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MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA (ANS) -- More than 25 years after her crisis pregnancy, radio personality Kim Jeffries lives in Minnesota with her second husband. Her two children and two stepchildren, ages 21 to 24 are edging into adulthood. And Jeffries is writing a book to tell her abortion story.
"I'm at peace now," she says. "That's what allows me to speak. I tell the truth of what happened to me."
In a 2003 interview for the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper, reporter Kay Harvey says Jeffries raises her hands above her head in the shape of a V. To Jeffries, the V symbolizes a choice. On one side of the V is an unplanned pregnancy. On the other side is the life a woman envisions herself living.
"And you are down here," she says, looking up at the bottom of the V. "You're down in the pit."
In the interview, Jeffries says she was engaged to be married when she learned she was pregnant. Her fiance declined to get married or support the pregnancy, she says, and they later broke off the relationship.
Harvey writes the picture Jeffries saw of her life didn't mesh single motherhood with her budding radio career. She had studied at Northwestern University, graduated from Brown Institute and landed her first radio job in St. Cloud. Just three months before facing the prospect of motherhood, she climbed another rung on the career ladder. She signed on the air at Twin Cities KS95 Radio.
Harvey says Jeffries shared her abortion secret with only three people: her fiance, her mother and a sister. She scheduled an abortion in Minneapolis. Her fiance accompanied her to the clinic for the procedure.
Like many women who have abortions, Jeffries said, she remembers few details of what happened. As she taught herself to do in a dentist's office, she detached from the experience. "It was like sleepwalking," she recalls. Jeffries says just one poignant moment is burned in her memory. "I was lying on the table," she remembers. "The nurse must have seen that I was distressed. She offered me her hand. And she held mine."
Back at home, remembering the comforting gesture, Jeffries held her own hand. "I think it was God holding my hand, telling me to pray," she says. "But I thought I didn't dare to pray. I had offended."
For years afterward, Jeffries believed she could never be forgiven or forgive herself. In her article, Harvey says Kim Jeffries' life moved forward. At age 28, she married for the first time. She gave birth to a son and a daughter. She juggled home life with building her broadcast career, which later included a one-year stint as a features reporter on WCCO-TV, the CBS flagship station in Minneapolis. Jeffries served from 1998-2004 as Host and Co-Host at top-rated CBS Radio News/Talk affiliate WCCO-AM. Jeffries reported feature stories for WCCO-TV from 1997-1998. Her radio career was established over the course of 19 years at KS95 in the Twin Cities, where she filled many roles including disc jockey, music director, and co-host and news anchor for the morning show. Ms. Jeffries recently completed studies for a Bachelor of Science in Ministry at Northwestern College through the FOCUS adult-degree completion program.
"Those years were a desert experience of feeling very separate from God," she says. "Of feeling I had to preserve a persona with my radio career. I wasn't feeling safe with anyone knowing me. Yet, I really wanted to be connected to others."
Harvey says that Jeffries felt an emptiness she didn't know how to fill. She saw a smattering of psychologists over the years, never specifically for the purpose of talking about her abortion. The subject always came up, she says. But nothing washed the hurt away. Her first marriage lasted a decade.
After the breakup, she met a woman friend who encouraged her to go back to church. According to Harvey, Jeffries grew up Roman Catholic in Texas and during her teen years in Wayzata, Minnesota, where she graduated from high school.
But she hadn't worshipped or practiced religion for several years. "She led me to God and back into church," Jeffries says of her friend. "I was born again during that period. And I began to see faith as something that could help me answer problems."
Friends introduced her to Bruce Ketola, now her husband of 14 years. Their Christian faith became a central part of their marriage and blended family, she says. The couple taught Sunday school and work together in a lay ministry at Woodbury Lutheran Church.
Even as pieces of her life fell into place, she struggled with familiar lows. "I still had a lot of issues about isolation and intermittent depression, shame and guilt around the abortion," she says. "It was getting better, but it was still there."
Harvey says the turning point for Jeffries came in 2001. She found the courage to give her emotional pain over to God, Jeffries says, and God took her pain away. She calls her ability to speak publicly about her abortion "a direct result of getting right with God." Abortion is too often a secret, she says. "The secret didn't help me."
Now Jeffries hopes her ministry -- Life Redeemed at www.liferedeemed.org -- can spread what she has learned on her own, personal and quite painful, journey toward forgiveness and wholeness.
"Don't give up on God," she tells women she talks to in churches, recovery centers, prisons and conferences. "And don't give up on yourself."
There have been more than 48.5 million legal abortions in America since 1973, according to the National Right to Life website. But Jeffries stresses that her ministry has no political agenda. "I am 100 percent pro-life, as I believe the Bible teaches we must be. However, the reality is, the right to an abortion is the law. Some people are hurt. We're trying to help."
Jeffries' revelation allowed her to talk with her father, as well as her then-teenage children, about her abortion for the first time. "That was hard," she says. "You don't want to influence their sexual behavior, or their need to have a hero parent, or shatter their childhood illusions. I told them they are loved and wanted. They all have their individual reactions. But I think they understand why I'm pursuing my ministry."
She looked head-on, too, at the secret she had kept buried inside. She dug into her keepsakes to find a journal she kept at the time. One entry begins, "Coming home to the little ghost." She can read it now and remember. Jeffries says she has just one lingering regret: "I'm not glad the choice was so easy."
Post-Abortion Healing and Community Involvement
Jeffries says her program Along the Way with Kim Jeffries began broadcasting on Faith Radio (KTIS-AM 900) in 2005. Her experience founding an abortion recovery ministry led to her role as podcast Host and Producer of Life Redeemed which also aired on KTIS-AM & FM from 2004-2005.
Jeffries serves as Chair, MN Governor's Council on Faith and Community Service Initiatives, since January, 2006. She is also a Board Member at Union Gospel Mission. Jeffries' ministry, Life Redeemed, is billed as a ministry of hope for life in Jesus Christ. The ministry shares a message of healing after abortion through speaking engagements and conference presentations of the Life Redeemed Workshop which equips and encourages healing and hope.
Says Jeffries: "I was blessed to travel and present the Workshop recently with Ruth Graham and Friends for the Get Growing Conference in Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada. There are very few resources for those who need support after abortion in the region." She will travel with the Ruth Graham conference to Paducah, Kentucky in May, with several other dates upcoming in 2008.
Kim's lay ministry emphasis is to serve those in prison and recovering from addiction, and proclaiming a pro-life message. She contributes articles to Minnesota Christian Chronicle and has also been published in the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, and Minnesota Women's Press. Additionally, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill-MN awarded Jeffries their 2003 Annual Media Award, given to an individual or organization working to reduce the stigma of mental illness.
Jeffries suggests seeking a pregnancy resource center for help after abortion, or a great alternative is the online Bible study and interactive counsel at www.FreeMeToLive.com and www.safehavenministries.
On her ministry website you will also find archived posting of Life Redeemed audio files from podcasts and broadcasts which were created and aired in 2005. These "Stories of Hope in Jesus Christ After Abortion" continue to bless visitors to this website.
"I am continually amazed at how He has redeemed my work in broadcasting, which I chose over the life of my child. My work as a Christian talk show host has provided many opportunities to proclaim the truth about abortion. And we remain grateful to the many individuals who told their stories. I think you'll find timeless truth from the many pastors, Christian writers and other spiritual guides who contributed. These stories reflect the eternal power of Jesus to save and redeem the darkness of a life lived without Him," says Jeffries.
Michael Ireland, Chief Correspondent of ANS, is an international British freelance journalist who was formerly a reporter with a London newspaper and has been a frequent contributor to UCB Europe, a British Christian radio station. Used by Permission of Assist News Service www.assistnews.net
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