By Sue Schulzetenberg
The Visitor
10-8-10

For more than a decade, Tracie Rademacher carried suppressed emotions and memories from a traumatic experience in her teenage years.

During the current 40 Days for Life campaign, she holds a sign saying, “I regret my abortion!” in front of the Planned Parenthood building in St. Cloud. She holds the sign confidently as she walks on the sidewalks in front of the facility and nearby buildings and chats with other vigil participants. She feels the healing has begun.

“I’ve gone a full circle from suffering to doing this,” Rademacher said. “I go every weekend.”

Rademacher, a mother of four and resident of Big Lake, spoke during the opening ceremony for the current 40 Days for Life initiative in St. Cloud and during the closing ceremony at the one last spring. The 30-year-old also has spoken to classes at Cathedral High School about her story and life choices.

“So there’s one less person who can say, ‘I didn’t know,’ ” she said. “I came to the realization that abortion didn’t make me unpregnant. It just made me the mother of a dead baby.”

With a lesson from Project Rachel, which provides post-abortion counseling, she started a support group at her church, Riverside Church in Big Lake.

Her story
Rademacher had an abortion at age 16. She recalls knowing at the time that it was wrong, but her mother and grandmother told her it was just a group of cells and that she would have to forget about college and struggle for years financially if she kept the baby.

At the abortion facility, she felt like there was no turning back. She remembers a medical professional asking her why she was crying.

For years after the abortion, Rademacher didn’t share her story and repressed her feelings, she said. She also went on with her life and married Jason. After giving birth to her second child, she became extremely depressed.

Healing began a few months after the birth of her second child thanks to a Bible verse, she said. It was Isaiah 1:18: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they may become white as snow.”

Rademacher decided to read the Bible and study it. Eventually, she realized that she could be forgiven through Christ but struggled to forgive herself and wondered what she should be doing, she said.

She signed up for pro-life mailings and attended a Bike for Life event in Duluth in spring 2009 with her husband. After the ride, the couple sat by a stream and Rademacher apologized to God and her baby for what she did. Correspondence with her mother and grandmother led to further healing.

Through prayer, Rademacher said she could tell that God wanted her to use her experience to help others. She said she prays a lot and knows that God is speaking to her when she gets a thought that she never had before and it keeps coming back.

“God spoke the loudest about this,” she said. “He wants me to speak and educate.”

Called to outreach
After hearing about the 40 Days for Life campaign in St. Cloud she decided to participate. She made a sign saying, “I regret my abortion” and she and her sister brought it to the peaceful vigil in front of Planned Parenthood last spring. Rademacher was afraid of the reaction she might get from the others at the vigil, but when they read her sign, they hugged her and she knew she was at the right place.

Since then, she has held her sign, a newer, sturdier one, and walked with others every Saturday during the current vigil in front of Planned Parenthood. As she walks, she hopes many people will be in support of the pro-life effort. But if she can help even one person to stop and think what abortion is really about, her efforts are worth it, she said.
“Children are a blessing from God and they’re never a surprise for him,” she said. “There’s always options.”

Her healing continues whenever she sees people responding to her story, she said. Yet, she knows she will continue to carry the memories of the abortion. In telling her story, she speaks calmly, honestly and with conviction. She said that it is important for those who had abortions to seek help.

“Never tackle it alone,” she said.

When she holds her sign, most of the cars drive by without reaction. Some motorists wave or honk. A very few use profane gestures.

As Rademacher wraps up an interview with The Visitor, a woman yells from her car, “Thank you for what you’re doing.” Rademacher and the others holding signs wave at the woman driving past. “One of those takes away 10 bad ones,” she said.