Victims of their own choice

Abortion | A growing number of women are speaking up about the crippling effects abortion had on their bodies, hearts, and spirits | Lynn Vincent

By 5 p.m. on Jan. 24, the temperature in Washington, D.C., had dipped to a bone-numbing 13 degrees—so cold that, had more experienced activists not given Leslie Graves disposable hand-warmers to tuck into her boots, she might have fled indoors. Instead, the 49-year-old stay-home mother of three shivered near a small stage erected in front of the United States Supreme Court, waiting for her turn to tell a crowd of 250 about her abortion.

Others spoke before her: Actress and model Jennifer O’Neill, 57, a veteran of more than 30 films who aborted a child in the early ‘70s and loathed herself for decades. Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, who said the question of whether her two aborted babies were boys or girls still haunts her. And Georgette Forney, an abortion survivor who co-founded a group that helps abortion-injured people proclaim their pain.