By Holly Dutton

I was born in Endicott, NY, in 1955. I was normal until severe epilepsy struck me at age six. This posed a new and terrifying experience for me, my family, and friends. Mom tried her best to cope, taking me to a child psychologist and monitoring my daily medication.

Dad, however, appeared unable to accept my new-found disability. For instance, he took care never to directly mention my illness, and if someone else did, he would change the subject. Other relatives and friends were also dismayed and bewildered at my situation. Some former playmates were forbidden to see me anymore for fear that my illness might be catching. Stinging taunts and name-calling were common occurrences, but the barbs from my brother hurt the worst. Mom always rebuked him for deriding me, but he kept it up. However, he was two years my junior-which made him only four at the time-so he was really too young to understand what was happening.

With proper medical care, my epilepsy was reduced from severe to mild by the time I was nine. In December, 1967, at age 12, I was secretly kidnapped from my parents’ home in Miami, FL (where we had moved in 1962), by a total stranger who, threatening to kill at the least resistance, took me two blocks from my home, mercilessly raped me for two hours, then dumped me back home. Profoundly shattered by this brutal and unprecedented attack, I went straight to bed instead of awakening my parents.

Next morning, Saturday, December 2, 1967, Mom and Dad wondered what was making me so adversely withdrawn. I had no interest in Saturday morning cartoons and would not eat any breakfast. Finally, Mom warned me I had better eat so I could take my medicine. Then I told her what had occurred the night before. She was absolutely flabbergasted, too much so to believe me. When I insisted I was telling the truth, Mom hit me with a pillow. Dad warned me rape was then a capital offense in FL. "Do you want an innocent man to be executed?!" Dad exclaimed. When Mom suggested a medical exam to see if I’d "really" been raped, I balked in sheer terror. The rapist had roughed me up so badly I was too afraid to let anyone else, even a doctor, touch me.

At the time, it seemed my parents didn’t care, but actually they were probably just as stunned and frightened as I was. Back then, however, I was too young to understand, and soon began to resent them. Since my parents hadn’t been able to believe me, I felt nobody else would, either, and kept the ordeal to myself. I told no one, not even my parish priest. While I did my best to go on with life as usual, my emotional struggle worsened, and my once top-level school grades began to decline.

On April 4, 1968, news of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination hit like a thunderbolt, electrifying horrible memories of my own victimization. Later the same month, I turned 13, but didn’t feel like celebrating. Instead of a young lady, I felt like a dirty dishrag, for the assault had occurred before my first period, meaning I was still a little girl at the time!

Two months later, the June 5, 1968 murder of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy jolted me all the more violently. A week after this tragedy, I again found myself arguing with my parents about the rape. "I hope God punishes that creep for raping me!" I sobbed. "I hope God punishes you for telling lies!" my father shot back.

Much to my parents’ confusion and dismay, my school grades continued to suffer. While I appeared to be nonchalant about life, in reality I was absolutely furious about the outrage done to me and my parents’ seeming lack of concern and support. To my utter bewilderment and despair, I found myself beginning to believe I must have done something to deserve such raunchy treatment.

By 16, I was promiscuous. When word of my doings from my high-school principal reached my parents, they rushed me to a psychiatrist. After hearing me recount the rape to the psychiatrist, Mom exclaimed, "But I didn’t believe her because she didn’t act hysterical about it! She didn’t wake her father and me right away to tell us!" The psychiatrist then explained to my mother that the rape had probably left me so emotionally traumatized that I couldn’t think straight and summon immediate aid. Visits with the psychiatrist continued until I graduated from high school in June, 1972.

Although my parents hoped I’d go to college after graduating from high school, I wasn’t really interested. I was more intent on finding a way to "fix things." Despite the fact my parents had tried to help me by taking me to a psychiatrist, I longed to get even with them for not believing me about the rape. Still mildly epileptic, I shied away from drugs as a means of revenge.

So I decided to try getting pregnant out of wedlock to retaliate against my parents, and continued to secretly see men on the side. Eight months later, in February, 1973, I became pregnant. I was seventeen. All month I watched anxiously for a period that never came. Suddenly I became frightened, and realizing I’d be found out sooner or later, at last decided to tell someone -- my mother. Utterly stunned and dismayed, my mother had our family doctor test me, and sure enough, I was pregnant (March 12, 1973). Mom and Dad were thoroughly chagrinned and terrified. Over the next month, the doctor tested me two more times-the second test after my second missed period-and each time, the results resounded "positive!"

The doctor warned, in a voice harsh with fatalism, that abortion was the only option. Epilepsy is known to "dangerously or even fatally complicate pregnancy." My poor parents were at their wits’ end. They didn’t like the idea of abortion, but also didn’t want to risk the health or perhaps even the life of their daughter. I held out against abortion until the doctor mentioned that the strong medications required for my seizures (Phenobarbitol and Dilantin), just might "seriously damage" the fetus by inducing physical and/or mental defects. "Do you really want to give birth to a deformed child?" he asked almost disparagingly. What a thing to say! I had gone to my parish priest for help, but after I repeated the doctor’s grim prognosis, the priest was just as frightened and confused as I was. After a prolonged, moody silence, the priest advised me that if the doctor felt the abortion was "in my best interests," then I should follow his counsel.

The abortion counselor did not give my parents and me the truth about abortion. We were not informed on how an unborn child develops, the gruesome nature of abortion procedures, or the tragic physical and emotional aftermath of abortion. All that seemed to matter was that this inconvenient unborn child be eliminated as soon as possible-which is just what was executed when my unborn daughter was killed by abortion on April 5, 1973. She was only eight weeks old.

For the next five years, I felt deep guilt and depression from the abortion, but it remained mostly low-key -- until Mother’s Day, 1978. I had just turned 23. After each Mass that Mother’s Day, strange-looking photos were being passed out to the congregation. I moved in for a closer look, only to discover that these photos revealed what the abortion counselor had hidden: the true nature of abortion, in every grisly detail, depicted in these photos of innocent children murdered by various abortion methods. One photo of an 8-week-old killed by suction abortion hit too close for comfort. "The same age as my daughter! The same method used to kill her!" my heart cried out in anguished dismay.

Desolated as never before, I plunged into 11 years of terrible turmoil and despair. Now that I knew how my poor child had really died, I hated myself as never before. I plunged headlong into tobacco and alcohol addiction. In 1980 and 1982, I attempted suicide, but failed. In 1985, Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s "The Silent Scream" devastated me still further. Time and again I confronted my parents, but every time they insisted that the doctor’s decision was "in my best interests." In 1988 a mental health therapist, appalled by my "reckless" remarks on killing my mother, exclaimed, "You think nothing of killing your own mother, yet you carry on about killing an embryo!" My eyes flashed red-hot rage. "What you’re talking about is not an embryo!" I screamed in an almost rabid lather of fury at the therapist. "She is a person, my unborn child, my daughter, and I let some creep kill her by abortion!"

By March, 1989, I was sick of the post-abortion struggle. Sixteen years of hell with still no end in sight. Countless intensive yet failed attempts to break the grip of this emotional monster. Again ready to give up on life, I plotted the final demise of my parents, and then myself.

After two days of awkward but intense prayer and meditation, I phoned Carol Everett at her Dallas office on March 9, 1989--the day which marked the first real positive turning point for me in years. God seemed to speak sweetly through Carol Everett. Through her encouragement and example, Jesus invitingly demonstrated to me that no sin is too great to be forgiven and no sinner too wretched to be transformed by His grace into "a new creature in Christ." At last, after a lifetime of struggling to break free, here was the key to my liberation! His mercy! If only I would accept! And, yes, I did accept-and His forgiveness set me FREE!--for the first time ever!

Meanwhile, I had been praying for the conversion of my parents. Sure enough, on Sept. 18, 1991, my mother was listening to "Point of View," a Christian radio talk show. And on this particular date, the guest was none other than Carol Everett. As she listened to Carol Everett’s moving testimony, Mom was convicted and repented of her part in aborting her grandchild. Later God reached through Mom to convert my father. After Mom and Dad had repented, they apologized to me. I was overjoyed God had finally brought my parents back to Himself, and thus restored our family.

In 1990, I began sidewalk counseling in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. In 1991, I moved to Austin, TX, worked in pro-life there for two years, then in 1993 went to work in Corpus Christi. In April 1994 I left Corpus Christi for Dallas, where I have been working since. Ever since the abortion, I had promised God and myself that if I ever got pregnant again, I would let nature take its course.

While homeless in Dallas in December, 1994, I was raped. Then 39, I knew my chances of getting pregnant were less than at 17, but this time I was ready. During the medical exam for rape, I quietly and steadfastly refused the pregnancy-preventive medication. The doctors and hospital staff were dumfounded, but I felt a wonderful inner peace, the first real peace in many years. I didn’t get pregnant, but when I told Bishop Charles Grahmann what had happened, he smiled warmly and praised my action as "heroic." Rev. Flip Benham of Operation Rescue was also elated. "It took great faith and courage to do what you did. God bless you!" Fr. Larry Pichard and Fr. Anibal Adorno of Santuario de Guadalupe Cathedral acclaimed me for exercising "extraordinary generosity and courage." "You did the right thing," commended Cathedral deacon Charlie Stump. Deacon Juan Ibarra agreed. "I think God is trying to tell you He is proud of you, too!"

Other pro-life notables whom I later met who also commended me include Norma McCorvey, the former "Jane Roe" of Roe vs. Wade, John Everett, director of St. Joseph’s Helpers at the White Rose Pregnancy Center, Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life, Jean Garton, Lutheran pro-life author of "Who Broke the Baby," Olivia Gans of American Victims of Abortion, and Dr. Bernard Nathanson.

Yet beyond them all lingered Deacon Juan Ibarra’s moving observation," God is proud of you!" Slowly but surely it dawned on me that God was really proud of me. From there it became increasingly evident that God could only be proud of me because He LOVED me! I was worthwhile, after all! I was NOT a dirty dishrag; I was His child! Better yet, I no longer felt relentlessly driven to forever keep trying to prove myself to others or to me, because, as Fr. Anibal Adorno had so gently yet firmly reassured, God had already affirmed me, as He does every one of us, in His divine Son, the Word made flesh, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.