Forgiveness in Christ after an abortion

Georgia traces God’s pursuit of her soul through her abusive childhood, her teenage years in the foster system, and her decision to have an abortion at age 21. Find out how God’s love and forgiveness after her abortion transformed her life along the way.    

My mom and dad had a tumultuous marriage, and so my mom moved to Florida from California when I was nine months old. There were four of us kids, and she couldn’t drive or work, so we depended on welfare. I remember being hungry all the time—the food stamps were never enough.

One day, we found a playground in our neighborhood, and it was connected to a Lutheran church. My family started attending that church, and my mom began cleaning the church so that we could afford to go to the church’s school. Looking back, I’m grateful that my mom put us in that school and that we went to church every Sunday.

My mom dated a lot of men, and, before long, I was being was sexually abused. I lived in these two worlds: I would go to school at the Lutheran church and memorize scripture and pray to God, and then I would come home and suffer abuse. I cried out to God, and it seemed like, from my perspective, He wasn’t hearing my prayers. But, in hindsight, I can see He was working.

Turning point

When I was about 11 years old, I got into a physical altercation with one of my mom’s boyfriends. I called the police, but the police arrested me instead of him. It was a blessing in disguise, though, because they put me in counseling, and it came out that I was being abused.

That night, I was removed from my house and given a trash bag to pack my belongings. From there, I jumped from one sterile and unloving group home to another. I remember longing for a home and a family. Eventually I landed with a foster family and stayed there until I was 18.

They were nice people but didn’t believe in God, and I had theological questions they didn’t have answers to. I would ask them, “Do you think there’s a purpose to all of this? Do you think God hears my prayers?” And they didn’t know.

We fought often, and so as soon as I turned 18, I moved out and started working two jobs to support myself. I gravitated towards romantic relationships because I thought that everything would be OK if I found a husband. I clung to those unhealthy relationships like life preservers because I didn’t have a family. These men, I reasoned, were my everything.

I became pregnant at age 21. When I told my boyfriend, he said he didn’t want the child. The hurt of my past convinced me that not having the child was the right decision. I didn’t want to bring a child into the world who wasn’t going to have a father, so I went through with the abortion. Even as unbelievers, we understood the gravity of what we had done.

Healing comes

In 2020, I went to a crisis pregnancy center because I didn’t have prenatal care when I became pregnant a second time. They asked if I had ever had an abortion, and I said yes. They told me about a Bible study they offered.

This Bible study was an abortion recovery small group that helped me bring to light the abortion that I had buried deep down and heaped with piles of remorse, regret, and disgust.

I needed help lifting those things off myself. It hurt too much for me to do it on my own. Going through the class helped me slowly remove those piles and replace them with loving truth from God’s Word. I felt a wound heal that I thought would hurt forever. Through my recovery process, I found forgiveness that had been there waiting for me all along.

God’s saving grace

Growing up, I had always longed for a different life. I had asked God why He didn’t give me a different family. But, looking back, I can see that everything I went through made the gospel so sweet when I finally came to faith. If I had had the white picket fence and the stable family, but I didn’t have Christ, then I would have nothing.

God knew what it would take to bring me to faith, and I keep that in mind because, when I was living in sin and rebellion against God, I didn’t want to be saved. It was only by the grace of God working sovereignly in my life that I was saved.

The abortion remains one of my biggest regrets, but I have looked my depravity in the eye, and that was the place I needed to come to in order to accept the gospel. There I found freedom in Christ, so I’m thankful.

Georgia, who heads up CPC’s Abortion Recover Ministry, is passionate about helping women find healing and forgiveness through Christ after an abortion. She and her husband live in Chesapeake, Va., with their three children. To learn more about our Abortion Recovery Ministry, and how you can find forgiveness after an abortion, visit cpcfriends.org/afterabortion.