I’d like you to meet Ann Marie Cosgrove. She heads up the organization Silent No More MN. When she was twenty-five, she chose abortion. Here’s what she shared with me recently.

JOY :What convinced you abortion was the answer?

ANN MARIE: Even through I was an adult, living on my own and supporting myself, I still felt I would bring a lot of shame and embarrassment to my family by having a child without being married. Couple that with what felt like no support for the pregnancy from the child's father when he said, "it was my choice" as if giving me all the rights eliminated his responsibilities. Abortion seemed like my only option.

JOY: Tell me about your grief and your infertility.

ANN MARIE: While making the decision to have an abortion I suffered from just the thought of it...I ended up doing a lot of drugs hoping I would have a miscarriage. The day of the abortion while laying on the table I looked up with tears in my eyes and said, "God forgive me for what I am about to do"

This was in November of 1983, afterwards I suffered deeply and greatly with thoughts of suicide, feelings of shame and guilt. I lived under a blanket of despair. I married the baby's father hoping to "right a wrong". We did get pregnant again and the pregnancy ended in miscarriage. I thought God was punishing me. I went further into a depression. I hoped God would take my life. I found myself crying all the time and my husband wanted me to "get over it" I was desperate to have a baby and went on fertility medication.

One night I told my husband I was ovulating and he said, "I want a divorce"...I was devastated. The man who I thought would leave years ago if I had the baby left because I had become in his words, "No longer an asset to his life".

I did not live a chaste life style after my husband and I got divorced. I also didn't use any birth control. Looking back I can see I put myself in the position to get pregnant with the men that came into my life hoping to conceive a child. After one abortion and one miscarriage I have never been pregnant again.

JOY: What led you to a path of healing?

ANNE MARIE: After my husband left I was "sick and tired of being sick and tired", so I decided to go into secular counseling to find healing. For three years I saw the same therapist and at the end of those three years she threw up her hands and said, "You are just going to have to learn to live with this."

In turn I said, "How does someone learn to live with murdering their own child"...she had no answer.

It was also during these three years that my mother died from cancer. She died on May 24th, 1994. I, along with my siblings and father were with her as she sat up in bed, said the "Our Father" and then died. It was seeing life leave this world that I came back into the loving arms of Jesus. I told God, "I give up. I want the life you have for me. The life I tried for did not work" and so through my mother's physical death I received my spiritual life.

I returned to the Christian faith I was raised in. Each week I went to a different Church and always picked up different things to read. On March 5th, 1995, which would have been my mother's 62nd birthday, my brother asked me to come to mass with him and his family. Again, I picked up a lot of brochures and magazines.

Later that night, after reading a prayer about Jesus’ Divine Mercy. I got down on my knees and began praying. As I prayed I started to cry and was in a very deep sorrow when God purged a place in my soul I didn’t know existed. I thought I was going to die and told God I was ready. I continued to pray. Then came a moment of release; In place of the captivity of guilt and shame I’d lived in for twelve years, love and peace poured into my soul and I became a different woman.

JOY: What do you want women to know about abortion?

ANNE MARIE: Abortion is forever. Abortion changes you. Abortion changes you forever. Abortion will make a pregnancy go away but it leaves you as a mother of a dead baby.

JOY: What’s the most important thing pro-lifers can do to make a difference in the lives of post-abortive women…and in the legislation process?

ANNE MARIE: Because abortion is so prevalent and yet held in such secrecy we would be very surprised to know who has experienced an abortion. Many times women will keep it a secret from their husbands whom they have been married to for years. And because of that I believe the most important thing is language. For instance, instead of saying, "I just don't understand how someone could do that to their own baby" we should be saying, "My heart goes out to those who feel abortion was their only choice"

We must become a safe person for those who are post-abortive whether they are women or men. It’s up to us to give them the opportunity to open up without judgment. Many times the men get left out as if abortion is not supposed to affect them and yet they hurt deeply as well.

JOY: Tell us about Silent No More MN

ANNE MARIE: Silent No More Minnesota is a 501 ( c ) (3) non-profit organization that is affiliated with the National Silent No More Awareness Campaign. We are women and men who are speaking out publicly (parks, state capitols, street corners, college campuses) about the pain abortion has caused in our lives. We do this for several reasons.

One, to bring awareness that abortion hurts women, wounds men and destroys a family. That every one of us is affected by abortion somehow whether we had an abortion or not.

Two, to reach out to those who maybe suffering in their own silence and pain from past abortion so they too can know there is healing and be able to experience peace and joy.

Three, if someone is pregnant and thinking of making the choice to abort their baby that they hear our stories and identify themselves with us so they don't abort their child.

Ann Marie Cosgrove

www.silentnomoremn.org