“God creates life and has purpose for everyone,” said Adams. “I’ve never met a person who regretted having a child. I’ve met many women who’ve regretted having an abortion.”
By Nancy Flanders
Live Action News
It was the early 1980s when 19-year-old Terry Ann Adams discovered she was pregnant by her older boyfriend. Their relationship had been long-term and though he initially spoke of marriage, after Terry became pregnant, he ultimately changed his mind and told Adams that she should abort their baby. Reluctantly, she agreed to the abortion. It’s a regret she now lives with every day, more than 35 years later.
Her boyfriend was a “rising star in the music industry” at the time, even touring with 1980s-star Billy Idol. When he told Adams that he wanted her to have an abortion, she was afraid that he would find his fame and leave her and their child behind. Fear, she says, is what pushed her to have the abortion — fear of abandonment, fear of losing her job, and fear that her parents would be upset with her, especially her emotionally fragile mother.
“We both decided on abortion, though I was more reluctant and I would have kept the baby if he was supportive, I’m sure,” Adams told Kayla Nichols during a Virtuous Mama Ministries podcast for Sanctity of Life Sunday. “[…] I am sure if there was a pregnancy center — Christ-centered one like there are so many now — alternative listed in the phone book, I would have called them for sure.”
But feeling as though she had nowhere else to turn and no other choice to make, Adams went with her boyfriend to Planned Parenthood of New York City. She was struggling and feeling ambivalent, but he was “dead set” on going through with it.
“I remember looking around the outside of that tall cement building hoping that someone was there to help me somehow,” she said. “[…] I was having doubts and I started crying and said, ‘No. I don’t want to do this.’ And my boyfriend disagreed. And I remember him holding my hand tightly, kind of pulling me along the streets of New York.”
Adams said there were quite a few girls at the clinic, some who spoke nonchalantly about how many abortions they had had and one young girl with an older man – both of them sitting silently.
“They moved people along very quickly there,” she said of her experience at Planned Parenthood. “My boyfriend paid, you know, two hundred dollars to the secretary. When they called me in, he couldn’t go with me.”
After she had changed into the hospital gown, Adams began to cry and asked Planned Parenthood staff if she could speak to her boyfriend. They refused, telling her it was better if she didn’t.
Later on, she learned that her boyfriend could hear her crying and tried to see her but was stopped by the clinic staff. Adams became so distraught, in fact, that she asked to be knocked out for the abortion. She remembers the abortion workers leaving to ask her boyfriend for more money to pay for the anesthesia. No one ever spoke to her about the procedure or the risks involved but did ask if she liked to get high on drugs, telling her that the anesthesia would feel just like that.
Pregnant, need help or know someone who does?
National Hotline: Call 1-800-712-HELP or Text 'HELPLINE' to 313131.
In Southeast Penna: Call the Community Women's Center at 215-826-8090
If you or someone you know is suffering after abortion, confidential non-judgmental help is available. Call Project Rachel's national toll-free number 888-456-HOPE (4673) or visit hopeafterabortion.org.
