This Heartbreaking “What Nobody Told Me About Abortion” Essay Is Going Viral

In a culture that often paints abortion as an empowering choice, more women are beginning to speak out about the reality they faced once the political slogans faded.

One of them is Romy Holland, who shared her devastating story in her essay, What Nobody Told Me About Abortion. Her words are not politically calculated or sanitized. They are raw, personal, and haunting. And they reveal something the abortion industry would rather stay hidden: the profound, often unbearable pain abortion leaves behind.

When Holland discovered she was pregnant, she had been dating her boyfriend for several months. She cared for him. She even, briefly, let herself imagine a future as a mother. “There was a flicker of excitement inside me when I thought about meeting my baby,” she writes. But fear quickly set in: fear of judgment, fear of her life changing irrevocably, fear of losing everything she had worked for.

Her boyfriend didn’t pressure her into abortion, but he also didn’t encourage her to keep the baby. His muted reaction left her feeling overwhelmingly alone. “If even one person had said to me, ‘You can do this,’ I might have made a different choice," Holland reflects.

Instead, she was surrounded by reassurances that abortion was normal, safe, empowering. “The world told me it was my body, my choice. That I would feel relieved.”

Nobody told her that choosing abortion would shatter her heart.

"I chose fear over love," she wrote. "I chose death over life. And I have to live with that choice for the rest of my life."

“No one warned me that choosing to end my pregnancy would also end a piece of me,” she adds. “I was absolutely devastated after my abortion. I cried every single day for months. I missed my baby so much.”

"I felt instant regret. I missed my baby instantly."

The pain wasn’t just emotional, it became existential. Holland describes grappling with self-hatred, suffocating depression, and deep spiritual anguish. “I didn’t know that I would question my worth as a human being. I didn’t know that depression would smother me for months.”

Physically, she says the abortion procedure was “terrifying and painful,” but it was the aftermath that truly broke her. “I didn’t know that I would wake up every day for the next year wishing I could undo that decision."

"I needed someone to tell me that I could do it," she adds. "That I was strong enough. That I wasn’t alone."

What makes Holland’s testimony so powerful is her willingness to name what so many are too afraid to say: abortion isn’t a simple "medical procedure." It’s a mother choosing to end the life of her child.

"There is no funeral for aborted babies," she writes. "No memorial services. No 'I'm sorry for your loss' cards." Instead, women like Holland carry their grief in silence, their devastation hidden beneath slogans about choice and empowerment.

"The truth is, abortion is a permanent decision based on a temporary circumstance," she writes.

And the cruelest irony? Holland believed she was choosing abortion to protect her future, but the future she imagined never came. “I thought abortion would solve my problems," she confesses. "Instead, it created wounds that I am still trying to heal."

In the conclusion of her essay, Holland is clear: she shares her story not to judge others, but to tell the truth that she wishes someone had told her. “I don't share this to shame anyone,” she says. “I share this because women deserve to know the truth before making a decision they can never undo."

Her honesty cuts through the glamourized narratives surrounding abortion. And her grief demands that we confront what so many people would rather ignore.

Abortion is the end of a child's life, and it forever alters a woman’s heart, her identity, and her story. As Holland’s devastating experience reveals, the truth about abortion isn’t liberation. It’s a loss.

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