One woman recently shared her story about having an abortion on Facebook with the hopes that her own personal experience would help to end any existing misconceptions associated with late-term abortion. 

Lindsey Paradiso/Facebook - facebook.com

"This is ending a wanted pregnancy," Lindsey Paradiso wrote in the October Facebook post. "This is late-term abortion." Paradiso, who resides in Fredericksburg, Virginia, explained in the post how when it comes to women's reproductive rights that "[t]he government does not belong here." 

She decided to share her story after "watching the [third presidential debate] and when I heard Trump say that late-term abortions were ripping babies out at nine months, I went into a full panic attack and started sobbing because I couldn’t believe people actually thought that happens, so I had to share my story and set things straight," she told BuzzFeed in an interview published on Feb. 4.

In December, Virginia proposed legislation banning abortion after 20 weeks, and Paradiso's post went viral with over 116,000 shares. 

"The government does not belong here."

Paradiso's post consisted of over 20 photos documenting her pregnancy with her daughter Omara, detailing why Paradiso and her husband made the decision to stop their daughter's heart after it became apparent that an inoperable tumor in Omara's brain, lungs, and heart — "three times the size of her head," Paradiso told BuzzFeed — would end the baby's life.

Lindsey Paradiso/Facebook - facebook.com

"It was not wanted. It was not a 'way out,'" she wrote in her Facebook post. "It was not birth control. It was heartbreaking." 

Lindsey Paradiso/Facebook - facebook.com

After her post went viral, Paradiso added further clarification, due to being harassed for her admittance to having an abortion:

"To those of you who are saying that Matt & I should have given Omara the chance to live, and don't feel like reading the blog; she had an inoperable tumor growing into her brain, lungs and heart. She would not have lived to birth. If we had waited past the window of a legal abortion and she died in my womb, I would have had to carry her body (while my body began breaking it down) before being scheduled for a D&C or EXIT procedure (due to the size her tumor would have been). We opted to end the pregnancy early, relieve the suffering that she and our family were experiencing and deliver her through labor fully intact. Because of this decision we were able to hold her and say good-bye."

"We have to end these misconceptions," she added. 

Women do not make decisions to have late-term abortions because their babies were "not wanted," Paradiso noted.  

"Of the more than 1 million abortions performed in the United States in 2011, about 12,000, or 1.3 percent happened after 21 weeks, more than half-way through a 40-week pregnancy, according the Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit research group that supports abortion rights," USA Today reported in October 2016. The reasons are "severe fetal abnormalities, discovered late by ultrasound or genetic tests, or a health crisis for the woman."

Dr. Jen Gunter - wordpress.com

 "After 24 weeks, birth defects that lead to abortion are very severe and typically considered incompatible with life," according to Dr. Jen Gunter, OB/GYN. 

Lindsey Paradiso/Facebook - facebook.com

Robin Colleen is another woman who recently wrote a viral Facebook post about her own late-term abortion, she explained in the post that "it's easier to get a gun than have an abortion in Missouri."

The Missouri resident sought the abortion due to her daughter's severe health abnormalities, ATTN: reported in January. "We learned at Grace's 21 week anatomy scan that she had a disease that would absolutely, 100 percent prompt her to either be stillborn or die shortly after birth," Colleen wrote on Facebook. "Three doctors independently confirmed this for us. Not one child has made it yet with her disease and the early onset of it. Additionally, staying pregnant would have caused my own risk to go up seven times." Like Paradiso, Colleen wrote how she "desperately wanted" her baby.

Paradiso's now involved in local politics, saying to BuzzFeed, "the best way to affect legislation is to tell personal stories of how that legislation would’ve affected you had it been in place."  

[H/T BuzzFeed]