Linda Menon has a story to tell. And, she’s eager to share her story with those who want or need to hear it. Her message: there is life and hope and perhaps most of all, forgiveness, after abortion.

Linda knows about all of this. She’s had three abortions, been raped, attempted suicide, and abused alcohol.

Linda was born in a small Ontario town in the early fifties. She had a difficult childhood. She describes her home life as “strife-filled.” When she was in her late teens, her dad held the family—mom, brother and Linda—at gunpoint in their home, threatening to kill them. Earlier in her teens, she took an overdose of pills and was rushed to the hospital. Several hours earlier, her mother had also attempted suicide and was in hospital.

When she finished high school she began working at a local Holiday Inn. She met and began dating an older guy. “He was 25 or 26,” she recalls. After a few months, she found she was pregnant. When she broke the news to him, he took her to his car, drove to a back road and beat her up. He put his tie around her neck. “I saw my life pass before my eyes,” she says. She prayed to God for help and promised that she would never try to take her life again if God got her out of the situation. She leapt from the car and hit her head on a mailbox post. She was able to stumble up and then run to a nearby farm house with the boyfriend in pursuit. The farm family phoned the police and the boyfriend took off. The police charged him and he was later convicted of assault.

She decided to have an abortion. She was sent to Women’s College Hospital in Toronto where a committee of three doctors, the then-required Therapeutic Abortion Committee, approved her abortion. “I remember lying on a gurney in the hospital. I wept and wept,” she says. She was given a full anaesthetic. When she awoke, she recalls experiencing a “deep sense of loss.”

The abortion became a taboo subject for the family. “Mom and I didn’t talk about it. Dad didn’t even know I’d had an abortion. It was a big secret.” She moved out of home, got an apartment and began a course at a business college. A year after the abortion, she went to a party and ran into a cousin who was an Oshawa policeman. They partied and he raped her. “A month later I found out I was pregnant,” she says. “I was in complete denial.”

Once again, she traveled to another city and had an abortion in a hospital. This time, she recalls, she awoke “bitter, angry and hurt. I thought life was a joke.”

She quit school and began working. Several years later she moved to Edmonton to work in a business with a friend. She began seeing a married man and lived with him for seven years. It was not a good relationship. They argued, drank too much and occasionally used drugs. Linda wanted to get married and have children. Eventually they did marry but the strife continued.

Linda had a one-night stand after meeting a guy in a bar. She found out she was pregnant, knew it was the result of the affair, and had another abortion. This time she was hysterical after the procedure and sank into a deep depression for six months. She remembers sitting on her bed, her life a mess and contemplating suicide. “I heard a voice say, ‘We had a deal’”, she says.

The “deal” was a promise she made years earlier when she prayed for God to help when her boyfriend was assaulting her. She says, “Over the years I forgot my promise but God had not. He used this opportunity to get my attention.” She realized that she needed help and turned to God.

From that point on, her life began to change. She went for post-abortion counseling. She began volunteering at the Pregnancy Counselling Centre in Edmonton, and eventually became a counselor there and served on the board for several years. She became very active in her church and led several missions to Romania to deliver medical supplies to orphanages there.

She discovered that she and her husband could not have children. Six years ago, they adopted a baby girl from Romania.

Linda now leads a group of post-abortive women in a Bible-based healing program at her home. But, she wants to do more. She wants to warn young women about the perils of abortion and to help post-abortive women to find forgiveness and peace. For the past two years, she has been at Parliament Hill for the March for Life as part of the Silent No More Awareness campaign to witness to the truth that there is healing after abortion. “Women need to hear the truth about abortion and what it does. I want to spread that truth wherever I can.”

Joanne Byfield is the President of LifeCanada