ISABEL: Flashbacks, night terrors and dis-associative episodes are also normal. In extreme cases of severe stress I have what I call ‘time-travel flashbacks’.
My husband witnessed one and said later that he felt like he had been there in my past and witnessed what happened when I was a child. That's the most extreme example, though. More often when the time-travel flashbacks hit, I'll be confused about where I am and not know what year it is, and I panic. I also take a long, long, long time to trust anybody.
REGINA: You were only twelve when you became pregnant. Knowing what you now know, what would you advise any young girl or woman should she find herself in that position?
ISABEL: I would tell her to talk to someone. Even if there is no one you trust, find a teacher at school and force yourself to open up because many people are actually trustworthy and you just have to take that leap of faith. I really wish I had.
Also, take time. If you've been assaulted you're already not thinking straight. If you then find out you are pregnant from that assault, your head just becomes an unbelievable mess of panic and trauma.
REGINA: And this was your experience?
ISABEL: As soon as I found out, I just took care of the situation in the first way that crossed my mind. It's a truly life-changing situation you are in. My child would have been 20 now. I don't have children and had things gone differently, yes, we'd have had some difficult and traumatic discussions about where she came from but I'd have loved her and she would be an adult now herself, changing the world.
Please, please give yourself time to think and give someone the opportunity to help you. And pray. I don't make a single decision now without prayer. I know if I'd just turned to Our Blessed Mother in one single Hail Mary that day things would now be so different.
REGINA: What would you tell those who assume that abortion is the best solution for a pregnant woman who has been a victim of rape or incest?
ISABEL: I have to try not to be angry answering this question. A lot of the time people like me are left out of the pro-life/pro-choice argument simply because we are too traumatised and shamed by our experiences to speak up so the people who come out with this are often well-meaning, but frankly talking nonsense from hypothetical situations they've not been in themselves.
REGINA: Speaking from your own experience, what is your view?
ISABEL: Finding out you are pregnant due to rape and/or incest is horrific, yes, but making a panicked decision because you think you can't take yet another blow is worse.
It's tantamount to suicide. You're making a life-changing (or ending) decision from which there is no going back, when you are at your most vulnerable and you are not thinking straight. If I had known that it's a baby from conception, I'd perhaps have given myself time to think. With time to think I might have told a teacher.
REGINA: And what might have happened if you had ‘told’?
ISABEL: Actually, being pregnant would have saved me from further abuse at home because had I told a teacher, social services would have removed me and the baby from my family, and my healing process could have begun much sooner. As it was, I was in that environment until I became an adult, though from around 12 or 13 the abuse was mostly psychological and emotional.
REGINA: What, in the end, is your point?
ISABEL: Abortion after rape or incest causes extra trauma on top of what she is already going through, as well as killing her baby. And that baby could have turned out to be the one consolation she had.
REGINA | 75