I Aborted My Lover’s Baby to Save My Other Children From the Devastation of a Broken Home

Submitted by: F

Fool that I am, I fell into an affair and got pregnant. My husband had gotten a vasectomy. I didn’t want my older 4 children to go through the devastation of our family getting blown apart. I agonized for a month to find a way to save the baby. I love all my children and I would have loved this one too. I had every reason in the world to end the pregnancy. But in the end it wasn’t worth my babies life and my very soul.

I wrote this poem the day after.

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Abortion

Now that all the dust settles and I survey the scene,
So many problems and crises and struggles averted.
My outer landscape is at peace and all is calm and undisturbed.
That was the point of it all,
No casualties here.
Mission accomplished.
But it’s an empty victory.

Within, a bomb has gone off.
It’s shrapnel stuck in everywhere; chaos, ruin and destruction. 
A landscape that is devastated and desolate.
In stark contrast to the outer world left intact.
Deep in my soul and in my body,
There is a mounting cry that won’t be suppressed,
I want my baby
My precious one!
And I can’t ever have him back,
Not if I dig in the bowels of the earth,
Or search the heavens above.
Not in this life, will I behold him.
Nothing can replace him
Me and him, we took the fall.
A fall no one even knows about.
Inwardly my heart looks for him and seeks out his presence, but I reach out and he is no longer there.
I search the inner chambers, but he is removed from me.
Where is he now?
I cannot understand that I am the reason for that.
That there was no safe place for you and me in this world together.

It’s hard to see the peace around me, purchased at such a high price, through eyes veiled in mourning.