My Name is Kate and I Just Killed My Baby
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just like me, she regretted it afterward with everything in her heart.
I'm getting off on a tangent again, aren't I? If anyone else was reading this now, they'd say, "You're nuts. What you've just said is impossible. If she'd had an abortion, you'd be dead. You wouldn't be writing this right now."
True enough. But she DID go through with her abortion, and she did agonize over it afterward. And then, three weeks after she'd had it done a miracle happened. But it's not the miracle you're probably thinking. It's not that her abortion was merely unsuccessful. Rather, it turned out that she hadn't actually had one at all!
Doc Jenkins told it best in his own words. All the while he was telling me this story I felt unreal, as if I was an observer watching a play unfold on a stage. But I also knew I was much more than an observer in this play. I was there. I was the baby. I was Jonathon.
"Carol happened to glance at the newspaper on this day, about three weeks after her abortion," said Doc Jenkins. "She was very depressed, and had turned to reading to try and keep her mind off what she had done to you, Kate. And she came across a very interesting article. An article that changed her life."
"It was about how a young doctor who had recently started working at an abortion clinic in town was having his medical license revoked. It seems this doctor had been engaged in a vast pretense. He was secretly very much against abortions, you see, and had concocted a plan to fight them in a small way. He applied to work at the abortion clinic and was accepted. He then 'performed' abortions on roughly a dozen women. But in reality, he had not aborted any of their babies. He only pretended to. He even succeeded at fooling the inexperienced nurse who assisted him, claiming that he was using a new procedure that she knew nothing about."
"He knew he would be found out eventually and stripped of his license. But he also knew how he felt about abortion, and decided that if he could save just one baby--just one, mind you--the sacrifice of his career would be worth it. His main hope was that if the mothers on whom he'd done the 'abortion' found out they had a second chance, they'd have a change of heart and keep their babies this time."
"And that is exactly what your mother did, Kate. She found to her inexpressible relief that her 'abortion' had not happened at all! You were still healthy and growing inside her all the time. And when she found this out she utterly refused to have a true abortion when the clinic offered her one for free, to make amends for the doctor's deception. More than half of the other dozen women on which he had performed his sham abortions decided like your mother, and also let their babies live. Unfortunately, however, a few of them went through with their second--and this time real--abortion."
At this point in his story, I just stared at Doc Jenkins in horror. The thought of Mom having an abortion was unthinkable. It was like eating a delicious piece of pie, only to find a roach in the last bite. In fact, it was worse than that. I found my breath coming in short gasps as if I had just been running a long distance. I nearly felt like I was hyperventilating!
I was an aborted baby! ME! I was supposed to have been killed, just like Jonathon! I was supposed to be dead! My mother and father had both decided to terminate me! The conflicting emotions that coursed through me at this knowledge was almost more than I could take. And I knew it was going to take my feeble brain a while to digest all this, and come to terms with hit. I knew I'd be thinking about this for a long time to come.
I had been saved by a miracle. Out of the hundreds of thousands of abortions that happen in this country every year, I was one of about a dozen babies supposedly 'aborted' by this doctor, that had a very unexpected second chance! And my Mom had taken that chance, bless her heart! Because if she hadn't, I wouldn't be here, writing this right now. I'd be dead. Stone dead.
I just couldn't get over it.
"The other women who had the second chance and saved their babies," continued Doc Jenkins, "were all greatly relieved, of course. But none were as relieved as your mother. The realization that she had aborted you weighed so heavily on her mind for those three intervening weeks that she reached a point of mental instability. The guilt was too much. The young doctor was not able to tell her and the others anything of course, since he wanted to discretely do as many sham 'abortions' as possible before being discovered. So for those three weeks, your mother was absolutely convinced that she had aborted you. You were dead to her, and her grief was inconsolable. Her mind was already starting to sink into oblivion when she found the article, and that saved her sanity just in time. If she had gone just a few more days, it would have been too late."
Doc Jenkins suddenly reached down to the candy plate Mom always kept on our coffee table and helped himself to a butterscotch. A funny little voice in my mind piped up, "How can he eat a butterscotch candy at a time like this, when he's just told me I should be dead!"
I looked down and was surprised to see that my hands were shaking. And then I suddenly blurted. "Thank you. Thank you, Doctor for saving my life. Because of you, I am alive today."
Doc Jenkins looked at me in surprise. "I have not revealed the identity of this doctor! What makes you think it was me?"
"But he is you!" I blurted. Somehow I know it is."
"Hogwash," was all he said casually, while sucking on his butterscotch. "You have no proof. At any rate, to continue the story, this poor doctor had a rough go of it afterward. It took five years before he could get his license back again, during which time he worked at a car wash. And he has been so frowned on by his colleagues even to this day that he cannot lease any space in any doctor building in town. Therefore, he must offer his services out of his own home."
"But that's you!" I cried again. "You work out of your own home!"
He merely shrugged. "So do many doctors. But enough of such wild speculations. Your mother is the point of our discussion today, not some unknown doctor. I'm afraid that even though she found out you were still alive, her mind did not fully grasp that reality at first. For much of the time she seemed perfectly normal. But at other times she would unaccountably start to cry and carry on because she had aborted her baby. I must say that your father showed his true colors at this point. Instead of urging her to have a second abortion, he begged her forgiveness and urged her to have the baby, promising that he would marry her and support her. He was the main one who was instrumental in restoring her to mental health, by constantly and gently reassuring her that her 'little Katydid' as she called you was indeed still alive, and would soon be born. She was always certain you would be a girl, and knew that she would call you Kate."
Just like I always knew that Jonathon would be Jonathon. The joy of finding I had been spared from abortion death was stopped short by the memory of what I had done to Jonathon. If only the doctor had done his deception two weeks ago at the clinic I went to, rather than 19 years ago! But if he had, I would never have been born 19 years ago!
A wild and completely illogical hope suddenly jumped into my fevered brain. "What about my abortion?" I cried. "Was it real? Or was it a fake, like the one Mom had?"
Doc Jenkins shook his head sadly. "I took the liberty of having a friend of mine inquire at the abortion clinic where yours was performed, as soon as I heard you'd had yours done there. I was sure that question would come up, either from you or from Carol. But I'm afraid lightning has not struck twice in the same place this time. Your abortion was legitimate, and was properly performed."
At my crestfallen look he reached over and patted my hand gently. "I don't judge you, Kate. I never judge the mother in these cases. She has enough of a burden to carry without feeling like everyone around her is judging her. But now you suddenly have another life in your hands. Your mother needs you, Kate. I'm afraid when she learned about your abortion, it triggered her repressed memories of the terrors she went through for those three weeks before she found out the truth. I was hoping when I took you upstairs a few minutes ago that the sight of you--a fully grow
n, mature Kate, the girl she raised for 18 years--would restore her mind, at least somewhat. But you saw what happened." He sighed. "I'm afraid her condition is more serious than I'd thought."
"Will she recover?" I asked, a dim sense of terror gripping my heart. The thought of Mom never being Mom again was more than I could take.
"I don't know," he responded. "Perhaps a specialist could answer that question, and I've already urged your father to retain one immediately. But I firmly believe you can help her regain her health by simply being here for her, going in to see her often, reassuring her that you ARE Kate, no matter what she says or how much she denies it. Like your father did 19 years ago, you can help her gain her life back."
I shook my head. "But won't the sight of me just make her problem worse? After all, it was finding out I'd had an abortion that triggered this!"
Doc Jenkins sighed again. "True enough," he said. "But her main problem is not your abortion but her own. While she's going to have to accept the reality of your abortion someday, in the meantime just seeing you every day should trigger her memories of you as the girl she raised, and help her to recover. In other words, I'm convinced your presence will do her more good