One year after the U.S. Supreme Court made abortion legal across America, an 18-year-old woman felt coerced into a decision she said she didn’t want to make. Now that same woman speaks for life and helps women like herself with abortion healing.
Daria Monroe, CEO and executive director for Women’s Hope Medical Clinic located in Auburn, Ala., was recently featured on the video series Truth Teller from the SaveOne international abortion recovery program. She shared her abortion experience and spoke about the importance of abortion healing. Daria recently discussed her background and her passion for life for the unborn and healing for women and men after abortion with Pregnancy Help News.
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Her story
At the time of her abortion experience, Daria was engaged to a man. Another man, whom she considered a friend, contacted her, and told her he was feeling depressed. He asked her to come to his apartment and cheer him up. She asked if they could meet at a coffee shop or restaurant, but she recalled him saying, “No, I need you to come to my apartment.”
That man raped her, and she became pregnant. Her fiancé was unwilling to parent the baby and insisted Daria have an abortion. She lived in Washington, D.C. at the time, and he took her to an abortion clinic in the city.
“I remember going in,” Daria said. “The sad thing is he had told me, because he knew I didn't want to do this, he told me that if I would go and ‘do what I needed to do’ he would take me to the mall afterwards and buy me some beautiful dresses.”
“I thought, ‘To buy the life of my child essentially with dresses,’” Daria recalled. “I went in and was shocked by the room full of young women. They all looked just as nervous as I was, chomping gum and with their knees bouncing up and down.”
She underwent a suction abortion.
“I had no pain pill, no anesthesia. It was horrible,” she said.
Afterward, Daria was placed in a room with other women who had undergone the procedure.
“All of us sat in a room together,” she recalled, “to make sure that they could kind of slow down the hemorrhaging or bleeding.”
“After I went home, I became so ill that I thought I had a flu or something,” said Daria. “But to this day, I obviously feel that either I was further along than they thought, or they did something wrong, that there was an infection – I would be just in and out of consciousness.”
She stayed at her mother’s house for several more days, gravely ill.
“I'll never forget walking out and feeling like a zombie,” she said, “like there was nothing there, like I was just walking but there wasn't a human in me.”
Depression set in and she was placed on medication at age 19. No one asked about trauma or if she had thoughts on what might have contributed to that mental state. Daria and her fiancé ended their relationship, a common occurrence after an abortion.
A desire to help others
After carrying the various emotions often brought on after an abortion and seeking God’s forgiveness, Daria felt compelled to help other post-abortive women.
“I started thinking that there's something deeper that happens in us when we have an abortion than other things that we might go and repent for,” she said. “Yes, we are forgiven, and it's as far as the east is from the west, but there's something that an abortion does to us.”
She began implementing various resources and programs, including Rachel’s Vineyard and the online abortion recovery program Her Choice to Heal. Several years later, she met Sheila Harper, founder and CEO of SaveOne, which is based in Tennessee.
“I just love the way it flows, and it brought great healing to me,” Daria said.
Daria leads the abortion recovery program at Women’s Hope Medical Clinic, and she’s observed that post-abortive women now contact the center earlier after an abortion than they used to do. She suspects that’s because of the ease of access to abortion pills, including by mail and through pharmacies, and the do-it-yourself at-home nature of chemical abortion.
“These women are essentially completing an abortion right in their own home and not necessarily knowing how far along they are,” she said.
“So that's my heart,” Daria said. “I'm so passionate about the abortion recovery part [of pregnancy help ministry]. It's like, they have the abortion, whether it's the pill or surgical, and right away they need the healing. They're feeling the symptoms [of post-abortion trauma].”
Tweet This: “I'm so passionate about the abortion recovery part of pregnancy help ministry" - center director
Leading and serving
In addition to her leadership roles at the Auburn pregnancy medical clinic, Daria volunteers with Operation Outcry, using her voice, and her abortion experience, to speak at churches, in court, to legislatures, and other outlets to educate people on the truth of abortion and its effects. She is also involved with other pro-life organizations around the country.
“I just feel thankful and blessed that, because I work in a pregnancy center and adoption agency, I'm able to freely share my story when I feel the Holy Spirit’s nudging,” Daria said.
She began serving as Women’s Hope Medical Clinic’s director and CEO about seven years ago. In addition to providing pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, the clinic tests for STDs and provides prenatal care for patients up to 20 weeks thanks to a few OBGYNs in the area. The center offers parenting classes, has a growing fatherhood program, and, under the umbrella of Hope Adoptions, is licensed by the state of Alabama as an adoption agency, Daria said.
Her organization will hold its annual gala April 23, to support moving forward with services in the university town.
The inspiration to serve
Education is a key component to all she does, and passion to help others to know the truth about abortion is what drives her.
“I’m working to bring awareness and truth and to educate – that’s what I feel we do,” Daria said.
“The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy,” she said. “He is nothing but a liar, and that's what he's done to all these people for all these years.”
“If I can just serve the Lord in this ministry of truth teller, bringing truth and bringing light into the darkness and sharing that light, letting people know this is the truth, this is how abortion effects people," added Daria, “that was my prayer when I was 19, to give my life to the Lord and serve Him.”
Daria believes healing after an abortion is critical for so many reasons, but none more crucial, for both women and men, than to forgive oneself.
“It’s a hard journey to get to that peace and acceptance,” she said. “Only the Holy Spirit can do a healing in a woman or man who has been through an abortion, and I just feel that it's a beautiful process to see their smile and to hear them speak with hope in their voices again. You see this finished product of God's mercy.”
Abortion healing resources, including information on various programs like SaveOne, are available HERE from Focus on the Family, and HERE on Heartbeat International’s website. Heartbeat also manages Option Line, a 24/7 bi-lingual contact center offer pregnancy help support (call or text 1-800-712-4357), including connections After Abortion Support.
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages Pregnancy Help News.
