Silent Victims of Abortion

Silent Victims of Abortion
By Magaly Bobadilla

For approximately
50 years I have silently carried a burden in my heart. Recently during
my prayer time, I felt that the Lord was asking me to break that
silence. Much
has been written and said about the suffering of both women and men,
who have been hurt by abortion. Yet we rarely hear or read about the
other silent victims of abortion : the siblings of aborted children.
It is
not an easy task for me to write about my own painful experience with
abortion. I am doing so in obedience to God, who I believe asked me to
share it. I am also doing it in the hope of encouraging others who,
like me, carry the same type of burden but have not come out publicly.
We need to let everyone know, that each abortion leaves many victims,
and I'm not just referring to the unborn baby, his or her mother and/or
father.
When
I was a teenager my mother had an abortion. For some reason that I
don't know about or can't remember, she asked me to accompany her to
the abortuary. I remember that clinic in Havana, Cuba. It was like any
other clinic. The abortionist was the same gynecologist who delivered
babies at a private hospital where we got our medical care. Even though
at that time abortion on demand was illegal in Cuba (my country of
origin), it was widely practiced, done mostly by doctors, and used as a
method of birth control. Abortion on demand was legalized and the state
has been paying for it, since Fidel Castro took over more than 40 years
ago and Cuba became a communist state. Today, there are more abortions
than births in Cuba and that country has the lowest birth rate in the
world . I often wonder if that repressive communist regime is God's
judgement on my country of origin, for countless abortions performed.
At
the time of my mother's abortion about 50 years ago, science was not as
advanced as it is now. Those who had no medical training had no real
knowledge of the development of the unborn child. Though
I was a very young teenager and had very little religious formation,
God had already given me a special awareness of the humanity of my
unborn sibling , which I believe was a special gift from Him in
preparation for the work He would ask me to do later. However, at that
time my mother did not realize that abortion kills a human being. She
truly thought that it was just a matter of getting rid of some tissue.
Abortion was so easy to obtain and so widely practiced in Cuba that it
was very common, so probably most people didn't think that it was
wrong.