For 12 years she lived with overwhelming shame and guilt for her abortion. Nine years ago, she found healing through the Divine Mercy devotion.

Today, Cosgrove serves as director of Silent No More Minnesota, an organization devoted to reaching out to post-abortive women for healing. Cosgrove spoke with Register staff writer Tim Drake from her home in Minneapolis.

Tell me about your family growing up.

I grew up in Minneapolis in a working-class family. Both my parents were talented.

Times were tough growing up. My father drank and my mother tried to get him to stop. There were four boys and two girls. I was in the middle.

Did you grow up Catholic?

Yes, but we weren't devout. My father used to drop us off at church and give us a dollar for the collection plate and a dollar to buy a soda at the drug store across the street after church. My two younger brothers and I would skip church, grab a church bulletin and go across the street and buy ice-cream floats.

What happened next?

During my middle-school years my friends started smoking marijuana. Some of them were arrested and my parents assumed I was smoking, too, so they took it out on me and made me watch the movie Go Ask Alice. I decided that if I was going to get blamed for something I didn't do, I was going to do it. So I started smoking marijuana in ninth grade and started drinking alcohol in 10th grade.

However, in January 1976 I went down with a group of senior high school students to the federal court building in Minneapolis to protest against Roe v. Wade. I knew that life began at conception and that abortion was wrong. It was a day I would never forget.

What led you to make the decision to abort?

My boyfriend John and I were both working part time in a bar and had been doing drugs. We struggled with the decision and realizing that if I went through with the pregnancy there was no guarantee he was going to stick around. I would be a single mom, working at a bar, doing drugs.

That situation has been described as being in a foxhole with ammunition going off all around you. All you can think about is getting up and running. You deny it's happened, but you're at a point where you need to make a decision. You tell yourself, if I make this decision I can move on with my life, and you believe that … that you can move on. I got up out of my foxhole and ran, and got shot. That's what abortion is.

What do you recall from that day?

John accompanied me to the abortion business. One gal came in with a baby and I was sick to my stomach. “Why doesn't someone tell her to leave?” I remember thinking. I also remember wanting to hear John say, “Let's just leave.”

Prior to the abortion, I met with a counselor. She asked why I was doing this. I told her that I was on drugs, but the real reason was that I had no support. She told me there would be discomfort, tugging and cramping. She said I would bpleed and that there would be some pain and sadness from the pregnancy hormones, but it would go away but it doesn't.

After my name was called, the next thing I knew I was on the table with my feet in the stirrups and a white cloth over me. A doctor and nurse were standing beside me. I was so scared that I started to shake violently. I looked up toward the ceiling and said, “God forgive me for what I'm about to do.” When the doctor started the machine I said, “Help me. I'm going to faint.” He yelled and screamed at me and told the nurse to keep me awake. I told the nurse I was scared. She said, “Shhh, you're going to be okay. You've got to stay awake. You can't faint.”

I felt the darkness enter me as my baby's life was being ripped out. Afterward, I went to the recovery room and remember thinking that I would never be the same.

How did the abortion affect you later?

Whatever relationship I had with John, it ended the day the baby died. I felt even worse about myself, and I started smoking crack cocaine. A year later I moved to the Virgin Islands with the intention of getting off drugs, and I did.

John and I ended up getting married in the Catholic Church, and before our wedding, we went to confession. I asked him, “Did you confess the abortion?” He replied, “No.” Neither had I.

The pain of the abortion never went away. We had gotten pregnant, but I miscarried and wasn't able to get pregnant again. I would cry in the shower, wanting to die and scream without any sound coming out. John would ask, “Why can't you get over this?” In the end, I realized I didn't trust him. He hadn't protected his family. After five years of marriage, John left.

What brought you back to the Church?

In September 1993, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. As she lay dying, I went to her. The priest gave her last rites and my older brother came in and told her he was sorry for everything he had ever done. She couldn't say a word but looked at him with forgiveness.

My youngest brother began praying the Our Father. Mom prayed it with us and then lay back down and died.

I felt God calling my name. I remember telling God, “I give up. I'm done. I want the life you have planned for me, because obviously my plans aren't working. Show me the truth.” I decided that if the Catholic Church was the truth, I needed God to show it to me, and I started going back to church.

How did your post-abortion healing come about?

I had been seeing a therapist for three years. At about this time, she threw up her arms and said, “You're just going to have to learn to live with this.”

I asked her, “How does someone learn to live with murdering her child?”

Three weeks later, on the evening of March 5, 1995, which would have been my mother's 62nd birthday, I read a brochure on the Divine Mercy. After reading the brochure I thought, “Here, in the privacy of my own home, I could find forgiveness,” so I got on my knees with a rosary and started praying the chaplet.

As I prayed it, I felt something being lifted up out of my soul. I was praying and sweating and crying and I thought, “If I'm going to die tonight, I'll go.” I physically felt something like a ball come out of me, and although there was no physical presence, I could physically feel something leaving me. The shame and the guilt I had felt for 12 years was gone and has never come back.

The moment this happened I could feel the love and peace and joy being poured to the depths of my soul. My arms were stretched out and I said, “It is finished,” and as I said it I thought of Christ's words on the cross. It was then that I knew he had died for me. I knew a miracle had occurred and I needed to go to confession. It just so happened that I had an appointment with a priest the following day to discuss my annulment.

As soon as I walked into his office, I said, “In 1983, I had an abortion.” The priest said, “Sit down. We'll get to that.”

Tell me about your work with Silent No More.

After that, I told Christ, “After what you did for me, I'll go anywhere and do anything.” We gather women and men who have experienced abortion and regret it to speak publicly. We're trying to educate those who don't know the devastation of abortion and let those who do know that there is healing so that others don't have to be silent.

We believe women deserve better than abortion and we believe hearts and minds can be changed. We travel to as many towns as we are able as a powerful witness to God's mercy.

Tim Drake writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.