Editor’s note: This article may be difficult to read for young and sensitive people, or those with untreated abortion trauma.

Some things are implanted in your mind forever, and no matter how much time passes, the events are as vivid today as when they took place. For me, the death of my unborn child at 16 weeks of gestation was such an event.

Coerced into an abortion by my dad, I was brought to a hospital, ironically on the maternity floor, for a saline abortion. No one told me what was about to happen, or about the development of my baby. I was injected with saline, which caused me to go into labor as, I was later to find out, my son was thrashing around inside me as his body burned. After many hours, I gave birth to a dead baby boy.

I can still see him lying on the bed next to me as I stared in disbelief. I could not believe that this was legal. What was wrong with us that we had allowed this? My mind could not wrap around it, as I looked at his tiny hands and feet. How could this be possible? Yet it was, right there on the maternity ward where the woman next door to me was celebrating the birth of her child.

Today the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act will be brought to the floor by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. This act would ban abortions after 20 weeks’ gestation, at which time it has been proven that unborn babies feel pain.

I pray it passes but, sadly, I have no doubt that many will vote against it. We have gone from making abortion “rare and legal” to enshrining it for all nine months at the expense of everything, including the long-term impact on the mothers we profess to care about. This negative impact is still being denied by those who have made abortion their god, despite women themselves speaking out on the pain and destruction it has caused.

How did our country come to this? Can average people continue to do nothing just because they feel it will never affect them? When will we honestly look at the repercussions of our more than 40 years of abortion legality, with 60 million unborn babies dead and countless numbers of mothers, fathers, and others suffering?

My son—a boy whom I named Joshua—was not 20 weeks like the unborn children this act seeks to protect, but I am certain that he suffered greatly as he burned to death from the saline solution. I may not have known at the time that it was him thrashing around inside of me that I felt, but I will never forget the day I found out exactly what took place in a saline abortion and the cruelty I subjected my son to because of pressure from others. I led a life of destruction and misery for years after that until I finally found the help I needed to heal and forgive myself.

I am so proud and grateful to McCarthy, Rep. Christopher Smith, Rep. Diane Black, and the others who continue to bring the truth of the horrors of abortion to the floor. Hopefully, our humanity will come through as this act is brought to a vote and the innate good that abides in each of us will win out, making late-term abortions a thing of the past.