Women are often told that abortion access means reproductive freedom, but when Toni McFadden walked into a Planned Parenthood clinic at the age of 18, she didn’t feel free. She felt cornered.
After learning she was pregnant, she was “terrified and looking for someone, anyone, to tell me it would be OK,” Ms. McFadden said. Instead, her boyfriend encouraged her to have an abortion.
“I shared the news with my boyfriend, hoping he would be supportive. He said, ‘You don’t want to keep it, do you?’” she recalled. “I felt trapped. I immediately thought, ‘If I don’t have this abortion, my boyfriend would leave me.’ I did the only thing I thought I could do. I ended the life of my child through abortion.”
Ms. McFadden’s boyfriend dropped her off at an abortion clinic in Pennsylvania and then “walked out of my life,” she said.
She was one of a half-dozen women who shared their stories Wednesday about how easy access to abortion left them vulnerable to pressure from boyfriends, husbands and even medical providers to end their pregnancies.
“Most women with unplanned pregnancies said that they would not have gotten abortions if they had had the emotional or financial support,” said Emily Erin Davis, a representative for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which hosted the virtual press conference. “A sizable number of these women did not have that freedom, whether forced, coerced or pushed to an unwanted abortion.”
A 2023 study by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute found that 61% of women with histories of abortion felt high levels of pressure to terminate their pregnancies, whether from their personal circumstances or interpersonal relationships.
“What we found was really striking: Only a third of the women in our study said that having an abortion was something that they wanted to do and was consistent with values and preferences,” said Tessa Cox, senior research associate at the Lozier Institute. “Two-thirds said their abortions were inconsistent or counter with their own values and preferences.”
That figure “includes a quarter of women who said their abortions were unwanted or even coerced,” she said.
Decades later, the women who felt pushed into having abortions still wrestle with anger, frustration and sorrow.
Lorien Hershberger of Florida said she felt she had no choice but to seek an abortion after lifelong poverty and pressure from her boyfriend. She was 20 years old and had given birth to a son just three months earlier over his family’s objections.
“He handed me the money and told me to get rid of it, with the added threat of leaving our son and me. I didn’t have enough fight in me to withstand his pressure a second time,” she said. “At that moment, I was completely dependent on him, lacking formal education. I relented, completely and utterly defeated.”
During the procedure, she said, she turned her face as far from the monitor as she could, “unable to look into my baby’s face.” Tears were streaming down her face.
“I learned that being poor was not the worst thing you could be when I took the life of my child,” Ms. Hershberger said.
Shanna Cates of San Antonio said her boyfriend threatened suicide if she gave birth to the child. She felt she had to choose between either his life or the baby’s.
“I would be responsible for this man taking himself out of the world if I brought our child into it, so under distress, I went and got an abortion,” she said.
She shared her misgivings with the doctor. Instead of offering options, he told her she was doing the right thing and had a lifetime to start a family.
“He was dead wrong,” Ms. Cates said. “I never had children ever again. I never could. That is my story.”
Mayela Banks, an immigrant with limited English skills, went to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Phoenix and asked to speak with a doctor. She said she was told to pay $200 and sign paperwork that she didn’t fully understand without being offered a translator.
She was placed on an IV and only belatedly realized she was undergoing an abortion when she heard a vacuuming sound. Days later, she was lactating, meaning she likely had a late-term abortion.
“Now I realize they coerced me into aborting,” Ms. Banks said. “They offered me no information, no informed consent, no consultation with a doctor, no translation, no translator or explanation, and they lied over and over to me. They said there would be no pain. There was more than physical pain.”
The Washington Times has reached out to Planned Parenthood for comment.
Ms. Banks said she tried for years after the experience to have a baby, but, like Ms. Cates, “I was never able to have a child of my own.”
Jessica Williams had a happier ending. She became pregnant with another man’s baby in Las Vegas while she and her husband were separated. Her husband demanded that she abort the baby, so she took the first pill in the two-pill abortion regimen and then changed her mind.
She said she knew from her nursing training about the abortion pill reversal. She went to a pro-life pregnancy center for progesterone, which saved her pregnancy and enabled her to give birth to a healthy girl.
Chelsey Davis said her doctor urged her to have an abortion after an ultrasound revealed a mass in her unborn baby’s abdomen, meaning the baby could be stillborn or disabled.
Desperate for support, she turned to “the one place I knew would be on my side: a pregnancy resource center.” She refused to abort the baby. Her son was born with liver calcification that resolved itself with no medical intervention.
Ms. McFadden’s story had an unexpected twist. Ten years after her abortion, her ex-boyfriend returned, apologized and asked for forgiveness. They fell in love and lit a candle at their wedding ceremony in memory of their unborn child.
Today, they have four children, and Ms. McFadden has become an advocate for healthy relationships and alternatives to abortion. She spoke at the 2022 March for Life in Washington.
She and the other women urged Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to push for more resources to help women give birth instead of terminating their pregnancies.
“I do want to ask Vice President [Kamala] Harris and the Democrats: Is this what you’re calling freedom? No,” Ms. McFadden said. “Just like most women with unplanned pregnancies, if I had had the support that I needed, I could have kept my baby.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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