Sharon’s childhood years had not been easy for her. Mum and Dad fought a lot before finally separating when Sharon was seven. She then lived alternatively with Mum and then Dad, as do lots of children of divorced parents. A lot of the time it was Dad though, with help from her paternal grandmother Phoebe and Aunty Betty.
Sharon was twelve when Phoebe died and within days her Dad remarried. Sharon’s Mum Phyllis had committed adultery so her Dad felt justified legally and from within his Christian faith to leave her and then to remarry. He must have known his new wife for a while but didn’t marry her until after his own mother had passed away. Sharon’s new step-mother became the fourth mother to Sharon and her younger sister.
Looking back, Sharon doesn’t blame her Mum for her abortion. She realises how tough it had been for Phyllis. Phyllis never really recovered from her own father George walking out on his family days after returning from World War Two. Phyllis then put Sharon into boarding school but Sharon doesn’t blame her for that either, although she accepts she may have been better off with her mother close to her during her teenage years. The sins of the Father…
Sharon left school at sixteen. Shortly after she joined a church-based youth group, but it was more party than church. She was soon caught up in partying, smoking, drinking and going out with boys.
At eighteen going on nineteen Sharon had a fling with an ex-boyfriend. A little while later on a trip to Townsville she found out she was pregnant.
‘I had a hard heart at the time and was very selfish so I flew back to Brisbane and went to the Doctor my friends told me about. The year was 1974. Abortion was illegal then but I wanted to travel and to have every experience life had to offer, even the experience of abortion, so I didn’t care. So I went to the doctor. He examined me and then performed the abortion. Later I wouldn’t stop bleeding so he put me in another room. I think the doctor was panicking that I would have to go to hospital. He was probably more worried about himself than me, given that he had performed an illegal act. Later I stopped bleeding and left the doctor’s room. I spent the night on my own with the cramping and the pain before telling my sister everything the next day. She told me I would regret what I had done but I pushed it down to the bottom of my being as if it never happened.
I had told the Father what I was going to do but didn’t give him any choice in the matter. I had broken up with him and didn’t want anything from him. I think he would have liked to have kept the baby. He wanted to continue to go out with me but I thought he was too controlling. I haven’t spoken to him again in all these years but I do know roughly where he lives.
Whilst I was selfish and wanted things for my life that a baby would stop me having I have to admit the main reason I went ahead with the abortion was I didn’t want to be rejected by my Dad.
Life went on.
About eighteen months later I was in Adelaide and had decided to take the Indian-Pacific train to Kalgoorlie to start work as a prostitute.
But that was the weekend God gave me my future husband Peter. He came up on his Kawasaki 1000 motorcycle and that was it for me. He was the solid rock that I needed to arrest the insecurity I had experienced growing up. I still went to Kalgoorlie but only for a holiday and Peter joined me about a week later.
Amazingly I met a former prostitute on the train who told me her sad story. God was showing me what my life would have been like if I had gone down that road.
We had three sons in the next five years. They were and are wonderful but I desperately wanted a little girl, perhaps to replace the little one I had lost to abortion, perhaps so that I could have the mother / daughter relationship I didn’t have growing up.
Suffice to say it would have been biologically impossible for us to have more children but for the grace of God.
I had become a Christian on my own. Being a bookworm I decided to read the bible and I was two thirds of the way through when the Lord came to me and my life changed. But I still wanted a daughter.
One Saturday morning I was sitting in bed thanking the Lord for my sister having a daughter but I was also crying because I didn’t have a daughter of my own. I heard the audible voice of the Lord. He said ‘what are you crying for, you are going to have a daughter too.’
My husband believed me when I told him what had just happened to me.
On April 1st 1993 we had our baby girl and we named her Janessa which means ‘gift of God’ or ‘God is Gracious’
I prayed for a sister for her on the day we brought her home from the hospital. Nine months later I had a dream – of a baby girl being born with long legs! Straight after that I conceived our second daughter – who is tall with long legs! Her name is Kayley (meaning ‘crown’ or ‘laurel’) because I had a sense it had to be a Jewish name and in any case my husband had just seen a teller at our bank with that name! Kaylee is now expecting our ninth grandchild!
Twenty five years after I had had the abortion I attended a restoration course at a little Baptist church on Phillip Island in Cowes that ran for four Mondays.
On the last Monday a couple stood up and started talking about grief and grace. They were the parents of the doctor in town. I had never heard anything like that before. I felt a continual bubbling up in me. We had a break-up lunch but I then felt an urgency to go back to the church and speak to the couple. The moment I stepped back on church ground all the grief over my abortion came up like a river. The couple prayed over me and I felt a weight lifting off me and I forgave myself.
I told them I thought the baby was a little girl. I told them I named the baby Sarah. The power of God’s forgiveness was so complete, as far as East is from West.
Then I wrote the books. I didn’t really want to but I believed that the Lord had impressed on me the importance of writing them. There are so many women in Australia who have had an abortion so I needed to write down my experiences so that perhaps other women who had gone down the same path might use them to find forgiveness from God and themselves.
The first book is called ‘Reconcile me from abortion’s chains’. I then got it reprinted with a new cover and a new title ‘Reconciled from Abortion’s Chains. (Editor’s note: Both books are available through the author. Contact the office for details).
The second book is ‘Christians contemplating abortion?’. This book is for everyone but specifically for the aunties, friends and cousins who can influence someone newly pregnant who might be contemplating an abortion.
Just before I had the second book published the Lord said I had to tell my Father and my Step-mother what had happened to me. My Dad was shocked and disappointed in me initially but he eventually said he could see God’s greater plan in what had happened.
My focus now at seventy years old is to help women in prison. I met a woman once in the Koorong bookshop in Brisbane who told me that every single woman in the prison where she volunteered had had an abortion. My experience since then tells me that is probably close to the same at every women’s prison in Australia. I am trying to get my books into the prisons, especially those with no fellowship happening.
There is always a back story to abortion and this is mine. I just don’t want other women to make the same mistake I did, and if they have already had an abortion I want to help lead them to forgiveness.
Looking back now as a Mum, a grandmother and a Christian I would give anything to have given my baby Sarah to the evil of abortion. My little one.
_______
Met Darrylin Brain at a Prison Fellowship whilst giving a talk
Friends of ours live in Kalgoorlie (Kevin and Veronica) and Sharon wanted to get her book into the Kalgoorlie Prison for women there who had no real fellowship happening
Every single woman in a particular prison in Brisbane had had an abortion (According to a woman Sharon met in Koorong in Brisbane).
Every week there is a talk in Perth for people associated with prison ministry (Sycamore Tree Ministry – Steve McKinnon in Maylands and Thornlie
Then Elaine Murphy – YANA (You are not alone)
Sharon had an Australian Father and New Zealand mother and was born in Darwin. She grew up in Auckland when Sharon was 41/2.
My sister had a daughter and I was at the birth.
We didn’t know how it was going to come about because it was an impossibility for us. Three or four years went past and I was at a football game watching my son play. A doctor I was there and he gave me the name of two neurologists. We met one of them but then didn’t hear anything more. So then we met the other one, at Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne. He said he could do the reversal. Eight months later I was kneeling on the floor praying and asking the Lord his plan for my life.
The phone rang and it was the Monash Medical centre saying they would arrange for the reversal to be done within a month and it wouldn’t cost me anything!
After 21/2 hours microsurgery and two nights in hospital. After four months my husband Peter and I decided to fast and pray for a daughter – and I conceived two days later.
There is always a back story to abortion.
Author
Sharon McFee
0417733019
