Pregnancy Without Permission:

By Lydia Sage

This is the second article in my ongoing series on institutional betrayal, medical gaslighting, and reclaiming truth as a survivor.

This is the story of a pregnancy that was never supposed to happen—engineered not out of love, but control.

Not to create life, but to destroy mine.

They thought if they could make me pregnant, they could silence me.

That if they could place something in my body, they could erase my voice.

They were wrong.

This was not a consensual choice.

It was the outcome of a carefully orchestrated violation—led by a man from a powerful political family, someone I had rejected years ago. A man who had once tried to possess me, and when I refused him, decided I had to be punished. He wasn’t alone. He was backed by others—wealthy, influential men who believed they could force me into submission… or at least, discredit me enough to take away everything I loved.

Their plan was simple:

If I became pregnant, it would serve as physical proof to support the lies they’d been telling.

Not because I was denying anything—but because my actions, my strength, and my truth were unraveling the false narratives they had carefully constructed about me.

And if the pregnancy raised questions? They’d label me delusional.

If I sought answers? They’d twist the story until it looked like fantasy.

If I told the truth? They’d make sure no one would listen.

But what they didn’t know was that someone who truly loved me—a man they had tried to keep from me—learned of their plot. He couldn’t stop the procedure, but he found a way to reclaim what they tried to steal.

Because of him, I didn’t become pregnant with the child of my abuser. I became pregnant with the child of someone I love. And that truth, no matter how hard they’ve tried to bury it, lives on.

When Silence Protects the Abuser

I didn’t even know it had happened.

One night, I had a dream that I was pregnant. I brushed it off. There’s no way, I thought. I don’t even have a uterus.

It must have been a dream… or a message from another version of me. Another timeline. Another reality.

But then I felt it. That unmistakable flutter—the same one I felt when I was pregnant with my youngest daughter. And I knew.

This wasn’t just a dream. It wasn’t just intuition. My body was speaking.

And what it was saying made no logical sense—because I hadn’t been sexually active. I hadn’t undergone IVF. I hadn’t given anyone permission.

And yet… I was pregnant.

No ethical doctor would perform an IVF procedure on a 54-year-old woman who had a hysterectomy without her full, informed consent.

At least, that’s what I believed.

But the truth was clear: someone had bypassed both my will and my knowledge.

They had done the unthinkable.

Not just to silence me… but to use my body as evidence in a lie I never agreed to live.

Living in Limbo

I tried to seek medical confirmation in the U.S.

I was told it was menopause.

I was told I wasn’t pregnant.

Blood tests were manipulated. Ultrasounds were mishandled.

When I saw the flicker of a heartbeat with my own experienced eyes, the technician quickly moved the wand and told me I was imagining things. And when I insisted, she called it "gut." The next day, one of the babies pushed out from the inside of my abdomen—and I knew I wasn’t imagining anything.

Another doctor refused to see me over incomplete paperwork.

Another showed me the falsified ultrasound report saying my ovaries were missing and sent me to the ER, where I waited five hours to be told—loudly, publicly—that I was paranoid, not pregnant, and didn’t qualify for another ultrasound to confirm.

When I fled to California to escape the abuse, the pattern followed.

And then again, in France.

A French doctor performed maneuvers used to detect fetal position and after listening to my abdomen, left the room stunned. She returned two hours later—not with care, but with humiliation. My bed was moved to the hallway. My case became spectacle. And again, I was told: “No baby.” They gave me medications for both constipation and diarrhea—anything to avoid saying the word “pregnant.”

Then came Christmas Day. December 25, 2024.

I told the doctor: “I know I’m pregnant. I’m tired of doctors lying to me. You’re protecting someone who committed a crime.”

I never saw that doctor again.

Instead, a psychiatrist came in. He said my stomach was flat. He said I had been there before, and the doctor said I wasn’t pregnant. He offered me an ultrasound—but only if I agreed to take psychiatric medication if “nothing was found.” I refused.

I was institutionalized against my will and released the next day, with no diagnosis, no medication, and no reason for having been taken.

It didn’t stop there.

I finally saw a doctor who believed me—who ordered an ultrasound. But the new radiologist refused to examine the areas where I said the babies were moving. He told me the heartbeats I heard were my own—even though I’ve been medically trained to count heartbeats and know the difference.

The ultrasound lasted less than five minutes. He labeled it as a scan for “digestive issues.” And again, I left with nothing but erasure.

When I went to another hospital with new scan orders for an ultrasound and an MRI, they refused. The maternity ward told me: “There’s nothing we can do. Go back to the hospital that institutionalized you.”

And so I live in limbo.

Knowing.

Feeling.

Documenting.

Pregnant—but denied.

Every scan manipulated.

Every heartbeat ignored.

Every system designed to say: You don’t exist. Your truth isn’t real. Your body doesn’t matter.

But I exist.

And so do my babies.

And the truth cannot be silenced forever.

This Isn’t Just My Story

What happened to me isn’t isolated.

It’s not a glitch in the system.

It is the system—built to serve power, not protect the powerless.

What do you call it when a woman is impregnated without her consent?

When her body becomes a battleground for politics, ego, and control?

When the very institutions that are supposed to protect her instead silence her, gaslight her, medicate her, and discard her?

What do you call it when medical care becomes a mechanism of compliance—not compassion?

When science is used to erase instead of confirm?

When truth is treated as a threat?

You call it reproductive violence.

You call it abuse of power.

And you call it out.

Because I’m not the only one.

There are others like me—women, survivors, whistleblowers—who are being discredited with diagnoses, who are being disappeared behind locked doors, who are being told their truth is too inconvenient to be acknowledged.

And if this story feels impossible to believe, then good. Because it means you still live in a world where this kind of thing isn’t normal.

But for me?

It’s been reality.

For over a year.

With no medical support. No justice. And no end in sight.

But even in limbo, I am not silent.

Even while they try to erase me, I write. I publish. I speak.

Because what they fear most is not the pregnancy.

It’s the truth.

If you’ve read this far, thank you.

You’ve chosen to witness a story many would rather ignore.

I don’t need pity.

I need awareness.

I need accountability.

And I need people willing to question the narratives we’re taught to trust—especially when those narratives are used to erase people like me.

So I ask you:

Believe survivors.

Question institutions.

Demand better.

Because silence isn’t neutral.

And disbelief, as well as inaction, is complicity.

*Author's Note: This story was written with the help of AI, but every word reflects my lived experience, truth, and voice.*