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Lord Tells of Abortion's Devastating Impact

What’s life like after you’ve had an abortion?

Vera Lord, an attractive, fiftyish former college recruiter from California, walked her audience at Our Lady Queen of Peace Church in Middle River on March 3 “through the looking glass” to the sad and little-known world where women go after their abortions.

“I was 34 years old when I killed my son,” said the Defend Life-sponsored speaker.  “I was 21 weeks’ pregnant; I had felt life.”

But she had had two negative pregnancy tests, so until a few days before the abortion, she thought she had a tumor.

When she learned the truth and turned to others for advice, they all urged her to get an abortion.

“I was the poster child for justifiable abortion,” Lord explained with a grim smile.

“On the night my son was conceived, I received a black eye and a broken rib--I was in a very abusive relationship.  I was also abusing alcohol, methamphetamines and cocaine.”

Even a minister told her that the kind thing to do was to have an abortion--to “send the child back to God.”

She took their advice.

Shortly after you’ve had an abortion, said Vera, “Mother Nature shows up.  No matter what you’ve called it, you have one awful moment when every cell in your body knows what you have done.  Primal instinct tells you--sometimes it’s only for a couple seconds--that you have committed the most awful crime possible.

“We spend the rest of our lives trying to get away from that moment.”

If a woman’s baby dies of Sudden Death Syndrome, everyone feels sympathy, and society grieves with her, said Vera.

But because society tells the post-abortive woman that her baby didn’t really exist, she is not able to express her grief.  Psychologists call this condition impacted grief, said Lord.  

In addition, the woman is also dealing with guilt.

“Susan Smith put her two little boys in a car and pushed it into a lake.  Andrea Yates drowned her children in a bathtub.  What I did was a thousand times worse!  I paid someone to dismember my child, part by part, and he probably felt it all,” said Lord.

The post-abortive woman’s suppressed feelings of grief and guilt manifest themselves in migraine headaches, eating disorders, relationship problems, and a variety of self-destructive behavior.

“A post-abortive woman feels like God and society won’t punish her, so she’ll punish herself,” said Lord.  “I thought about suicide many times, but that would have been too easy; I wanted to punish myself more.”

Vera divorced her husband, then got into “an even worse relationship,” marrying a man who she knew wouldn’t work, and supporting him for the next ten years.

She got herself fired from two jobs for “telling off” her employer.  She continued to abuse drugs.

Finally, she began her healing process, starting with being forgiven by God.

A former Methodist, Vera explored “every religion there is.”  She ended up in a Christian Orthodox church in Pennsylvania.

To prepare for the church’s sacrament of Chrismation (the equivalent of baptism), she had to go to confession.

At the end of a very long confession, Vera recalled, she told her confessor, “Oh, by the way, I had an abortion.”

The priest started crying.

“I said, ‘Why are you crying?’  He said, ‘I’m crying for your baby.’”

Vera fell to her knees, bursting into tears, and cried for an hour.

That was the turning point, she realized later:  “It broke me out of my denial.”

Following her healing process, which started in 1997, said Vera, “I had a call--and you don’t say no--to go around the world, telling people the truth of what happens to women after abortion.”

She has spoken at Harvard three times, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Holy Cross and Wellesley.  This summer she will go on a speaking tour in New Zealand.

One of the steps on the road to healing, she said, is for a woman to name her aborted child.  Vera named her son Gabriel.

“If you look beside me, there’s a 21-year-old young man standing next to me named Gabriel.  What I want you to do is help him and help me to make abortion not only illegal but unthinkable.”

The number of women who have had abortions is legion, said Lord.

“If you are a woman and you have reached the age of 45, the Alan Guttmacher Institute says there is a 43 percent chance you have had at least one abortion.

“That means we’re all around you.  We’re your mother, cousins, aunts, sisters--every one of you knows at least one person who has had an abortion--probably more.”

Vera believes that the way to reach “pro-choicers” is through the use of “cross-over” issues.

“Most ‘pro-choicers’ know it’s a baby--they don’t care.  But the cross-over issues will win them over.”

So as she travels the  country, Lord talks not only about Post-Abortion Syndrome, but about issues such as parental notification; the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which says that if a pregnant woman is killed, there are two victims; and embryonic stem cell research and cloning.

She said she will be doing this for the rest of her life.

“I feel very blessed,” Vera concluded.  “I know I’m doing what God wants me to do.”

Vera Lord can be contacted to schedule a presentation at 410-761-8027, or e-mail alphaomegalife@pghmail.com.