He was 12 weeks old, when I aborted him. My child would be 21 years old now. Jonathan. As a teenager I lived in England. I started going out, drinking early on and soon started smoking cannabis. One evening I went to someones house, I barely knew them. I was so drugged up that I was hardly able to move after a while. One man there took advantage of that. Then I was pregnant. When we realized, my mum noticed, I was already 12 weeks pregnant. We went to the doctor and he told us it would have to happen quickly since it was only possible to abort a child up to 12 weeks. It would be sucked out and that was it. I didn’t want to think about what I was doing, that I was going to kill my child. I wouldn’t have been able to cope with that. I put it away and didn’t think about it. I pushed it away for years. Wanting to just forget it all, I started taking other drugs, went out even more, dressed more provocative, had many different men, it just got worse.
10 years ago I met Jesus. I started to realise, that what I had done had been wrong. I would have had other options. I ignored it for a few more years, until I was confronted through a film. For the first time, I thought about what it was actually all about, what I had done to my child. I cried and poured out all the hurt and shame to God. I have always drawn a lot, also to deal with difficult issues, to process the things that I had experienced, sometimes using it as a source of escape.
You reach the point of being distraught, there’s no way to reverse what happened. No way to raise him from the dead. No one gave him a funeral, he never experienced love from anyone. I asked God what my child’s name was. In that moment I knew that he was called Jonathan Luke James. That was my sons name. I do miss him. In certain situations I find myself wondering what it would be like, if he was here. I find that really hard. During that time my mum gave me a teddy bear. Because this was shortly afterwards, I took it to be the bear my son would have been given. I’ve still got that bear today. I have moved about 30 times and that bear is still with me, because it reminds me that i would have another son. Jonathan.
This clip was recorded in 2018 for the March for life, a prolife event in Switzerland.
Jonathan’s life was not in vain.