Those Abortions Changed My Life Forever

*Publisher's note: this personal testimony is being reprinted in light of the upcoming vote in South Dakota on Initiated Measure 11 and the recent statement by the American Psychological Association that abortion does not threaten women's mental health.

By Luana Stoltenberg
Legislative Team Leader
Operation Outcry

My life has been devastated by abortion. I have had three abortions, and I remember them as if they were only yesterday. I lay on the cold table with no anesthetic for the pain, staring at the ceiling, wishing I were someplace else. It seemed to last forever, and the pain was unbearable. No amount of anesthetic could dull the pain in my heart and mind.

The types of abortions I had were the vacuum aspirator method. I could hear — by the increased labor of the suction machine — when a part or limb of my baby was being extracted. Each time I tried to look at the jar with my babies remains they would push me back down. To this day I still hear that haunting suction sound.

Those abortions changed my life forever. When I realized I would never hold or see those three children, I became angry and depressed. I started drinking heavily, doing drugs, and attempted suicide three times.

Years later I found out that those three babies would be the only children I would ever bear.

Why did that abortionist tell me my children were only a blob of tissue, and that it would be safer to abort than to carry them to full-term?

These abortions destroyed my tubes and ovaries and caused me to be infertile. Everyday I live with the reality that the only children I will ever bear I killed.

Today I am still living with the effects of those abortions. A few years ago, I had a hysterectomy because of the severe damage caused from the suction procedure.

The only way I have been able to live through this nightmare is that I have come to know my Lord Jesus Christ. He has forgiven me and set me free. II Corthinthians 5:17 says: “Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature, the old things are passed away; behold new things have come.”

There has never been a day that I don’t regret the “choices” I made to have those abortions, or think about those three children and who they would have been. Abortion didn’t solve my problems it only created more. I am still a mother it’s just that my 3 children are dead. I want the world to know the harmful, horrible effects of abortion and how it destroys lives, so I WILL BE SILENT NO MORE.

Luana Stoltenberg and her husband Steve have been married since 1985. They live in Davenport with their son Zachary, who was adopted from India at the age of two. They attend and are in leadership at Calvary Church of the Quad Cities.

Luana has been involved with the pregnancy care centers in the Quad Cities. She has also been a board member, treasurer, and media spokes person for the Life and Family Coalition. She is currently active in Operation Outcry. Luana also does public speaking and shares her testimony.

Luana’s heart is to show others the love and mercy of Christ. She does this by telling people what the Lord has done in her own life. She loves to share how the Lord literally picked her up from a life of drugs, alcohol, and abortions, then placed her on His lap of “Grace”.

Her life can be summed up in II Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold all things are new.”

*Reprinted by permission of Operation Outcry.