Living What She Preaches
Thompson is more than just pro-life. She is the former chairperson of Wake County (NC) Right to Life, and for the last six years has been communications director for North Carolina Right to Life. She also served three years as the state director in North Carolina for American Victims of Abortion.
Thompson had an extraordinary journey to get where she is today.
While attending college she dated a seminary student and even though she knew it was wrong, began having sex with him in the winter of 1975.
Thompson discovered she was pregnant in February, 1976. Feeling alone and confused, the local health department confirmed her pregnancy and gave her counseling, which consisted of writing a name and phone number on the bottom of a sheet of paper and telling her to make an appointment.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)
Muffling the Screams
On April 2, 1976, Thompson and her boyfriend entered a women’s clinic. Bright and clean, with up-to-date magazines and beautiful pictures, she remembered the staff being personable and smiling a lot as she completed her paperwork and made her payment. It belied the emotional trauma she would soon face.
Thompson was taken into a room where she put on a gown and was told that “it would hurt like a menstrual cramp and shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes.” Thompson was informed the “glob of tissue” would soon be removed from her body and birth control was suggested so the “mistake” would not happen again.
After entering the room where the procedure would occur, she tried to change her mind, but was told it was too late. The pain was excruciating. Her screams drowned out the noise from the machine. The receptionist opened the door without knocking and informed her that she was too loud and disturbing patients in the waiting room. Thompson bit her lip, but the cries came out again and the nurse put her hand over her mouth to muffle the screams.
In recovery, the doctor tried to reassure her that she would be okay. As she left the clinic, she was told there would be some bleeding, a slight fever, cramping and headaches. After days of bleeding and fever, she called the clinic and was told the doctor would have nothing to do with her now.
Her boyfriend took Thompson to a local health clinic where a young intern said “they botched you and left some baby in there.”
He was the first person to call it a baby. He told her she had hemorrhaged, had an infection and was close to death. After treatment and rest, Thompson began to heal physically.
That fall Thompson married her boyfriend, but they never discussed what they had done. She told herself that it was not a baby and what they had done was perfectly all right.
It was not until 13 years later that everything changed. In 1989, she listened to someone give his testimony in a Sunday School class, when she broke down and shared her awful secret.
A New Life
Thompson cried with her head in her hands and then she felt one hand after another being placed on her as the entire class gathered around to pray. There was no condemnation, just love, forgiveness, and concern. It was the point where she said she began to live again.
As Thompson studied the effects of abortion on women, she began to better understand her life. It explained the hidden depression that led to an attempted suicide in 1981. It explained her two miscarriages of Hannah and Sarah. It explained her inability to emotionally bond with her two sons and a two-year separation from her husband in 1984, which included an affair on her part.
In October, 1991, as she had begun to heal, her husband asked for a divorce because of his own affair. She wanted to work it out, but he refused. Six months after her divorce, she met a new man on a blind date. They were married five months later in April, 1994.
In the summer of 1997, more healing occurred when her two boys helped her name her aborted baby. They chose the name: Michael. Thompson now carries a model of a perfectly formed fetus that would have been the size of her baby. The regret and what-ifs are evident in her eyes as she gingerly holds little Michael in the palm of her hand.
Thompson wants every woman to know the truth.
“I tell people the truth so they won’t go through what I did. I hope they make the right decision in their lives,” she said. “Abortion is never the right decision. On April 2, 1976, nobody told me Michael had a beating heart, he had fingerprints, or that he would feel the pain.”
“(Loretta’s) a high-energy, motivated individual with a love for life that because of her own personal testimony has a passion for women who are considering abortions to choose life,” said Barbara Holt, President of North Carolina Right to Life.
