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The National Helpline
866-482-LIFE (5433)
Are you pregnant and confused? Or hurting from a past abortion?
Talk with a trained consultant who has also experienced the pain of abortion but has found hope and healing.
All calls are free and confidential.
Operation Outcry
866-4-OUTCRY
Operation Outcry is the project of THE JUSTICE FOUNDATION to end legal abortion by exposing the truth about its devastating impact on women and families. We believe that this will be accomplished through prayer and with the testimonies of mothers who have taken the life of their own unborn babies and of others who have suffered harm from abortion. We are working to restore justice and to protect women, men, and children from the destruction that abortion causes.
Voices of Truth
To book Joyce Zounis for a speaking engagement, call:
(303) 680-0221
CBN.com – “There was one family I always hated to visit because of what would happen behind closed doors. I was six years old, and my younger cousin was sexually violating me. I didn’t know what that meant; all I knew was that it felt wrong.”
Childhood is supposed to be an innocent time. Little Joyce never had a choice.
“I thought that I would be punished because of something I had done,” says Joyce. “So no one knew of my secret.”
Since no adults knew, the abuse continued during summertime visits.
“At nine years old, going on ten, I finally found my voice. And told him no more.”
Though the abuse stopped, the damage was done. If Joyce had thought about telling anyone, what she heard at a church sleepover changed her mind.
“She read to us this nice little story. The moral of the story was purity, and I finally found out what I was not. I wasn’t pure. So no longer was my family a safe place. I wasn’t going to tell them. I finally learned that the church was not a safe place either.”
That’s how she saw it. Joyce had accepted Jesus when she was eight, but her trauma muffled the truth.
“The enemy began to whisper: ‘You’re spoiled goods. Your heavenly Father doesn’t love you. You know your earthly father doesn’t. If he ever found out this truth...’ And I believed that.”
A few years of that kind of thinking had its consequences.
“Now I was no longer being violated, I was offering the invitation for sex at 13. Smoking pot, hanging out with the wrong crowd but wearing that mask.”
By 15, Joyce was pregnant. Without a second thought, she made a phone call.
Joyce says, “I knew the remedy. All I knew was that it was supposed to be quick, easy, and affordable. I had been babysitting, had enough money. I’d take care of it, didn’t tell the boy that I was pregnant, and life would just go on back to normal.”
Joyce decided to tell her mom about the pregnancy but still couldn’t talk about the abuse from years before.
“When we walked through those doors, she told me, ‘we will never talk about this again.’ It was an issue; it needed to be dealt with. We had all these great aspirations for my future, and a baby just wasn’t part of the picture. Even placing that baby for adoption was just not an option.”
Joyce kept busy with schoolwork and cheerleading. She was really good at hiding behind her mask.
“I became more harsh; I shut down afterwards -- more disconnected,” Joyce says. “What did I do? Next year, here we are, pregnant. I’m now a junior in high school, and I knew the way out.”
One abortion made having the second one easier. Four more would follow in the years to come. What about her relationship with God in all of this?
“I thought He doesn’t love me anyway because of the sexual abuse. I did feel His presence at various times and knew in my heart that what I was doing was wrong but it was the answer.”
When Joyce was 25, she became pregnant and decided to keep the baby. Her thinking on abortion was starting to change, and she hoped her boyfriend would stay for the child. He didn’t.
“But when I had Costa, my world came apart. I finally woke up and realized what I had done was really wrong. What I had lost was not a problem, but my children.”
So instead of running from God, this time Joyce ran to Him.
"And then the Lord told me, 'Joyce, I will take care of you.'"
Joyce soon met and married Ted. Though they were happy, she was afraid that he too might leave her. So when she found she was expecting, she reverted once more to her old pattern.
“I just felt that one was enough, if Ted left us, I could handle one. But I didn’t think I could handle two,” Joyce says. “I had become something that I hope most people never choose to become -- to reject and denounce the true joy and love of your heart for myself.”
Neighbors had invited them to church many times. Ted and Joyce decided to go, hoping that’s what was missing in their lives.
“We went. It felt like I had never been gone -- like all of those 20 years disappeared.”
The next time Joyce was expecting, she went to a pregnancy care center for a free test and found so much more.
“They actually asked if they could hug me. They offered help for me to carry that baby. I had never been in that environment before. It was always, ‘oh, when would you like to set that appointment for that abortion?’”
In time Joyce took part in their abortion recovery program.
“I didn’t even know such a thing existed. I entered in as a very frightened young girl, but 12 weeks later, I left as a woman of God. Looking at denial, depression, and anger, women and men who have lost children to abortion live in the state of anger, and for me it was 10 years.
"I finally called them for what they are – sin. I learned that this is a sin that is forgivable. It took a little while, courage, His strength, to change my wording from ‘several’ to ‘many’ to ‘seven.’”
Joyce and Ted had four more children and love having a big family. Joyce is grateful in a way that few truly understand.
“He’s a God who has redeemed and given me strength to tell His story. If He can take this girl who made so many wrong choices, all these abortions…if He could forgive me, I know He can forgive anyone, because I thought I was the poster girl of wrong choices.”
For those considering abortion or dealing with its consequences, Joyce has this comfort:
“It may seem simple. It may seem like the quick fix and no one needs to know, but you’ll know for the rest of your life. It’s a devastating, destructive choice that impacts you as a mother, as a wife, as a sister, as a friend. It’s a grief, even when you know the Lord’s forgiveness, which you carry for the rest of your life. There is nothing I can do to fill my hands with my children again. Most pregnancy centers offer Bible studies. Come to know His truth, come to know His freedom, and those chains of guilt and shame can fall.”
Are you pregnant and confused? Or hurting from a past abortion? Call 866-482-LIFE (5433).
A caring friend will be there to pray with you in your time of need.
