Lizette was a good Christian girl. So too was Kerine. They both grew up in Christian homes and were very active in their local churches. They sang on the choir, went religiously to prayer meetings, Bible study and fasted.

But Lizette was living a double life, one which led her to have seven abortions - one involving twins - between ages 20 and 26.

And Kerine, who was "in and out" of church in her teen years, aborted two pregnancies, the first when she was 13, the other six years later at 18.

The two women have never met. In fact, the former is a Kingstonian, while the other hails from Montego Bay. The only thing they have in common is the set of circumstances which surrounded their having had induced abortions.

They both said they were molested when they were very young girls, that they were involved with men much older than they were, and both grew up in poor families in inner-city communities. They both also said they experienced rejection, condemnation, depression and emotional instability as a result of their actions.

"I made the choice to cover my own family and the church," Lizette told the Sunday Observer. "I thought, 'what would people think?' Living in the inner-city, they look up to us and my mother, she was a woman who did not like scandals and that kind of thing. Furthermore, when I looked at my own life and the struggles, because even though I was with this man, I was not getting the help. My needs were not being met, and so I decided to do the abortion."

On the first occasion, she was six weeks pregnant. She left work early one Friday, checked into a well-known private hospital and paid $4,000 for the procedure.

"I can recall the pain because there were no anaesthetics back then," she said. "I remember the sounds that I made, just 'mmmm'. It was so hurtful and painful. I can never forget the forceps, when it goes in and it makes that sound [imitates cracking sound] and then you feel that stabbing. I bore the pain and I went alone because I didn't want anyone to know. All I could say was 'mmmmm' and the tears flowed, but I bit my tongue and I bore it... I even felt when he was doing the washing out [imitates gushing sound].

"When I was finished, he gave me the prescription for Baralgin 500 and Brufen. I was hunched over when I dragged myself out. I was just dazed. I remember saying to the secretary, 'I need to lie down' and I lay on the chairs and fell asleep. I woke up after two hours," she said.

On Sunday, she was back in church but it was difficult.

"There was a deep emptiness, a pain, rejection, because everything turns in. You feel like a nobody. Behind my smile I was hurting so much. The pretence... I know about pretence. I was in condemnation. I wore a mask because there I was in the midst of all these people who were supposed to be righteous and I was the sinner," said Lizette.

She was 20 and in her first relationship. Her partner, 15 years her senior, was not a Christian, and unknown to her, was only separated from his wife. For the entire time they were involved, some four years, they used the withdrawal method of contraception.

"In my early life I always used to say I would never have a child out of wedlock and that statement allowed me and lured me into it, which is out of ignorance and also deceit of my own heart, and so I made my choice," said Lizette.

Two years later, she had a second abortion, this time without her partner's knowledge. This time she went to a private doctor and it cost $8,000.

At age 24, and with a new partner, who was also much older and who she later found out was married, she aborted another pregnancy. In the years they were together, she had two more, the second of which was a male/female twin.

"This guy was more affluent and influential but he never helped. And, of course, I was just dying for help," explained Lizette. "This was a poor girl. I needed help. When a woman gives her body she's expecting something... And I was still in the church. I went to church late, trying to hide at the back."

Relationship number three lasted just over a year, and within that time, Lizette had two more abortions. Total number of procedures: seven. Total number of children lost: eight.
She turned her life around in her 28th year, the same year her mother died.

"God started speaking to me more clearly," she said. "He showed me the stench of my life. I questioned His love for me. 'Why do you allow me to go to this extreme, why didn't you stop me when I did one, two, three? You allowed me to do eight [babies], why?' and He said, 'for you to understand the depth of love that I have for you, the price that I paid for you'."

Until the turnaround, Lizette, who is a qualified and trained professional, and a very physically active person, sought refuge in her workouts, but it was the hymn Jesus, He heals you where you are that provided the therapy, she said. Now, she wants to share her story so she can save lives.

"Even in the church we think 'yes, Christ forgives us' and when we find out about people who have committed such, we reject them, we keep them at a distance and there are lesbians, homosexuals, bisexuals in the church but some are fearful to even say where they have been," she said, adding that she knew girls just like herself in her own church.

"It could sound as if there is no remorse but I'm not here to jar emotions. I just want people to understand that what Jesus has done for me, He can do for anyone else. For the killer, the rapist... it's not where you began, it's where you're going."

"I must have been a mad woman to have eight abortions. I was sick!"

Kerine's story

Twenty-nine year-old Kerine, also believes she was unwell to have had two abortions.

"What I know now, if I had known it then, I wouldn't have had the abortions," she said.

"Even though you were only 13?" the Sunday Observer asked.

The reply: "Yes. It is wrong."

The man for whom she got pregnant then was "old enough to be my father". Kerine said she doesn't remember everything about that first abortion, but she does recall when her mother took her to the doctor and had the procedure done.

"She said it would destroy my life and that it wouldn't make sense... I remember the rejection, the sleepless nights, the depression, the peer pressure. I fell back in school and then my mother stopped spending on me because she said she didn't see what it was worth," said Kerine.

"Because of that, I never accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. My father sent me to school, but my mother never showed any interest, and I left school at grade 10," the young woman said.

Three years later, at age 16, she got pregnant again. The situation was so difficult, she said, that she didn't just want to kill the foetus, but herself as well.

"One night I was passing a crusade and the pastor was doing altar call. He said he knew someone was there who was pregnant and who wanted to commit suicide. I just stood there staring because I knew it was me," said Kerine.

She overcame the suicidal tendencies through counselling and decided to bring the pregnancy to term. The flipside, however, was that her father threw her out of the house. She moved in with the family of the man for whom she was pregnant and today, she has a 12-year-old daughter.

The year of the first pregnancy, however, Kerine again found herself with child, but things didn't go as planned.

"He said he wasn't ready for another child and that if I was going to keep it I would have to leave his house, but I didn't have anywhere else to go so I had the abortion," she told the Sunday Observer.

"That one hurt me big time because I had all these plans and then the relationship broke up. I threw away the baby because I thought we would have been together, but then it didn't work," she confided.

"I went through a healing process with a lot of counselling. If I hadn't got that counselling, maybe you wouldn't know me today," she said.

Now, she said, she has "totally dedicated" her life to God and wants to publish a book with her story. She has, however, already told her daughter.

"I shared it with her because we're close and she said she knew. I don't know how, but she felt there was a missing link," said Kerine. "It used to affect her emotionally and socially. She used to be withdrawn."

Social scientist Frederick Nunes has done abortion research work in Barbados and Guyana. Using the abortion rates in those countries as a base (79.5 and 41.9 per cent respectively), coupled with the number of live births in Jamaica for 2005 and the size of the female population between the ages of 15 and 44, as per figures for 2006 provided by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, he estimates that the country's abortion rate (number of abortions per 1,000 women age 15-44 per year) lies between a low of 31,251 and a high of 51,875. Jamaica's abortion ratio then (number of abortions divided by the number of pregnancies x 100) is between 40.56 and 53.11.

Elective abortion is illegal in Jamaica, but a report of the Abortion Policy Review Group recommended last month that the procedure be made legal and that the Government provide trained professionals and registered health care facilities to safely carry out abortions.