How I Found God Through My Abortion Journey (Part 1 of 2)

I'm John Fuller, and today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, we'll hear about one woman's unbelievably tragic journey of risky and harmful choices that could have easily destroyed her life.

And this is not going to be a topic for younger listeners. We need to warn you that what you'll hear today represents how lost and blind some people are today as they try to medicate and fill those holes and pains in their life with drugs and drinking and sex to the point that they lose all sense of right or wrong and can't even comprehend the consequences of their bad decisions. And that was illustrated by this dramatized entry in Cynthia Wentz's journal when she was just 15 years old. Thursday, September 16th, went and had my kid murdered. They knocked me out with an IV so I didn't feel a thing.

I wanted mine and Jay's baby so bad. John, one of the worst tragedies in our modern world is how many teen girls and women are facing a horrific decision just like that. Maybe they're confused and afraid. They don't see another option.

Worse, they're not exposed to other options in some cases. All too often these girls and women don't have anyone to confide in, a responsible godly adult who might give them practical help and hope for that budding new life within them. As a result, millions of precious preborn babies are literally destroyed every year. And man, folks, this is why Focus on the Family has been a consistent voice for life for more than 40 years now.

We believe God created each one of us in His image, believer and non-believer, which gives us great worth and importance. And in the Christian community, we have a responsibility to protect and speak up, not only for the preborn children who are at risk of abortion, but for their mothers as well. And that's why we've chosen to address this difficult yet important topic during Sanctity of Human Life Week. And we hope what we share today will challenge you to get involved in the pro-life movement. Yeah, we've been encouraging our Focus friends and the community of believers to continue praying about the upcoming Supreme Court decision later this year regarding Roe v. Wade and the ongoing battle to roll back pro-abortion legislation. Later on today, we'll explain how you can help save lives through our option ultrasound program.

Right now, though, we're going to introduce you to Cynthia Wentz. She's an author, speaker, a pro-life advocate. She's written a powerful memoir about her own experiences with loss and despair from abortion. The title of her book is Healed for Life, a Story of Redemption.

And we've got copies of that here at the ministry. The link is in the show notes or call 1-800, the letter A in the word family. Cynthia, welcome to Focus on the Family. Thank you so much. Life matters.

It does. I'm so appreciative you care so deeply about it. Well, and your story is so amazing. And that's why I'm looking forward.

You know, it's a heavy story, but what an amazing thing God has done in your life. Yes. That's what matters most. Let's get right into it. You paint a picture of yourself as this vibrant, well-loved child in a loving home.

Sounds like a focus on the family home, if I could say it that way. And describe what that younger childhood was like. Oh, she was cutie patootie.

She was tiny, tiny. I was little, little, little dancing on top of the Volkswagen bug in South Philadelphia. The life, you know, maybe the black sheep of the family, but the life of the family, dancing didn't need an audience. The audience was in my mind. You know, there was the bridge that the townhomes dead end into in South Philly.

There's the row homes and all the steps. And I can remember being just larger than life, but tiny in person. That's so fun. I can relate. I mean, when I was a five-year-old boy, just running around playing Batman in the alleys and having a great time, right? Just trying to enjoy life. Yeah.

That's what it sounds like. We would have been a dynamic duo in our neighborhood, but your grandmother, nanny, I think you referred to her. She was a very important part of your life.

Why? And then what happened? This is my mom's mom. We're Italian, so we kind of communed together. She lived with us until I was 12. And I remember being scared and I was under my canopy at night and she didn't speak English.

Don't ask me why I'm not bilingual and Italian, but I understood her and there would be nights where I was the kid that would wake up in the middle of the night at 4am screaming from the bad dream for whatever was in the dream. And she would be the one shuffling down that hallway. And in her way of sharing her faith, she had that beautiful blue crystal rosary. That was her way of giving me a piece of her faith. She'd put it in my hands. She'd pat my hands.

She'd say, and in Italian, and she'd say, you know, it's okay. And I remember holding just that thing that meant something to her. And I remember looking up at the canopy and I just remember feeling comforted by her faith. In that way then from 12 to 15, there was a bit of that wandering feeling, right?

Where's nanny and where's my rock? And your parents weren't doing well at the time. Describe kind of up until 15 when it kind of came off the rails for you. But there's so many young people that are in homes that have a lot of destabilization and, you know, kids struggle processing that sometimes. And I want to capture that for people, for parents to better understand perhaps what their 12, 13, 14 year olds are feeling when there's not God's peace in the home.

Such a challenging thing, isn't it? As a parent, how do you provide that in your imperfection? And I think if we're sharing with parents at large, my parents got wrapped up in self. My dad, who had a very rough upbringing, abandoned in eighth grade, supported three sisters, turned to the ponies, the horse racing, gambling, and the bottle for comfort and escape. And you could almost understand it and rationalize it. My mother was his prom date.

I mean, these are South Philly kids, Italian families grew up. My dad wanted nothing more than to be the father he never had. And in a way, provided it in his character, his work ethic, his provision and who he was. But he couldn't provide it emotionally and spiritually, because he had no point of reference. He had no well.

He had no well. And when they began to do this, I began to do this. Yeah, when they begin to separate. Yeah. In that context, 15 then became kind of a demarcation point. It sounded like in reading the book that, you know, that was when you started looking for those hugs. Right.

In places that weren't healthy. So describe that. Yeah, I mean, this again, your story is, is not your story alone. I mean, this is a very common story, especially for teen girls that don't feel like there's adequate love in the home. So that I mean, you're speaking to many, many people.

Yeah. And you're a minor. Yeah, you're not wired to process what's going on. And so you grasp at things.

And so at 14, actually looking for love in all the wrong places, I began acting out with promiscuity. I mean, we're Italian, there's plenty of alcohol in the house. And you can find the outlets and begin drinking. Of course, the neighbors didn't help. They were down the townhouse alleyway and began, you know, my friend and I began going over to these older men's home.

And the alcohol and the drugs were provided, you know, we kind of became the object, if you will, tragic. The door was open in my home. My father was remote, my mother was working, just because I was home alone. And there were neighbors that thought I was cute.

The open door does not mean walk through it. I walked through it. I was sassy. I thought I could get out there and take the world by storm. And yet the world took me.

Wow. And I naively went into those environments. Cynthia, tell us about that first abortion. What age were you? What happened?

What were the circumstances? So right about this time, I walked through that door. I walked into the arms of strangers. A couple of months go by, my mother realizes I have not had a menstrual cycle.

I go to my mom. I said, Mom, I'm pregnant. She says, I've noticed.

You haven't asked for feminine product. I've noticed. And I looked at her. And she had the solution. And this is where, to your point, you can't look back and blame. But you can look back and go, she was doing what she thought would help me.

There's a law on the land that said it was okay. And she borrowed cash, so there would be no receipts for my father to see. She got her friend, Annette, who, you know, was our support system. We drove over to, you know, a road where there was an abortion facility.

She checked me in under her best friend's name, paid cash. I had just turned 15. Enter first abortion. Wow. That journal entry that was read at the beginning of the program, express that desire even as a late 14-year-old, 15-year-old, you wanted to keep the baby. That's what I got from that. Yeah. I mean, so the longing of your heart was there even as a young woman, a girl. Describe that. Well, I didn't know that longing was there.

Here's why. As a minor, that abortion enters in, that veil of sin comes over that young woman. She doesn't know how to process. She has no resources to process. So what does she do? She numbs.

She acts out. So it wasn't until years later that I had found that journal. And I remember my husband and I were decorating for Christmas and pulling things out of the attic. And I found the journal and, oh, so sweet. Look at her handwriting.

Oh, and I hit the page. And it became a trigger in my healing journey because I had thought she just wasn't aware. She was blindly carried away to the abortion clinic at 15 and just had no comprehension. And that diary entry, that journal entry was, she knew. She knew. She was very aware that that was the taking of a life. Our children may be naive.

They may be young, but they're not blind and they're not, they have the capacity to understand. And that journal entry showed me, I understood what was going on. Well, this is focused on the family with Jim Daly and our guest today is Cynthia Wentz. And she's sharing very candidly about pain in her life. There is hope as the story continues. But the book is called healed for life, a story of redemption.

So contact us today for your copy and keep listening. There's a lot more to hear. The link is in the show notes and our number is 800, the letter a and the word family Cynthia, in recounting that, I mean that feeling of loneliness, I'm just touching that and hearing your heart.

I can't imagine 15 and you think your dad's going to go into this blazing rage. You're whisked away secretly, your mom, the girlfriend, all of that. It had to be such a lonely place. It really was. I remember we went from the abortion clinic to Denny's. We went from the abortion clinic from the removal of life from a young adolescent girl to breakfast. Wow.

And probably didn't really talk about it ever again. Wow. Well, I hope you feel that I can certainly see it. And that's, I mean, I appreciate that the vulnerability of it. I mean, it's still tender for you. Sometimes we can say these things so often that you lose the heart part of it, but you haven't. And that's amazing. Let's keep moving.

It's going to get a little more dicey. You had another heartbreaking story from your book Healed for Life, which involved a, I even don't, I don't want to choose the words well-meaning coach. I mean, you had a swim coach. What happened?

Well, so that's interesting, right? So here's a broken child who is strong, but immature. Here's this healing agent that comes along perceived healing agent will say, and these coaches keep me busy. What is a young promiscuous child looking for love, misplaced the type of love that's being administered.

And I couldn't distinguish between the two. And I became, Oh, wait, there's something being given to me and I'm being taken care of. Now something is due in return. And I became the aggressor, if you will. And I don't think it was aggressive. Like let's, you have to remember sex at that time was painful, but it became, I think in that young girl's mind, a way of this must be love.

Therefore sex must be part of it. And it became this stumbling. And what happened in that relationship and who was that? That was me, aggressing, displacing love for the coach thinking you're my savior. And now I want to put my arms around you because I want to feel safe with you and misplacing that and taking it into a sexual relationship. And that happened. That's what I was getting at. That's what I remember in the book. I mean that, that he, you know, again, he's the adult, so he should have known better, but you did move in that direction. Oh yes. For three and a half years. It was when he left the picture, the acting out returns, enter second abortion.

You sought another relationship to soothe the pain of promiscuity at its best. I mean, no, no, no. I'm acting out. Yeah. Piece that together.

I mean, you were really struggling. Oh yeah, absolutely. And so that in essence, that third relationship also resulted in a pregnancy.

Take us through that. You're very gracious to say third. I think there were many to count when promiscuity enters a young woman's life. Promiscuity does not mean the first, the second and the third.

It means where can I act out in relationship and where can I feel loved? Yeah. And it just becomes part of the norm, part of the tragic norm. And you know, it's important to make this statement because some people, they haven't had that experience, you know, they didn't have that, that pole.

They didn't have those warring powers within them. And I, I get it, but you know, it's amazing. And this is the statement.

Jesus loves you. Oh, and through it all, regardless of that, that's the amazing thing. And I think we, you know, we can lean into a judgmental attitude.

Say, wow, Cynthia, really? I mean, how come you couldn't get your head together on this? You know, multiple relationships. Now you had an affair with your coach. You brought it on.

It sounds like, so the guilt of that, it was me being the aggressor and then a rebound relationship where you're looking for that affection again with this next man and you get pregnant. And I mean, I'm telling you, I just think it's so important for people to realize, yeah, God's love can extend to you obviously. So keep it going.

What happens in that situation? And I would even go so far as to say is it doesn't extend to me. He was present with me the whole time. Grieving every wrong turn I took. And I later prayed that out with the Lord, you know, cause you can look back as a redeemed woman of God and you can go, where were you Lord?

Right. And the comfort was I was with you. You're alive because I was with you.

You're here today because I was with you. And so I think as adults, we need to look back and say when sexual promiscuity, drugs and alcohol enter a young woman's life when she's a minor and she's too young to process it, she becomes a predictable statistic and she begins acting out. She may have had this affair.

It doesn't mean he was the only one. And what happens when he leaves? She goes off to college.

She tries to begin a journey, a new journey. And as a 19 year old, a freshman in college, here she is with a boyfriend in college. Sex is the norm. The habits have been formed. Sex is now the habit of what you do with men because you've already been there. You know the sacredness of it, but you don't know the application of how to the sacredness of it.

And at 19 drinking, partying, the collegiate life that can kind of consume you. I entered a second pregnancy and a second termination and it was tragic. I had gone home to Houston. I had let him know. I think I'm pregnant. I went to the OB-GYN.

He mailed me 190 bucks, paid for the abortion. But in this particular one, I was so drugged out, zoned out. Just you kind of in your mind, just you justify, right? Your mind just goes a place where it can make it all okay. Well, I was doing drugs and it probably, you know, damaged the baby anyway. And it was probably you begin to tell yourself it's probably a miscarriage. It was probably the right thing to do. Probably the right thing to do. Yeah. Which is kind of what the abortion industry says today.

No matter what the circumstance of the young woman, this is always the right thing to do. And that's the problem that we have because it's actually not. It's a convenience and it's a misnomer. It's a perceived convenience and a misnomer.

Neither are true. Yeah. So Cynthia, I just want to make sure as we end here on day one that we capture that conversation with your doctor, the third pregnancy, the third abortion, your pattern of abuse to yourself and to those children. What did that doctor say to you?

So I began acting out. I think we've seen this pattern back in 15. You know, at 15 it was a coach at 29. It's an employer who's on the outs with his wife. I mean, so sad.

The predictable pattern could have been disrupted and it wasn't. And at 29 I have this Guido machismo boyfriend of five years and I have this relationship outside of this one with a married man and we're acting out. Of course, what are we doing? We're drinking. Sex becomes a part of that. Enter in third pregnancy. And that doctor, when you have that third pregnancy, that doctor says what to you? Well, I go to the doctor.

I am now bleeding through the pregnancy and I'm thinking, why am I bleeding? She does a pregnancy test. She says, you're pregnant. I go into hysterics at the doctor's office. I can't be pregnant. I don't know.

He'll kill me. At that moment, I couldn't carry on. And she says, she sees my distress and she says, you're bleeding. She does a blood test.

HCG levels are dropping. She says, you're probably miscarrying. At that time, she walked me into the next office.

She performs a complete D&C in office in the OB-GYN suite. I'm clinging to the nurse that's beside me. I have my hand on my stomach. And I'm like, I can't. And she's saying, relax. And I'm like, I can't.

You feel the weight of the world and I can't get out of my own way. And I'm like, hurry up. And she says, she holds up a jar.

That visual haunted me for years. She says, I think we got everything. And we complete the procedure and I go on. I come back two weeks later for a checkup. She does a pelvic exam. When you're pregnant, your uterus enlarges. When you extract a child from the uterus, your uterus should shrink down. She says, your uterus is still very enlarged.

This is where the Holy Spirit was with me in my deepest, darkest moments. Because I said, what? What does this mean? She looked at me and she said, we probably didn't get everything. What does that even mean? And my arm went up and I said, can I see what's inside of me?

Oddest request because you don't know what you're asking at the time. And she sent me to the hospital for an ultrasound so we could determine what's going on. And it was at that time, the technician is scanning, scanning, scanning, scanning. And I'm like, she goes out, gets the supervisor. The supervisor comes back in. The supervisor says, the baby is moving so quickly.

We can't get a still image. And I'm like, the baby? What baby?

I had a D&C two weeks ago. And she flips that screen around. And you see a little tiny baby just moving, wiggling, wiggling.

And you see a deflated sack on the right side of the screen. And I had been carrying twins. And at 29, bleeding in the OB-GYN's office, we had terminated a twin. How did a twin survive? And thank God for the arm that said, can I see? Because medically we know when we didn't get everything, it's retained fetal matter.

What are you going to see on a screen? And yet, my son survived an abortion procedure. And at this point, Cynthia, I mean, this is where we're ending. That son, you did give birth to that son. His name is Roman for Romans 828. He stood in the capital of Texas with me and testified that sonogram should be required before abortion. The law passed in our state in 2011. He is noble and wonderful father of three himself now.

He has twin daughters, four year old grandson and twin granddaughters. At that point, I had to choose life. Cynthia, this has been so powerful. And man, I hate to stop at this point in your story, but we have run out of time today.

So let's come back tomorrow and complete the story. Tell us more about your son, Roman, and the ways God began to heal the trauma of your past. That's so important for all of us to hear. For our listeners and viewers, I hope Cynthia's story has touched your heart.

I know it's touched mine and motivated all of us to get more involved in the pro-life movement, helping to bring God's love, truth and hope to people who really need it. And one way you can do that is through our option ultrasound program, where we raise funds to equip pregnancy centers to get ultrasound machines and training and all the resources they need to be a compassionate voice and offer practical help to women and girls who are facing an unplanned pregnancy. Thanks to the generosity of friends like you, we're getting close to, get this, a half a million babies saved from abortion through option ultrasound. I'm so proud of that work that's being done and what a blessing that is to these women and obviously to their children.

Yeah, and to the glory of God, we are just so grateful that this is happening. You can be a part of it. You can be a part of the option ultrasound program. We've done the research and it's very clear that your gift of $60 saves a baby's life through this program. So please consider stepping up and donating on a monthly basis to save a baby a month, or if you can, a one-time gift. Either way, when you contribute to the work of Focus on the Family, we'll send a copy of Cynthia's book, Healed for Life. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, or stop by the show notes for the link. And John, let's remind the listeners that if you're struggling, if this has brought up emotions for you that are difficult, contact us here at Focus on the Family. We have caring Christian counselors who can talk with you and help you with a referral to a counselor in your area or with other resources. Certainly they can pray with you and give you next steps toward your healing. Yeah, give us a call.

Let us know how we can help. Our number again, 800, the letter A in the word family. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team here, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we continue the conversation and once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. I was convinced that nothing could change what was going on in our marriage, and I didn't want to try anymore. But my commitment to God helped me try one more time. We went to a Hope Restored marriage intensive, and it was life-changing. The counselors created the safest environment we could imagine, so that let us really talk. We're on a much different course now, and I believe we received a miracle that week. Give your free consultation at HopeRestored.com.