I am an educated woman who just this weekend received her second abortion.  Even at this wonderfully empowering, pro-choice, accepting clinic, I declined to tell them it was my second.  Braving the stigma with one abortion story is about all I can stomach.  I don’t want to be ashamed of my choice, but I don’t want the judgment, either.  It’s funny–I can see myself sharing my abortion count once I get my Implanon or my IUD: “I learned my lesson.”  Until then, I’ll sense that my personal responsibility is at a deficit.

I hate that I’m ashamed, because the reality is that my personal responsibility is in the black.  I did the right thing for myself and for the fetuses I aborted.  My choices *should* be less embarrassing than those of a woman who raised two children but could not provide for them or did not care to be a decent parent to them.

I don’t hold any religious beliefs that dictate my personal morals or ethics.  I don’t believe that conception is a magical process that imbues a zygote with personhood.  To whom do I feel, then, that I have to justify my decisions?  I don’t know.  As I write this, I want to convince you of my utter respect for life, how I contribute what I can with my career to raise the quality of life for myself and for others.

I wish my story were more accepted, less whispered.

My abortion isn’t something I’m ashamed of. I had taken precautions, I was on birth control, and I got pregnant. As my gynecologist assured me, these things happen. And they do. And you get through them, although it doesn’t always seem that way at the time.

I found out I was pregnant about six weeks in. I had no appetite but felt nauseous. I took a pregnancy test and it came back positive. I took three more, and had a friend take one as well. Me- four pluses, her- one negative. I went to Planned Parenthood and decided to have a medical abortion. My appointment was set for ten days later, so I had ten days of resting with my decision. I gave it endless thought, but never wavered. But I was surprised by how much in awe of my body I was. For ten days, I was constantly aware that there were two people where there used to be one. I brought a friend to the appointment with me, but didn’t tell the boy I was dating or my parents. I didn’t suspect they would try to convince me otherwise, I just wanted it to be as simple and quick as possible. I took the RU-486 pills one day, and then the next, exactly as instructed. It was two long days, but I just kept telling myself- soon this will be over.

When I went back for my follow-up exam the next week, they did an ultrasound and told me that the pills hadn’t fully worked. I tried to grasp the concept- to what extent did they work? What existed inside me right now? They told me I’d have to have a surgical abortion and I made another appointment for four days later. I felt removed from it all. It was a surgery, a medical procedure. Any indecision or grief I could’ve experienced had to have already passed.

I returned for my surgical abortion and chose a local anesthetic. I watched them perform the surgery- several minutes, nothing more. I went home and rested and knew that it was finally all over.

I’m not ashamed of my abortion. If it comes up in conversation, I’ll easily talk about it. I share my story so other women in similar situations will know that they’ve done nothing wrong, that there are millions of women who have gone through it and that they are not alone.

I know they argue about whether or not it’s right, whether or not the baby is alive at this point or that point in its growth inside the womb. This wasn’t about that. It wasn’t what the lawyers did. It wasn’t what the doctors did, it wasn’t what the woman did. It was what the mother and father did together.

-Denis Johnson

It’s strange the way life works- I spent my teens and twenties worrying about getting pregnant, only to learn, in my thirties, that it would be more difficult than I expected. My husband and I began the fertility route- hormones, in vitro, every test possible. Getting pregnant became, literally, a science, and a profound financial and emotional burden. I doubted my body and my ability to be a mother. I felt barren, physically and emotionally. It became too much of a toll and after six years, we stopped trying.

Then I got pregnant. That is the way life works. I gave birth to a healthy baby, a miracle. Quickly after, I became pregnant again. Another healthy child. I was, and continue to be, blessed. The children grew older. And then, years later, I became pregnant again. I was 41, and our economic situation was not once it once was. I knew the statistics about babies born to “older woman,” and I knew what a commitment a child was. And honestly, my husband and I didn’t want a third child. We didn’t want to sacrifice what we wanted, nor what we could provide our children. We recognized that this pregnancy was a miracle, but it was a miracle that came too late.  I cried, thinking of the children I had, of what my unborn baby could potentially be. But our situation was already tough, I was working two jobs, and I didn’t want to have a child I might potentially resent. I considered adoption, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to part with my baby after carrying it- emotion would trump reason. So we chose abortion.  I cried, and cried. I expected to continue crying- for days, weeks, months, years.

But ironically, I think all the years of fertility work prepared me for the abortion. It felt like any of the other thousands of doctors appointments. I felt numb afterwards. I had the same barren feeling I would get when I would look at the EPT tests and realize that they were negative. Except, this was my choice- a choice for myself, my children and our lifestyle. And I stood behind it.

I always said I wouldn’t be one of those girls- the girls who got pregnant. But I didn’t use birth control because of a bad experience with medications, and I was fearful of concepts like an IUD. I never really fully understood birth control or the importance of it. I used condoms, but not regularly. But then I got pregnant. My boyfriend at the time and I had been dating for five months. I had come out of a longterm, unhealthy relationship and had just finished a long period of celibacy. I knew I was pregnant the moment it happened. The sex was different, I felt different, I felt I looked different. I was 22 and felt, for the first time, like a woman. And then I took a pregnancy test. I was overjoyed, and devestated. I couldn’t figure out which one more. What if this baby was the beginning of the rest of my life?What if this was meant to be?

By the time I found out I was pregnant, six weeks in, I had already been dumped. I had spent three months mourning the relationship. My nauseau, or fatigue, or lack of appetite were all associated with the breakup. Even my lack of period I associated with the breakup. But my boobs were large, and tender, and growing bigger by the minute. I had to face the facts. When I told my ex-boyfriend he was silent. Very silent.Hours seemed to pass before he asked me what I wanted to do. I realized my hope that he would suddenly change his mind about the relationship and want to have the baby was ridiculous. He didn’t want me, and he didn’t want the baby. And I didn’t want his baby. I wanted a child with someone who loved me and who wanted to be a parent. I no longer felt elated, or hopeful, I felt realistic. I didn’t think I would be one of those girls, and now I was, and it wasn’t so bad. I could handle it. Read the rest of this entry »

My life is a non- negotiable demand. My story, the story of all women everywhere, can’t be said better than Marge Piercy’s words in The Right to Life:

A woman is not a basket you place
your buns in to keep them warm. Not a brood
hen you can slip duck eggs under.
Not the purse holding the coins of your
descendants till you spend them in wars.
Not a bank where your genes gather interest
and interesting mutations in the tainted
rain, any more than you are.

You plant corn and you harvest
it to eat or sell. You put the lamb
in the pasture to fatten and haul it in to
butcher for chops. You slice the mountain
in two for a road and gouge the high plains
for coal and the waters run muddy for
miles and years. Fish die but you do not
call them yours unless you wished to eat them.

Now you legislate mineral rights in a woman.
You lay claim to her pastures for grazing,
fields for growing babies like iceberg
lettuce. You value children so dearly
that none ever go hungry, none weep
with no one to tend them when mothers
work, none lack fresh fruit,
none chew lead or cough to death and your
orphanages are empty. Every noon the best
restaurants serve poor children steaks.

At this moment at nine o’clock a partera
is performing a table top abortion on an
unwed mother in Texas who can’t get
Medicaid any longer. In five days she will die
of tetanus and her little daughter will cry
and be taken away. Next door a husband
and wife are sticking pins in the son
they did not want. They will explain
for hours how wicked he is,
how he wants discipline. Read the rest of this entry »

I had my abortion in 1962. Back then, abortion was illegal, and taboo. Not stigmatized like today, but completely taboo. You didn’t do it, but more so, you absolutely didn’t discuss it. Quickly after I found out I was pregnant I began attempting to find a doctor that performed abortions. Through a friend of a friend, I found one, and my boyfriend drove me to New York City to have it performed.We were both eighteen, and I was six weeks pregnant.

The abortion cost 400 dollars, which, even by today’s standards, is expensive. I went to a doctor’s office after the practice was shut for the day. The doctor was kind. We paid him in cash and my boyfriend sat in the waiting room while I followed the doctor through the empty office. The procedure took about forty minutes and was excrutiatingly painful. The doctor told me I would have to be quiet and I somehow managed not to scream. I remember feeling that I deserved the pain, that I had called this situation upon myself.

Afterwards, I rejoined my boyfriend in the lobby. The doctor told us to have a good meal and then gave me a bag of candies. I’ll always remember that. I always wanted to know- who were those candies intended for? Did he give them to all his “patients?”  Several years later my boyfriend and I married, and two years later I gave birth to a daughter. I had two more children, another girl and a boy.

My children have grown older, and the world has changed. I’ve watched abortion become, however debated, legal, and watch as generations of women accept the right to choose as a give-in. I’ve volunteered at women’s clinics and taught my children about the importance of birth control and a woman’s right to choose. I’ve often thought about the child I didn’t have.  But more so, I think about how grateful I am that I no longer have to carry around the burden of a taboo- that I can speak publicly, or online, or with my family and not be fearful of judgment, let alone legal consequence. But I’m also saddened about the women who still don’t have access to legal abortions and have to face the fear, dangers and complications of illegal abortions.

How I felt at the time…

Not really present, ashamed, scared someone would find out.

How I feel now…

Relieved. Grateful.

My story…

First off, I should say that I was raised in a very religious family. Strangely enough, eventually my parents got divorced and I lived with my mom for most of my childhood. I was seventeen when I got pregnant. My mother had no idea I had been having sex with my boyfriend of three years, and I didn’t really want to get into it with her. Almost immediately, I knew I wanted an abortion. It was strange, considering how I spent most of my life hearing that abortion was the quickest one way ticket to hell. It’s strange to say, but I think that was my first real step to being my own person- I knew I didn’t want to be the person I was told I should be. I knew I wanted to get out of the town I lived in and sadly, away from my family. I just always thought my boyfriend would be a part of the great escape plan.

There weren’t many people for me to tell. Well, there were a lot of people, but none that I could actually tell about it. That part was hard. I hate lying, and there were suddenly a lot of lies to tell- covering up for feeling sick, for not having money (I was saving it), for why I wasn’t drinking at parties. It was almost disassociating- like I had already taken steps away from the life I was a part of. Finally there was the biggest lie- where was I spending a whole weekend- one day with my boyfriend at Planned Parenthood, another to recover. I told my mother I was going with friends to visit a friends sister at college. She had a fit and I held my ground. None of this made anything any easier. Read the rest of this entry »

I made this piece in mexico, when I was 19, before I had had abortions. It was a tree I saw that looked like a triumphant woman mid pose. It reminded me of the power of the woman and our strength in our relationship to the earth.  In retrospect it relates to the medicinal knowledge midwives have, in that power to induce abortion that has been present for generations upon generations and been happening out of the view of the men.  I was staying in the jungle in mexico and  this woman I was staying with, 16 years old, she was asking me about condoms (she had heard there was this thing you could use to stop the semen and not make babies).  Part of my agreement in being present in this village was to not give anything to the people – to avoid desires that were unecessary or conflict amongst people who received gifts and who didn’t… But I really always wanted to give her a stash of condoms.  Cause she had this thing with this boy there, but they couldn’t act on it unless they wanted to get serious… I realize now that this picture relates to access to birth control, and the power of birth control, and the difference it can make in a life.

People seem to believe that abortion creates some great divide- women who have had abortions, women who haven’t. Pro-choice, pro-life. On and on. But my experience with abortion makes me think that there’s another divide- between the perception of women who have had one abortion and the perception of  women who have had multiple abortions. I’ve had three abortions. I’m not uneducated and I’m not irresponsible. I’m a lawyer, I’m in my early thirties, I have a great life. I wouldn’t choose to have more abortions, and I don’t believe abortion is birth control. I simply cannot take birth control because it makes me feel horrible, and this has led to me getting pregnant.

It’s strange, because often in hearing about other women’s experiences with abortion, there’s a sense that abortion is necessary…once. As if it’s a get out of jail free card that you can use and learn a lesson from. I feel as if many women support abortion, but only once. You only get one abortion to learn your lesson. After that there’s no sympathy, no empathy. You’re perceived as irresponsible, or demonized. I can’t explain the judgment I’ve received from people- even close friends and family. I choose to openly stand behind my abortions, without shame, and will talk about them when asked (or if the conversation entails.) Over and over again, I can see the difference in people’s judgment between having one abortion and having three. Read the rest of this entry »