nobody's business ­ it's the woman's own private choice, don't you agree?" (This was exactly like someone telling a holocaust survivor, with a number tattooed on their forearm, that the holocaust was a myth and didn't they agree?) What do you suppose, considering what you know about me ­ what do you suppose I said?? I said nothing. To my eternal shame, I said nothing. I did the cowardly, socially­acceptable thing, and politely changed the subject.

I'm not asking you to march in parades and wave placards and sign petitions or even to put a bumper sticker on your car. I can't do any of those things. I am not a placard waving, in your­face activist. Here it is: The next time anyone, even a dearly­valued friend or family member tells you "It's a woman's choice, don't say anything. Just give them a copy of this article. If reading this can make one person even just begin to reconsider their "Pro­Choice" position, I have succeeded.

I would give my own life to be able to go back in time and allow my child to live. I cannot. I pray that your showing someone ­ just one person ­ this story will cause someone to stop and reconsider before they perform the same horrible act that killed my child and nearly killed me.

I need no perfect, logical arguments. You know, in your soul, that abortion is the murder of your baby. In the name of 2,000 years of Orthodox Christianity, I say now, break your silence and speak ­ not in parades and demonstrations, but quietly, as you are reading this now ­ one child of God at a time.

Written by my hand and published at my request,

Vera Lord

Bethel Park, PA