Emergency Encounters: What Do You Mean?

I entered the room to evaluate a woman in her late 20s with back pain, but that wasn't really the issue. She told me how she taken Plan B a few weeks back and, based on the large amount of bleeding she had, that it had worked so she didn't think she could be pregnant…

I sat next to her and told her the test was positive. She clearly looked distressed.

"I can't have this baby," she said.

I hesitated before I spoke; maybe it was a moment of prayer. "You know," I said gently, "abortions aren't all they're cracked up to be."

She turned her head sharply towards me and her eyes locked on to mine. "What you mean?" she asked.

I continued in a quiet and calm voice, my eyes still locked with hers. "There can be a lot of guilt, sometimes depression, even substance abuse…" I could barely finish my sentence when she responded.

"I know," she said and turned her eyes away from me. She dropped her head down.

She had had an abortion before and knew exactly what I was talking about. But she was in school, and her mother lived in another country. "I can't have this baby," she said. "But I can't have another abortion."

I gave her the number for local crisis pregnancy center and told her to talk it out with them before she made any decision, that she shouldn't go someplace that sold abortions in order to figure this out.

I still pray for her for so many different things depending on what her decision turned out to be.  I hope she's all right, not just physically, no matter what her decision turned out to be.