“I couldn't even say the words abortion survivor without breaking down,” Amy Miles said.
Amy always had questions. The mother of two and occupational therapist struggles to hear and walk due to cerebral palsy. As a kid, she always wanted to know why.
“I'm pretty fortunate to be just mildly impacted by my cerebral palsy,” Amy said. “But I always wondered, ‘Gosh, why is, why can't I hear? Why can't, why can't I just walk, right? Why, you know, why is paying attention hard for me at school? Why is learning hard?’”
Her parents seemed to answer her questions – they told her she was born premature, anywhere from 27 to 30 weeks, and adopted and loved – but the answers weren’t satisfactory. Their responses were often general or short and Amy assumed her parent’s emotion was because she needed extra support.
Once, driving home after a gymnastics class, Amy told her mom she had explained her adoption to her classmates and teacher.
“And she kind of stopped and looked at me and said, Amy, you don't have to tell everybody that you're adopted,” Amy said
To her childish mind, this response meant her mom didn’t want to talk about it and Amy stopped asking questions. Still, she was always curious about family heritage and history, wanting to see pictures and hear about their ancestors. She loved especially when the pictures showed how family members looked alike.
Her parents loved her and her sister. They lived on a small farm with lots of animals and were part of 4H. In general, Amy had a happy childhood.
School was where she struggled. Focus was hard and she couldn’t physically do the things her friends were doing.
“I was really mad at God as a little one, because I was like, I just want to ride my bike like my friends. Why is it hard? Or I just want to be chosen when on the playground, when we play a game, and nobody chooses me because I'm not good at this,” Amy said.
Amy met her husband, Jason Miles, in high school at a bus stop. Though they attended a couple of dances together, they were just friends. It wasn’t until after high school, when Amy and Jason ran into each other again at a restaurant, that they started dating.
Jason and his whole family look alike, which delighted Amy. The two married in 2004.
When she had her first child in 2010, her thoughts immediately went to her birth mother. Her second child was born in 2012.
“I don't know if it was just me giving birth myself, and I just automatically wondered where she was and if she was OK,” Amy said.
She saw her birth mother as an incredibly brave individual for choosing life and giving her up for adoption.
When her kids were young and she was working full time, Amy heard a coworker share that she had given her first baby up for adoption. Though she hadn’t known her child when she was younger, they have a good relationship now as adults.
“I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that's pretty amazing. That's kind of what I would hope for,’” Amy said.
So, after work that day, she visited her parents to let them know she was going to look for her biological mother.
They did not react how she expected. They were quiet and awkward. Her mom was at a complete loss for words and her dad didn’t say much of anything.
“I remember leaving the house that night going, well, that's weird,” Amy said.
The next day was Amy’s day off work. Her hair was still wrapped up in a towel from her morning shower when her mom walked in with two Starbucks drinks and an air of apprehension – not a usual circumstance.
Amy knew something was up.
“She was like, I want you to hear this from me before you find out yourself. But your birth mother went in to have an abortion procedure, and you survived, you were born alive anywhere from 27 to 30 weeks gestation,” Amy said.
Amy’s world stopped. She’d imagined there was more to her story, but she had no idea it was connected with an attempted abortion. Suddenly, some things in her life made sense – but how could it be true?
Her kids were still little and she was still working full time, so Amy locked the information away. She had no idea how to start processing it.
“I kind of locked it up tight cuz I had little kids and was working full time,” she said. “I didn't really know how to touch it. I didn't know how to process it. I didn't really want to process it honestly, because every time I thought about it, it just hurt so bad and I felt like I was the only one.”
The cerebral palsy Amy struggled with throughout her life was a result of this procedure.
She has a mark on her head – called a hematoma – that is indicative of brain injury. The location of the hematoma is where blood is supplied to help with hearing and motor coordination.
Though Amy tried to lock away her feelings, it’s not something that stays that way. She tried to talk about it with her girlfriends but quickly learned everyone has their own feelings about abortion.
Amy spent two years struggling with what she had learned about herself and spent a lot of time crying. It was worse at night, once everyone was asleep. She spent her evenings googling information about the abortion industry and searching for information on her biological mother.
One night she found a picture of the abortion doctor who tried to kill her.
“I remember just kind of feeling like, ‘this is the first guy that held me on this side of heaven. And how could he do, how could he do that to me?’” Amy said.
Her husband, Jason Miles, tried to offer help, but Amy shut him out. He kept telling her she wasn’t alone, there were other survivors she could research – Melissa Ohden or Gianna Jessen. She told him to let her do it her own way but always looked up what he suggested.
She was brokenhearted at childish Amy’s frustration towards God.
“My heart broke that I had spent so many times shaking my fist at God and thought ‘I finally get it,’” Amy said. “’You never wanted any of us to struggle. You know you want what's best for us all of the time.’ So I spent a lot of time saying, ‘I'm sorry’ to God just because I was like, it's not your fault. You didn't do this to me, this is just a result of broken, brokenness and sin.”
One night, Jason suggested Amy look into the Abortion Survivors Network. She did.
“This one particular night, I was just like, I'm tired of being so sad, and that's when I sent an email, like, I'm just tired of being alone and sad. And then I found out that I wasn't!” Amy said.
Melissa Ohden, the founder of Abortion Survivors Network, emailed her back and connected her with other abortion survivors. Amy was able to attend a couple of zoom calls Ohden hosted and work through a healing curriculum.
Shortly after connecting with Ohden, Amy went to a pro-life rally in Portland, Oregon. Antifa was there and Amy couldn’t shake the feeling they were like wolves. The signs held by the pro-choice people were awful and even some of the pro-life signs were awful and graphic.
Amy couldn’t believe her life was in the midst of this and it related to her story. At a different pro-life event, she was able to hear other abortion survivors speak. It helped her realize she wasn’t alone, but it took her a while to build up the emotional endurance to stomach the gruesomeness of abortion.
Ohden encouraged Amy to find her medical and adoption records. Amy found a pre-adoption birth certificate that had her birth mother’s name on it. She discovered that her birth mother had given her a name after the abortion didn’t work.
Amy reached out to her birth mother and they exchanged a few letters. She’s not ready to meet Amy yet and Amy is honoring those wishes.
As a child, Amy was always questioning everything. She still asks why, even as a grown up. But knowing her story has made her feel more whole and reinforced her faith in God.
“I think my story really reinforced my faith in God,” Amy said. “He is our protector, He's our provider, He loves us so much, every one of us, and we're all we're all valuable creations of His, and He says ‘that one's mine’ to each of us, you know. ... I think I try to see joy more in what I do, not that I was not joyful before, but I'm more intentional about seeing those moments that he provides for us on this side of heaven.”
When preemie is half the story, part two
Lauren Eden was in her room, unpacking from a youth retreat she’d helped lead when her mom knocked and asked her plans for the day. The recent college grad told her mom she was just getting ready for the week.
“Immediately, her eyes just filled with tears and she said, ‘I need to talk to you about something.’ And so she came in my room and sat down on my bed and like, I'm looking at her face, and I'm like, ‘something's wrong, like she's about to give me horrible news,’” Lauren said.
Her mom, Karen Eden, was a college freshman when she discovered she was pregnant. In college at the University of Arkansas on an academic scholarship, she had dreamed of setting the world on fire.
Now, she was shamefaced and terrified.
Karen and her boyfriend (now husband), William Eden, had been dating for six months. They hadn’t talked about marriage.
“In my mind, I just saw myself getting trapped in a, like, a poverty cycle. You know, being a single mother with a baby, and how am I going to take care of a baby, and which wasn't even an option because I didn't want a baby,” Karen said.
William was a senior and a Christian. He had even taken a year off of school to attend seminary and lead a Bible study in his hometown. Then, he got a girl pregnant.
“I can remember Karen coming to the door, ringing my doorbell at my apartment,” William said. “And I opened up the door and her words out of her mouth were, ‘I don't know if you'll ever want to see me again.’ And then she said, ‘I'm pregnant.’”
Finally, Karen decided the way to fix her problem was through an abortion. When she told William, he told her he wouldn’t support it. He knew he had messed up – and he didn’t want to keep making things worse.
Karen was furious.
“I was furious,” she said. “I felt like, ‘Y ou did this to me, and yet you're not willing to fix the problem,’ you know? So I just felt unsupported and kind of abandoned.”
Still, Karen wanted to go through with it. She knew she could get an abortion in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so she asked a friend to drive her. When they arrived at the clinic’s address, it wasn’t there.
Karen called the clinic and discovered they were on the opposite side of town. She wouldn’t make her appointment, so she scheduled a new one. The next time Karen and her friend made it to the clinic and they performed an ultrasound.
It showed she was over 12 weeks pregnant – further along than what the clinic could legally perform.
So, Karen went back to school and decided to try again. She’d heard of a clinic in Little Rock, Arkansas, that performed abortions on babies up to 15 weeks. She’d gotten William to agree to drive her part of the way – to her hometown – and then one of her friends would take her to the clinic.
When William heard of Karen’s trip to Tulsa, he panicked. In franticness, he started praying.
“I was asking God to intervene and to stop her from having an abortion,” he said. “… I just remember, in desperation, praying, ‘God, let her get there and the abortion clinic not be there. Lord, let her, let her get lost. Lord, just, just let her be late.’”
He didn’t want to take her to Little Rock. His parents were visiting school for the weekend, and he hadn’t told them about the baby. Karen asked him to drive her home in front of them – and he felt like he couldn’t say no.
As they were driving across the Boston Mountains, Karen fell asleep. William reached over, laid his hand on her stomach and prayed for God’s intervention.
“Out of nowhere,” William said, “This big, thick fog came down out of heaven and covered our car, and I could not see anything. …I had a car that had a little circular hood ornament on the front of the hood that stood up above the hood. The fog was so thick I could not even see that hood ornament.”
Unable to see the lines on the road, William turned around and went back. The next day, Karen’s friend picked her up and drove her to the clinic in Little Rock. Their ultrasound showed her baby as over 15 weeks.
The clinic wouldn’t do the abortion. However, they told Karen of a clinic in Dallas, Texas that would perform abortions up to 20 weeks. Karen made an appointment.
“I remember after, like, I was taking my final exams, and I took a chemistry final, and then jumped in the car and my friend and I went to Dallas,” Karen said.
Though he had seen God intervene already, William panicked when he learned Karen had gone to Texas. Unable to go to his parents for help, he went to a couple in his church.
It turned out this couple had been praying for an opportunity to minister to an unwed mother. Still, Karen was headed to the abortion clinic in Dallas – and she was mad enough to ignore William’s constant calls.
At the clinic in Texas, the ultrasound showed her at 21 weeks and Karen had a breakdown. The numbers weren’t making sense, and she was starting to freak out.
“William was very amused by all these roadblocks,” Karen said. “And I felt, like I was in crazy land, you know, because none of this added up, you know, it didn't make sense. I didn't feel like I was in control of my own life, you know, I was very frustrated.”
The clinic told her of a different clinic, nearby, that did abortions to 22 weeks. She asked if there was any way they could get the clinic to agree to use their ultrasound, fearing a new one would show her over 22 weeks pregnant. When the other clinic agreed, Karen and her friend went there.
The clinic began the dilation and evacuation abortion procedure by artificially starting dilation, then asked Karen to come back the next morning. Karen went to her friend’s sister’s house, where they were staying the night.
Meanwhile William kept trying to call her. When that didn’t seem to be working, he found a lawyer who said he couldn’t stop the procedure but might be able to get an injunction. And he was still praying for God to change Karen’s heart.
Karen’s friend hadn’t told her sister why they were there. The same number of weeks pregnant as Karen, she was not happy when she found out. She started explaining that Karen could probably feel her baby moving, she just didn’t realize it.
Finally, Karen wore down.
She could feel the baby moving – clueless about pregnancy, she just hadn’t known. She was in pain due to the artificially started labor. She was scared, because she had seen William’s God stop every attempt of hers to solve this problem herself.
And William kept calling.
“I don't know, I just cracked open and told him … if you will come and meet me at the clinic in the morning, then I'm, you know, 95% sure that I won't have the abortion. And so he, he did come and met me there, and we went in together and told the abortion doctor that I had changed my mind,” Karen said.
William and Karen drove back to Little Rock, baby still in tow. Karen had to lie in the backseat of the car, feet propped up, to keep the baby from falling out.
She moved in with the couple from William’s church and got a job at Target. William started working. The two attended church together and Karen became a Christian.
The baby was born at about 26 weeks and immediately whisked off to the NICU.
Karen’s intention was to give her baby up for adoption, but the birth happened so fast, the nurses didn’t know. One of them asked if she would like to see the baby. Karen fell in love and named her Lauren.
“She doesn't look like any baby I've ever seen before, you know, but yet, I don't know. I guess the motherly love kicks in and like I, I knew I couldn't, I couldn't give her up,” Karen said.
Eventually, Karen and William got married. They had two more babies.
When Karen finished her story, Lauren was shocked.
“I was like, what? Like that thought had never even crossed my mind,” Lauren said. “We had never talked about abortion, like, I just thought my parents had me young and but were happy and in love and wanted to keep me.”
Lauren had attributed the health issues – childhood asthma and a difficulty in fighting off diseases – to her premature birth.
She’d just attributed these things to her premature birth. Nothing in her happy childhood hinted at abortion as part of her history. She had so many questions.
But she also had forgiveness and compassion for her mother, who had spent years carrying the guilt and shame from this. In fact, it had taken Karen years to realize she was still hurting from this experience.
“I didn't even realize that there was pain or guilt or trauma or anything of the sort where that's concerned, basically because I had never spoken about it,” Karen said.
As a child, Lauren grew up with feelings of disconnect from her family – like she was on the outside of a circle her family was in.
“I realized now that that's probably attributed to my mom's abortion procedure, like not being able to bond with me because I was in an incubator and spending 53 days in the NICU,” Lauren said.
Talking through her experiences with her family and other abortion survivors has been really helpful. She went through a healing curriculum that’s helped her work through the emotion.
Karen, however, still struggles with trauma and guilt from her experience – even though she never finished the abortion procedure and her baby was born alive.
“It also made me realize, like, for me, someone who actually tried it get an abortion and didn't, and yet, I've got all of that inside of me,” Karen said. “I can't even imagine, like, for women who've actually had abortions, I can't even imagine the kind of guilt and shame and trash, you know, that they're dealing with.”
