God's Amazing Grace

One Woman’s Journey from the Bondage of Abortion to Freedom in Christ

by Colleen Tronson

Entering the abortion clinic’s waiting room for the first time, I found it filled with people sitting on colorful plastic chairs and filling out medical forms. As I crossed the room, not one person made eye contact with me.
When it was time for an abortion, a nurse appeared and called the first name of the next patient. As their names were called, women passed through the windowless double doors alone, leaving behind the friend or loved one who waited to drive them home after the abortion.

After many women were called, it was finally my turn. I went through those doors to a small room where I undressed and sat on the examination table. I was afraid of having the abortion but even more afraid of leaving without having the “procedure” done. I lay back on the table and allowed the abortionist to remove the baby from my womb.

The abortionist used a vacuum suction machine attached to a glass collection bottle located under the table. I cried as the nurse told me to relax, that the abortion would be over soon. My baby died that day. A part of me died, too. It went away through the suction tubing that removed the child from my womb.

After the abortion, alcohol and drugs became my good friends. In a few months, I was pregnant again. The baby’s father did not want me to abort our baby, but he went with me to the clinic.

This time a nurse held my hand while they did the abortion. I didn’t cry but kept my eyes tightly closed. I tried to think of something else … anything to distract me from the sounds of the vacuum machine … anything to avoid feeling the pulling and tugging going on inside my womb. Once again, my “problem” drained away into the collection bottle on the floor beneath the table.

After the second abortion, I continued to “medicate” myself with drugs and alcohol. Not surprisingly, I became pregnant again.

This time I went alone to the now-familiar abortion clinic. After the procedure was over, while I was still on the table, the doctor showed me the results of my abortion—an unrecognizable mass. My first reaction was shock. How dare he show me that! I got out of there as quickly as I could, fuming at his callousness. In the parking lot, I lit a cigarette and thought about what a jerk he had been to me, a paying customer!

As my life careened out of control, my actions led to a fourth pregnancy. Looking for another abortion, I contacted a friend, hoping she would finance it. But she couldn’t help me. I considered ending my life by simply driving my car over a cliff. I reasoned that if I died, my problems and pain would be gone. However, I quickly abandoned the thought of suicide, worrying that I might not succeed in killing myself.

While searching for a way out of my dilemma, I opened the yellow pages and found the number for a pregnancy help center. The center helped me get an ultrasound, and I was confronted with the fact that I was well into my fourth month of pregnancy. Reluctantly, I began to face the fact that this pregnancy was going to continue.

Then began a painful time of decision making; I knew I wasn’t ready to be a parent. A few months later, when I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, I placed him into the waiting arms of his adoptive mother.

During that pregnancy, I had begun to make outward changes in my life by stopping the chemical use and the promiscuity, but my heart had not changed. Within two months after my son’s birth, I was back to my old ways. At some point, I had contracted gonorrhea, which led to a serious case of pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). I spent a week in the hospital, fighting a raging infection. This problem slowed me down a little, but I was still determined to do what pleased me.

However, God had other plans for me. Soon a regular customer at the restaurant where I worked began to talk to me about God. He played his guitar for me and shared songs he had written while serving time in a state prison. His songs reflected God’s love and His desire to show grace to people when they repent and acknowledge Him as Savior

In the Bible, I found Romans 3:23, which told me that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (KJV).
The promise of John 3:16 gave me hope: “For God so loved the world [even me], that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

I soon began to see the truth about my life from God’s perspective. I was a haughty, proud, and selfish woman in desperate need of a Savior. I finally yielded my rebellious and sinful life to Him and received Jesus Christ as my personal Savior.

Mourning over my sin, I was comforted to read Isaiah 1:18. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

There had been plenty of scarlet in my life, but God through His amazing grace had washed me white as snow. God had not given me what I deserved; instead He had showed me incredible mercy.

Romans 8:1 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Once I repented, God began to change me from the inside out.

Someone once said, “Life can be the same after losing a trinket but not after losing a treasure.” I lost three treasures when I aborted my children, and I lost even more when I squandered my sexual purity in search of fulfillment.

God granted me mercy, grace, and salvation from my sins through His Son, Jesus Christ. He also granted me the privilege of marrying the man who had led me to Christ. There was, however, another expression of God’s grace yet to come. Over the next five years, God granted me the joy of giving birth to two more beautiful sons. He allowed life to emerge from a place where death had once reigned!

As a woman who has experienced God’s amazing grace and forgiveness from sin in general and from abortion in particular, I want you to know that there is hope and healing available through Jesus Christ.

Colleen Tronson, executive director of Metro Women’s Center in Minneapolis, has herself experienced the trauma of three abortions. She and her husband, Steve, make their home in Minneapolis with their two sons, Lewis and Charles. They are active at Fourth Baptist Church (Plymouth, MN).