We have previously shared a book called Empty Arms that highlights the stories of 60 women who had abortions. Their regret was met with grace and faith, hope and healing. While Vice President Kamala Harris makes a political show of visiting an abortion clinic, millions of women struggle with the anguish of their “choice.” One of them is Theresa Bonopartis, the director of Lumina, which offers hope and healing to those suffering after abortions, and the co-developer of Entering Canaan, a post-abortion ministry. She writes:

Recently, while praying in front of an abortion facility in New York City, while holding my sign, “I had an abortion, life does not go back to normal,” a pro-abortion protester came up to me boasting how her life was totally normal after her three abortions. I never answer when such protesters approach me, but inside I couldn’t help but think, “Does she think this is normal for us, to spend our Saturday mornings in front of an abortion facility?”

Abortion changes people — in diverse ways, but looking around at the effect it is having on our country, one has to acknowledge it is life-altering, not only for the individual involved but for everyone.

For more than 50 years now, my life has been affected by an abortion I had at 17 years old. Coerced by my father to abort my unborn child in my fourth month of pregnancy, the imprint of his dead, burned body from a saline abortion will stay with me forever. I remember thinking, “How is it possible that this is legal?” I could not wrap my head around the horror of the reality of what had just happened, a horror to this day that is hidden from the world.

Abortion is cloaked in language like “women’s health care” or “reproductive choice,” never venturing near what it is, the slaughter of an unborn baby in the womb and the ultimate failure of love to preserve your “self” for whatever reason. A desperation to believe the lies, and the rhetoric we are bombarded with daily, wins out over the truth.

Leftists clamor for “rights,” but they rarely care about women who feel wronged. “How is it that abortion can harm your mental health if you cannot get an abortion,” Bonopartis asks, “but the harm experienced by taking the life of your child is not allowed to exist?” Speaking of denying reality, she continues:

Abortion is framed as a choice, but of course, the truth is that very often it is not a woman’s choice. Women are coerced into abortion by boyfriends, husband, and fathers. Minors are sexually abused and brought for abortions with no consequences for their abusers. Women are physically and psychologically harmed, with large segments of society refusing to acknowledge their pain. Recently, more women have been traumatized, having been told chemical abortion is safe and can be done “in the comfort of your home,” only to come face to face with their dead unborn baby, an event that will forever erase the comfort of home.

Yes, we as a society have gotten incredibly good at denying the reality of abortion. There is no place more protected than abortion facilities, with boundaries and laws specifically enforced for them. People can burn down towns and commit all kinds of crimes, but step out of bounds near an abortion facility and you are sure to get hit with the full extent of the law.

Many pass by these killing centers with no thought of what is happening inside. They choose instead to call it “women’s health” as babies are slaughtered. It is easier to pretend it’s “women’s health,” so as not to have to face what women are really doing, but one day we will have to look.

“In the end,” she concludes, “we will all have to answer for the more than 63 million babies that have died in the U.S. while most not only stood silently by, but some even celebrated.” Instead, “I pray every day to have the courage to speak the truth, the truth of what I saw and what abortion truly is — the killing of innocent unborn babies under the guise of women’s rights.”

Read the whole thing here.