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Archive for May, 2011

Two days ago

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

Two days ago I had an abortion. While I am thoroughly pro-choice and always have been, I’ve always had a little voice in my head that told me that if it came down to it, I wouldn’t personally have an abortion. I was lucky to be well informed about sex education and never had to deal with even facing that situation asĀ  teen or in my twenties. But I’m now 31, married and I have a two year old child. I’ve been switching birth controls trying to find a better pill for me (my hormones are messed up from my pregnancy), and believed that my birth control was protecting me from pregnancy when it wasn’t.

When I first found out I was pregnant, I was beyond confused. I felt like the world was collapsing around me, but I couldn’t understand why. I have a beautiful daughter, and she’s the most important thing in my life (besides my husband), but both my husband and I only wanted one child. But knowing the highs and emotional attachment to my baby I felt during pregnancy, I had a really hard time and a lot of guilt coming to terms with the decision that I was going to abort my second child. My husband was wonderful throughout and very supportive. We discussed it over and over again and came to terms with the fact that we like our life the way it is, that we only have resources to properly raise one child well and that this is a very sad, unfortunate situation, but that we have to follow our hearts.

I went to the doctor and was told I was four weeks along, but it would be better to wait to have the abortion until I was at least six weeks. Over the next two weeks I did a lot of thinking and a lot of crying, but I knew, deep down, that I didn’t want another child and there was no way I could give my baby up for adoption.

The abortion itself was fine- it was much like any of the countless obgyn appointments I had when I was pregnant. Afterwards, I felt slightly ill or tipsy, like I was drunk- maybe from the anesthetic they gave me- but emotionally, I felt okay. My husband was with me the whole way and we got home and sat with our daughter and talked about how blessed we were to have her and how blessed we were to have the options of family planning and birth control and abortion that could let us create the life we want to have.