Pro-Life Activist Details Heartwarming Story of Healing After Abortion

A pro-life speaker and activist detailed her story of finding healing through a group at church after 17 years of suffering following her abortion.

Cindy Brunk told her story at the 50th annual March for Life rally against abortion on Friday, recalling how she was told she was pregnant just before she turned 19.

“Now, I remember thinking that I needed to decide if I wanted to become a mother. You see, I didn’t realize that I already was one,” Brunk said, while speaking behind a Silent No More Awareness Campaign sign that read “Women Do Regret Abortion.”

“I chose abortion because well-meaning loved ones encouraged it or offered no alternatives. I was ashamed of being pregnant. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to finish college, and I was still a child myself,” she continued. 

Brunk said she blacked out when her abortion began, and only remembered the boy who took her to the clinic standing at a counter, as well as walking down a long hallway before entering into the abortion room and seeing a man she had “never seen before walking in.”

“My memory returned three days later, after a nine-hour bus trip home, and working two shifts at a restaurant,” she said. “My memory returned three days later, as I opened a letter from the clinic stating that all of the tissue had successfully been removed. I know now that that tissue included the fully-formed hands and feet and the once beating heart of my very first child — and how I wish I had fought for him.”

Brunk said following her abortion, she suffered for 17 years from “nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety attacks, inability to bond with [her] future children, or trust [her] parenting decisions.”

“Because after all, look how I’d done with my first. My marriage was falling apart, and I was quick on my way to becoming a single parent,” she said. 

But after 17 years of grappling with her abortion, Brunk said she found healing when someone at church shared that they had been through an after-abortion program. 

“I started that program feeling like the woman at the well — and I finished it absolutely certain that I am a beloved daughter of an almighty King,” she said. 

According to her website, Brunk is now a national speaker, author, and pro-life activist who has traveled around the United States sharing her story and raising money for local pregnancy care centers. She also says she has served the Hope Medical Clinic for more than two decades — the same organization that provided her healing program. 

Brunk was one of several speakers at the March for Life last week. March for Life describes itself as “the largest annual human rights demonstration in the world,” and has been convening since the Supreme Court handed down its Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 declaring a supposed “right” to abortion.  The organization says even with Roe overturned, “the necessary work to build a culture of life in the United States of America is not finished.”

“Rather, it is focused differently. Sadly, the number of abortions annually is still well over 900,000 each year, and that number is expected to decrease only by roughly 200,000 each year in a post-Roe America,” the group states. “Many national legislative battles loom, including even keeping longstanding Hyde protections, which limit government funding for abortion on annual appropriation bills.”

March for Life continued:

The Hyde Amendment has saved over 2 million lives and is arguably the most impactful pro-life policy in our nation’s history, but now cannot be taken for granted. Last, our most important work is changing hearts and minds. The goal of the national March for Life is to not only change laws at the state and federal level, but to change the culture to ultimately make abortion unthinkable.

“With the role of the states being more important, we are also growing a strong state March for Life initiative quickly; however, we will continue to march every January at the national level until a culture of life is restored in the United States of America,” the website reads.