“I was scared. I asked them if it’d hurt and they’d say, ‘Just relax.’ I remember they have a lot of people waiting. They don’t have a lot of time so it’s kinda like, you got to get this over with and get you out.”
Michelle Sprawl was just 14, and abortion was her choice. In the beginning, her relationship with her new boyfriend seemed like a dream.
“I really flourished in that,” says Michelle “I really wanted to be with him all the time. I wanted the attention and the affection.
“We really were planning to get married, but I never made up my mind that I wasn’t going to have sex. So then when you’re into that situation you just kinda go with the flow -- whatever happens, which was what happened with me.”
When Michelle found out she was pregnant, she went to a girlfriend for some advice…
“I said, ‘An abortion?’ And she said, ‘Yeah. It’s just a simple procedure. You go in and out, and it’s like you’re never pregnant.’ I said, ‘How do you know?’ And she said, ‘Because I had one,’ and she started naming people that I knew.
Michelle’s parents drove her to the abortion clinic. Things were plenty tense already, then protestors came banging on their car.
Michelle knew she was doing something wrong. “I felt like I needed to have the abortion. So no matter what, this is what I had to do. I’d have to just deal with the rest of it later.”
The worst part was still to come …
“I do remember the sound of the suctioning machine,” she says. “I was crying. Then the nurse came to me. The doctor told her to calm me down. So she came over and said, ‘You were woman enough to have sex. You’re woman enough to take this. You need to stop that crying.’
“It was a major turning point in my life. I felt a huge, huge loss. I knew immediately after the abortion that that was my baby. I was angry at myself. I was angry at him for getting me pregnant. I was angry at my parents for not talking to me more about sex. I was angry at the doctor for treating me that way. I was angry at God because I had asked Him, ‘Please, don’t let me get pregnant.’”
Michelle tried several methods to escape her guilt and anger…
“It just got worse because I was on the birth control pill, I was drinking, smoking dope, taking pills… I didn’t care.”
And that continued for seven years. Then came an unexpected bend in the road.
“At 21 years old the guy I was dating took me to church,” she says. “I hear the gospel for the first time, and I start hearing that God loves me the way that I am. I start hearing positive things and not just condemning things about sins.
“When I prayed and asked God, truly from my heart, for repentance. I asked Him to forgive me for the abortion, for all my sins, to come into my heart, and be my Savior. At that moment, I just felt God wrap His arms around me and say, ‘Michelle, I love you. I love you more than anything in this world, and it does not matter to me what anyone else thinks about you.’”
A few years later Michelle married, and in time had a baby. But she still hadn’t dealt with her “baggage.” So she started really studying the Bible like never before.
“God walked me through the process of dealing with the anger, the unforgiveness, the depression, and then finally accepting His forgiveness and knowing that I’m healed.”
For years Michelle has been counseling women at crisis pregnancy centers, helping them see what’s true about abortion and what’s not.
The mistruth about abortion? Michelle says, “That abortion is safe. Abortion is just a ‘simple procedure.’ You’re in and out like having your tonsils taken out. That it’s not painful. That there are really minor complications, if any. Another lie that women might believe is that there’s no psychological consequences, emotionally, physically, spiritually. God has just put a calling on my life that everything that Satan had used for evil God was going to take it and turn it into something amazing and beautiful like Jesus.”
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