Irene Van der Wende
aborted her baby conceived in rape, and later learned she, herself, had been conceived in rape.  
Irene is from the Netherlands and available for speaking --

I regret killing my baby after rape.

His strong arms gripping tightly around my neck, strangling me, choking me, left me gasping for breath.  I realized death was imminent, so in a split second I chose to let him have his way with my body, so that I could stay alive.  Afterwards, I clutched my coat tightly against me, so no one would see my ripped clothing underneath. . . .

Although my body started to change, and needing larger clothes, I believed I was not pregnant, as the initial pregnancy test came up negative (not enough hormones yet.)  But after a 6-week roadshow, a visit to my family doctor informed me I was pregnant. “Oh no!”  Shock, disbelief, fear and turmoil gripped me.  London advised me to go a clinic halfway north in England for an abortion, mentioning that it had to be done
quickly, as it was on the verge of the time it was allowed to be done legally.  Numb, and only focusing on all the fears, I went ahead. My abortion took place in a cold, sinister, old mansion.
I felt very uncomfortable, waiting in the hall with black-white checkered tiles, watching the minutes on the clock tick by.  It was as if death hung as
a cloud in the air above me.  I did my best to stuff my emotions, signed a paper, received my number, and joined some 8 women lying on beds in a room, waiting a long time after inserting something and changing into an operation garment that was to remain open.  As they spoke of their pregnancies, morning sickness, and why they were killing their babies, I began to think.  In the lift (elevator) later, when I was going upstairs, I placed a hand over my tummy, finally realizing I had a child inside of me, and said “I’m a mother.  I have a baby inside of me!”  The nurse accompanying me reassured me, saying  “It’s okay – other women have that thought too at the last minute.  You’re doing the right thing,” after which the doors opened,
and I walked into a brightly lit operating room, where I was told to lie down, and place my legs up high in the stirrups.  But I felt terrible and vulnerable due to the privacy, and even more so as the abortionist became very angry and agitated when the nurse discussed something with him, and he started to yell at me, saying I had already signed a consent form, hadn’t I?  And that I was holding up the flow of things.  He roughly grabbed my arms, which they strapped down, and forced a needle into my arm, after which I don´t remember much . . . . I passed out.

When I came to, I was loudly told to stand.  In agony, I gripped my tummy with one hand, doubled with pain, while with the other, I fumbled my way along the dark corridor wall, back to my bed in the other room.  The other women were now silent and groaning with pain.  My stomach felt as if every inch had been scraped open with a sharp razor blade.  We were left alone, and after a long time -- I believe the next day -- I was allowed to go home, but the pain was unbearable. They offered a wheelchair, but I grit my teeth, saying to myself:  “I wanted this, so grin and bear it.”  I bled profusely on the
drive home, having to stop every now and then, dizzy, and was in absolute agony.  The bleeding lasted half a year.

Looking back, I regret my abortion, and the morning after pills I took.   If I had realized then, what I now know, I would never have been able to ask to have my baby killed. I came to this awareness after seeing videos of an abortion, seeing a 12 week old baby react to the instruments inside the womb, and seeing the aweful pictures of these little humans, where we pull off their arms, break their legs and pull them off, squash their skull, suction out (parts of their) bodies, brains, decapitate them, etc. How can we look at these pictures, with intestines, ribs, brains, heart, backbone, etc., and not call them a human being?  Life starts at conception – all the genes, and sex are in the first cell, hair colour, skin colour, etc. which keeps on expanding to 2, 4, 8, 16 cells etc., on till adolescence, when our children are fully grown.  I had immense guilt and remorse, after realizing what I had done. I also cut myself off from my emotions, as the guilt was too much to bear, causing problems in relationships later.  Later, I read that of women like me, who abort after sexual abuse (=less that 1% of all abortions) that 80% of us regret our abortions.  Whereas of the 70% who chose to let their baby live, none
had regrets.  I wish I hadn’t killed her.

Every mother’s day afterwards, I had to stand still at the fact that I was a mother, even though I had no living child – mother of a dead baby, through my own doing.  Emotional trauma -- I carried this in silence, not talking about it.  I froze when shortly afterwards someone placed their little baby in my arms – who was I to still hold a baby after killing mine?  I joined the statistics of having a miscarriage later.  I learned that scar tissue from the abortion can cause problems in later pregnancies, and premature births from the damage of the abortion, along with 50% more chance of breast cancer if you don’t carry your first baby to full term, but abruptly stop the milk production process developing by aborting.  When my daughter was born later via c-section, my arms were strapped again, just like during the abortion, and all the fear and anxiety came flooding back, at what should have been just a joyous oment.  I also find it heart-wrenching to not be able to say to my oldest living child, that she is my first born.  And when one day she came home from school, asking if I had ever lost a baby, I was stuck for words – how do you tell a little girl that you ordered her (half-) sister to be killed?  How motionally traumatic for the family of the woman who chose to kill.  How unsafe the brother/sister feel --  “Why them, and not me?”

When I was around 35, I found out I, myself, was conceived in rape.   My whole family had known all along, except for me.  My father and mother were married, but it was brutal rape.  He was totally drunk at the time, and had violently slapped her, all around the room, threw her on the bed, and raped her at force.  I was conceived.  But my mother tried to commit suicide.  When I had been growing in her womb about 6 months, she got on her bike, having premeditated to throw both her and me in front of a train at the railroad tracks a few miles away.  She went there, and stood at the side of the rail, but just as the train was approaching, she couldn’t go through with it.  I am so grateful she didn’t!  Life growing up wasn’t always as nice as it could have been when you hear how some were raised in nice, warm, loving, friendly homes.  But . . . , life is not about how we were conceived, or our upbringing, but about what we make of it.  There is healing, and I am so glad my mother didn’t have me killed through suicide, when she had the chance.  I am so glad that she gave birth to me, and raised me, despite how I was conceived, and that I am alive, and able to now do something for humanity.  My value and right to life does not depend on how I was conceived.

I have had to come to terms with what I, myself, did.  I chose to have someone paid to kill my innocent baby.  There was a father (the rapist), a mother (me) and a baby.  But I hired a murderer (the abortionist) to kill my baby.  I stuffed it away as much as I could for 25 years, but like psychology says, eventually the cesspool of life needs to be opened, and become honest about things we have done in our life.  I have named my babies, made a grave for them at the cemetery, and I have found healing with YHWH (God), and His son Yahshua (Jesus), whereby I am now able to testify of what I have
done, and the effects it has brought me, my family and loved ones, physically, emotionally and spiritually.  I deeply regret having put my innocent little baby through such torture and painful mutilation, letting her be cut up into pieces while still alive with a beating heart.  Killing
an innocent baby is never right, even after rape.  Two wrongs don’t make a right.  The father harmed me, but I harmed the baby.  The
baby didn’t do anything wrong.  The baby is a 3rd person.  I could have grown to love her, or have her adopted in a loving family.  A
baby should not carry the burden of the sin of the parent and be killed for it.  In law, if a man kills a pregnant woman, he is punished for
the death of two people.  What are we doing killing our own children?

I wish people would have told me about the beautiful development of my little one (= foetus in Latin).  That before we as mothers even know we are pregnant, 4 days missed cycle, that the baby already has a beating heart at 18-21 days.  That at 18 days, their brains start developing, at 20 days with mid-, fore- and hindbrain, and that their brainwaves can be measured at 40 days.  That they are sensitive to touch, heat, light, and noise.  Pain eceptors begin to grow with 4-5 weeks.  At 6 weeks, they respond to touch.  They have their own DNA, sex, blood type, and fingerprint, making them unique individuals.  Beautiful little hands and feet, ribs, mouth, tongue.   Sometimes the baby doesn’t die straight away when the killing starts, and the arms and legs are pulled off.  An abortionist has testified that the babies heart then still throbs sometimes.  Or that they are still alive as they are suctioned out, going through the tube, to die later in the jar.  These are human beings, who are not brain dead, or without feeling. If a woman is pregnant, she needs support, not abortion.  Many of us (64%) are coerced into abortion (e.g. by boyfriend, mother, father, schoolteacher, doctor, nurse, girlfriend, social worker) whereby we can feel regret and shame and guilt later, when we fully realize the full extent of what we have done.  A baby says: let me live. Take my hand, instead of my life.  Love me, instead of kill me.   Abortion kills a beating heart.  With embryoselection for diseases, we are saying to brothers/sisters “you are only wanted and loved, because you don’t have a handicap.” To the handicapped people, we are actually saying “you are only tolerated, because the technology wasn’t there to eliminate you when you were an embryo” -- genocide inside our
laboratories.  Remember: God loves you, but also your baby.  With abortion, one heart stops beating, but another heart breaks.  We either become numb, like I did at first, or the remorse and guilt and shame hovers over us, till we come clean, and find healing.  Like Mother Theresa said, “Abortion is the death of two: the baby, and the mother’s conscience.”  

Please don’t kill your baby.  Your baby needs to be allowed to live.  Find someone to help you.

.Irene van der Wende