A Tribute to Fr. Paul Marx, OSB, Founder of Human Life International: My Story of Abortion

How Fr. Marx tried to save me from the pain of abortion
Deceased, March 20, 2010

I never met Fr. Paul Marx in person, but I met him through his writing in a way that changed my life forever. Had I listened to him sooner, I know of at least one abortion that would not be etched in my memory, the one I repressed for over thirty years through my use of the IUD, one method of abortifacient birth control.

One morning some time in 1974, I went to my mailbox to find a magazine printed on newsprint, not the slick women's magazines I was accustomed to reading. It was not something I had ordered, and I was curious about it, especially one article in it, written by a priest I had never heard of, Fr. Paul Marx, OSB. I was aghast to read of several kinds of birth control that he called 'abortifacient.' I had used one, the Pill, after the birth of our first son. At that very moment, I had in place another one, the IUD, which I began using after the birth of our second son.

I had always been a practicing Catholic, but somewhere in my late teens and into my early twenties, I think around 1965, with the many "changes" of Vatican II, I thought it was old fashioned to be "too Catholic," and when I found right after marriage that we were very fertile, I chose to believe that birth control was one area where change was a good thing. I saw a way to have the large family of at least six that we wanted, but without having them too close together.

Intuitively, I knew the words I read were true. Here was a priest writing of how a tiny baby could be conceived well enough, but these methods sometimes prevented "implantation" in the mother's womb and so were often almost silently aborted, often appearing only to be a late, heavy period. Disregarding my intuition, I checked with my closest Catholic friends, a nurse and a religious education co-ordinator in our parish, and we concluded that a priest, not married, couldn't possibly be right. Anyway, there was only a small percentage of times when birth was prevented due to failure to implant. Most of the time, I thought, it impeded sperm and egg from ever uniting.

So I continued along, still relying on the IUD. One month, my period was much different. It was just as Fr. Marx had described when a baby fails to implant: unusually heavy, late, clotty. The moment I saw clots, my heart sank. I went cold and my hands became clammy. There was no way to change what I had read nor what I saw that day. Nevertheless, I tried.

Despite my denial, some inner determination compelled me to immediately make an appointment with my doctor to have that thing removed. He warned, "You're going to get pregnant," but for the first time, I did not care. I had the gumption to stand against his authority, and it felt very, very right and good. Soon we conceived again, and our third son was born. We deliberately named him 'Nathan,' meaning "gift of God."

In 1976, after our third son was born, I began having heart palpitations for no apparent reason. I was easily startled by noises. I was irrationally convinced that I was going to die, and I started to take Valium.  I became extremely self-conscious, and I could no longer stand being in front of a group without feeling like I was going to faint. I didn't return to teaching the following year and I could no longer even serve as reader at Mass. Also, when I read a story about abortion in Guideposts magazine, I sobbed. My reaction was so extreme that I wondered for a time if my own mother had tried to abort me. So thick was my denial that never once did I think I had aborted one of my own children.

In 1979, I had a personal conversion to the person of Jesus Christ after I had started reading my bible on a daily basis. One day, in my mind's eye, I saw Him with His arm extended as He asked me if I would come to Him. Dissolving in tears, I said "yes" and little by little as I surrendered my fears to Him, I overcame them, trusting my life to Him with deeper abandon and joy.

My husband and I learned natural family planning, and eventually we read Humanae Vitae. I couldn't believe how beautiful it was, obviously a love letter from God about how to live a happy married life. This was a far cry from something written by a bunch of celibate men who knew nothing about marriage. It spoke of the power of the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist in helping couples who struggled towards the virtue of chastity. It spoke of the necessity of compassion on the part of pastors in helping such couples. It also warned of the terrible disasters that would happen should contraception become an accepted practice:increased abortion; abuse towards women and children; increased divorce;spread of pornography; governmental manipulation of the poor to accept sterilzation and abortion in exchange for food.

In time, my husband and I became active in doing marriage preparation in our parish, encouraging others to learn natural family planning and we also became active in the pro-life movement.

Years went by, when one day in 1984, a couple came to our door. They were sent to us because of our pro-life work. They were deaf and mute, had one daughter, and they were expecting twins. They were unemployed, uninsured, and the mother had had no medical care during the seven months of her pregnancy. Through the Knights of Columbus, we got some money together, and soon a hospital in the border town of Laredo, a hundred miles from our South Texas community, agreed to do the delivery.

The twins were born safe and sound, perfectly beautiful, a boy and a girl. All was great until one day the young husband came to our house in obvious misery. He thrust a paper in my hand as he made horrible gutteral sounds in a desperate attempt to express his anguish. During the Cesarean-section delivery, a tubal ligation was performed on the young hispanic mother, without either spouse's knowledge or consent, and there listed on the itemized bill, was a charge for the procedure that stole their fertility from them forever.

I wrote to Fr. Paul Marx, and he wrote back to say that this sort of thing happens all the time, especially to the very poor and the handicapped. I was beyond belief, and it was not many nights later that I had an experience in prayer, right before I went to sleep.

In this experience, Jesus said words to me that I have never been able to erase from my heart and soul, though I have tried off and on during times of great distress and confusion. He said, "I want you to start a fund, and I want you to call it The Leaven, to honor those who honor Me by accepting the teaching of Humanae Vitae."

I woke my husband and told him about it, and we soon began a discerning process with our priest spiritual director, Fr. Robert Silverman and others in the Archdiocese of San Antonio. At the end of three years, it was decided that this was a genuine call from God that we dared not ignore. In June of 1987, then, we began The Leaven after spending a night before the exposed Blessed Sacrament to join the great Feasts of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Within one year, we had lost everything: our income, our home, our car, self respect. Everything material. No one wanted to hear our message, we found. We had to rely on our extended family to survive, since the oil construction business of my husband's employ had taken a nosedive in the recession of the Eighties.

We thought we must have heard wrong. We couldn't understand why God would so mislead us, and we turned away from pro-life apostolate, though we continued to attend daily Mass and reception of the sacraments. We soon moved to San Antonio from our rural community, and we eventually tried to start The Leaven again. Again, we struggled financially. We couldn't pay our electric bill and had our lights turned off, and we had to have help from our church several times to pay the rent. We coudln't qualify for home ownership because our credit was demolished.

In 1998, we moved again, this time to Lincoln, NE, and it was at an evangelization meeting that I read of something called Project Rachel, a ministry for women healing from abortion. Listed on a handout were symptoms of Post Abortion Stress Syndrome. I was amazed to see that I had so many, but I thought there must be many reasons people have such. After all, I certainly had never had an abortion. I had worked in the pro-life movement so many years in one way or another. Maybe my stress syndrome was due to the stress of that.

In 2006, I googled a recently canonized saint, Edith Stein, and I read that a Dr. Dominic Pedulla had founded The Edith Stein Foundation. I went to the site and clicked on "The Psychology of Contraception." There I read an article by a Dr. Gerard Van Den Aardweg:"Contraceptive and Personality Damage in Women." I was shocked to see that I still had disturbing symptoms from contraception that he spoke about even though I had long ago discontinued use of it, even becoming an advocate for the very opposite. I seemed to have an incurable low-grade anger, expressed mostly towards my husband. I had long wondered about it, but I had never connected it to the use of abortifacient contraception.

I phoned Dr. Pedulla, and he suggested without actually saying the word 'abortion' that I may have some lingering effects from using contraception. He suggested a Rachel's Vineyard retreat, but he warned that I might not find quite the help I needed there, since it was primarily for women healing from abortion. This was obviously a source of great concern to him, but he said Rachel's Vineyard nevertheless was a place to start my healing process.

I pushed the idea out of my mind, I think, because I didn't want to believe that I might have had a real abortion, though the late period of 1974 came back to my memory loud and clear. Finally, on March 12, 2009, I reached a point of such inner anger that I knew it was time to make a retreat. I googled Rachel's Vineyard, and I found a retreat in the Diocese of Peoria, seven hours away. And thus began my healing journey as a post abortive mother, who intuitively had known all along that contraception sometimes causes abortion, and that it caused not only one, but three in me. I realized that there was much unfinished business that had to happen before I could be fully free enough to start a fund to honor those who honor God by accepting Humanae Vitae.

Alton soon made a Rachel's Vineyard retreat, too, and we were on our way to feeling like the couple we wanted to be. With our first attempt, when we met obstacles, we became suspicious of each other. We were utterly unable to work together or to have deep faith in God's leading. Since our healing for "silent" abortion that was anything but silent, though we face similar obstacles, our response is entirely different. We have begun again to undertake The Leaven, but this time deeply humbled by our own experience of abortion.

My own healing continues today by belonging to an online Rachel's Vineyard e-group, Companions on the Journey, for those who've made a Rachel's Vineyard retreat. It also continues through the work of Robert and Mary R. Joyce and Dr. Conrad Baars, a late psychiatrist who specialized in healing of the emotions.

I write this testimony in honor of the life and work of Fr. Paurl Marx, OSB and of our three precious children: Edith Therese, Sara Eileen Elizabeth, and Charles Jonathan, lost by "silent" abortion by the Pill and the IUD.

Dear ones, please intercede on our behalf on this very day when the threat of expanded abortion looms so large in our great land. Pray for us!!!

Fr. Paul Marx, OSB, you are deeply loved, dear Priest of God!!!

Permission is granted for circulation of this testimony, with no modifications not approved by the author.

Juliana Davis, MEV

The Leaven

Contraception hurts women.