Multi-Frame Vignettes
I hope this long post will help some of you looking for choices. This is my experience, cross-posted from my journal.
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In this post, I have no witty or sophisticated voice; this is just me, saying things that I need to say now. This is all Truth, and I hope that it helps...well, anyone. It will help me to tell these stories for the first time. The first time ever.
Sometimes, Telling the Truth happens in stages. We lie to cover up something we're ashamed about entirely. After some time passes, we begin to tell the truth, but embellish it with smaller lies to make ourselves look less bad to our audience and even to ourselves. We rationalize, we adjust. Later, we may tell the story fully, and there is a relief that comes with that. Now that I have incorporated The Truth into my internal and external dialogue, I feel better. My internal truth did not reconcile with what I was telling others, and therefore, there was a disjointedness, however small, with how I moved through the world.
Some of you will judge me harshly. I respect that. After the first act of the story, you may feel uncomfortable, some judgment creeping in around the edges, but perhaps you'll still be sympathetic. After the rest of it, more of you will judge me much more harshly than you might expect. There is little tolerance for this sort of thing. Your opinion of me will change when you read this post; I can almost guarantee it. However, there is an off-chance that this post will find its way to someone who needs it. I'll explain more at the end.
When I was 25, I had an abortion. For many women, having had an abortion is a secret. Some of us keep it entirely to ourselves, some of us tell our closest friends, some of us tell a spouse, but virtually none of us feel absolutely no shame for having had one, regardless of the circumstances. It is something we try to hide from employers or potential employers. It's not something you bring up just out of the blue.
I shared that I'd had an abortion with my friends, or if the subject came up in conversation with people I'd met. I have told my long-term boyfriends. I told my mom. I have not told my father, the rest of my family or my current, newish boyfriend. I have not told my current boyfriend because he wants to have children, and, even though it's unlikely that we'll ever have them together, I'm not sure how he would react to me having had an abortion.
I am fairly well-adjusted about abortion; I was raised in a liberal household and well-educated about sex, pregnancy and abortion. I do not have a cavalier attitude about abortion; rather, I have a pragmatic one. I have never wanted a child. I don't think I would be a good mother. I am not especially fond of children. I don't want to pass down my genes. I don't want to have a growing, thrashing person inside of me for 9 agonizing months. For my whole life, I have recognized that it is of absolute importance that each person be allowed to decide what happens to his or her own body. Rape terrifies me. Torture gives me nightmares.
For these reasons, I am very, very glad that abortion is legal in this country. I cannot imagine being forced, helpless, to allow a child to grow inside of me. Or worse, being forced to find a back-street abortionist who would more than likely cause more harm than good.
These are scary times in this country; Roe v. Wade is under attack, and while it seems that more politicians may be taking a slightly more centrist approach, abortion rights are being eaten away.
Because abortion is such a secret, the conservative anti-abortion people may not be aware that their daughter, granddaughter, niece, best friend's daughter, high school sweetheart, neighbor, wife or cousin have had one. If they were aware of how many of us have made that choice, it would shock and scare the pants off of them. It might make them dig in their heels and say, "This must stop! This is an abomination! Look how many innocent children have been murdered!" It might also make them reconsider that position, engender empathy within them for what their loved one has perhaps gone through, and terrify them that if abortion were not legal, perhaps their loved one wouldn't be there today.
I am not a disadvantaged person. I travel, I have two college degrees, and I "knew better" than to get pregnant. I am here to share my story of How Shit Can Happen, Even to Those Who Know Better.
There was no broken condom or bad vasectomy; I got pregnant because I was an idiot with a strong sex drive. I was having a lot of sex with a dear friend of mine, and we usually used condoms. One night, we were having a really, extraordinarily wild time out on the couch, far from the nightstand with the condoms in it. He stopped just before pushing himself inside me and said, "wait, is this ok?"
I lied.
"Yes," I whispered; "I can't get pregnant right now." In truth, I had no idea where I was in my cycle or even what day of the month it was; what I wanted was for him to fuck me until we both screamed. I didn't want to stop the momentum to get up, go into the bedroom and laboriously put on the loathsome condom. Also, the man in question had only one testicle; how fertile could he be?
The sex was amazing.
I got knocked up.
Children have never been in my mental picture. The image of my life has not been rife with the pitter-pat of tiny feet.
Immediately, I knew that I had to get an abortion, and quickly. My friend, the father, agreed to pay for the procedure and to go with me. Also, I called my mom. It seemed the thing to do.
I wrote a few journal entries about how I thought I should feel guilty or angst-ridden or torn, but I wasn't. The truth was, I didn't want that little peanut growing in there. I wanted it out of me before it turned into a person.
On the day of the procedure, I drove my mother and my friend down to the clinic. I was cheery and talkative... and speeding. On the way to my abortion, I got pulled over by a State Trooper and I got a speeding ticket. I remember joking about it not being a good day. We all laughed.
I never use the LJ-CUT feature; however, given the sensitive nature of this subject, I shall.
Once at the clinic, we all went inside and I signed in. There were perhaps two dozen young women there, some with their partners, some with friends, some alone. Some were crying. Many did not look anywhere but into their laps. All spoke in hushed whispers.
After quite a long time, a nurse shuttled all of us into a side room, where we were required to watch a video about Abortion. In very affirming tones, the video told us What To Expect but that abortion wasn't the only choice. We could bear our unwanted children and adopt them out, and sometimes, the woman who ultimately decided not to get an abortion were the most grateful of mothers, et cetera. We were herded back into the waiting room like cattle; I felt like I was being processed, a nameless, faceless baby factory.
I resented the hell out of that video at the time; I felt as if the pro-lifers had somehow struck a blow to our right to choose, and were trying to get us when we were most vulnerable. Now, with some time and perspective, I realize that a lot of those girls might have had no idea what to expect or what their choices were. I sat through the video, then rejoined my mom and my friend. We were the only three in the room who didn't seem to be covered in a pall of sadness. We quietly talked and even laughed a little. I wasn't emotional - I was fine, honestly and truly. I almost felt guilty for being fine, for not being riddled with doubt.
Periodically, a nurse with a clipboard would come out and call a name. The young woman would get up, walk to through the door with her head down, and be gone for anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes. Then they would come back, sit down, and resume their vigils.
My name was called. The initial call, as it turns out, was for a urine test to confirm the pregnancy. I have a bladder with massive stage-fright. My bladder freezes like a bunny when there is any pressure to perform. I sat in that bathroom, trying to squeeze out one or two drops for over twenty minutes. I couldn't do it. I raged at my quivering, empty bladder, which had been deprived of liquids for over 12 hours, thanks to surgical policy.
Finally, I gave up. I went back into the waiting room and sat down again. The nurse told me to let her know when I was Ready.
Fifteen or twenty minutes later, I tried again. After a long, heated battle with my bladder, during which I alternately cursed at it and coddled it, I finally got nearly a whole eighth of an inch of liquid to drip out, drop by drop. I was proud of that urine. I presented it to the nurse and back into the waiting room I went. A few of the girls smiled at me as I told Mom and the father that I'd managed to go.
After another long wait, they began calling us in again. This time, it was for The Procedure. I was called into a large examination room, given a paper gown and told to completely disrobe. I obeyed and sat, perched on the edge of the padded examination table, waiting.
It was at this point, all alone in this cold, sterile room, that I began to get scared. There were cheerful paintings on the wall that said to me, "We are trying to comfort and cheer you up; don't be frightened, little one." I don't remember what the paintings were of, now, but they brought tears to my eyes. That someone would think to put colorful paintings in a room that housed hundreds of frightened, emotionally ragged women, touched me very deeply.
An elderly male doctor came in with a female assistant to do a cursory exam. He confirmed that we were going to use general anaesthesia and then he gave me a routine looking over. He put his stethoscope to my chest.
"Oh! Your heart is beating like a frightened little bird! It's going to be ok."
I fought back tears until they left the room soon after that, and then I let them come. I didn't feel like a frightened little bird, not really...I felt a little stark, I felt ... I suppose I was more frightened than I cared to admit. I sent some apologetic thought-feelings to the being in my belly, some explanatory words, and told it to come back someday if that's what was supposed to happen. My mother, who had a miscarriage prior to my birth, said that she believed it was me all along, that I had come back a second time.
Shortly after the doctor left, I was taken to another room, where I received an ultrasound to (re)confirm the pregnancy and to determine at what stage the fetus was. The details are hazy, but I remember tentatively asking to see the ultrasound. It was a staticky, nonsensical mess. I couldn't even identify a mass that might be a baby. I asked the u/s tech to show me, wondering if, when confronted with my child's sonograph, I would suddenly change my mind. She circled a tiny smudge on the paper, and I pretended to be able to see it against all the background noise of the image. Back to the exam room.
Soon, I was admitted into the operating room. I climbed up onto a ludicrously tall table, where my legs were splayed out into stirrups and my arms strapped to boards running perpendicular to the length of the table. Lying there, strapped to a table in a freezing cold, utterly white room, nearly naked, I felt more vulnerable than I ever have in my entire life. I felt obscenely crucified, with my arms strapped down, sticking straight out to the sides, my shamefully pregnant nether region on display for anyone who walked across the south end of the room.
Four or five men and women bustled purposefully around the room. One got me going with an IV. I remember trying to be polite, but I'm certain that my eyes were as wide as saucers and showed my extreme unease. Someone explained that I would very shortly be asleep and that when I woke up, it would all be over with. It was cold and noisy, and I was strapped down and helpless. Utterly helpless.
A faceless person told me to count backwards from ten. I believe I got to eight.
I slowly came into hazy consciousness in a hallway on a stretcher. There were a few other stretchers in the hallway, each containing an unconscious or semi-conscious post-op young woman. We were all unattended, left like dead bodies in this quiet, dim part of the clinic. I felt no physical pain. Without struggle, I let unconsciousness overtake me again, glad for the nothingness.
Phasing in and out of consciousness, I slowly became aware that I needed to throw up. I have had that reaction to anaesthesia before. As I was recognizing the symptoms of barfing, I weakly hailed a distant nurse, who helped me struggle to the bathroom. I violently vomited a small wad of spittle. It was unproductive, but I felt so much better. I don't remember going back to the stretcher.
I woke up on queue. Literally, a line of stretchers waiting for one of a row of Lazy-Boy recliners against a wall. I didn't care about the recliners. I was fine in my stretcher, where I continued to lapse into dreamless sleep. I woke up, closer to the recliners. I woke up, next in line. I woke up, already in the Lazy-Boy, without any memory of having been relocated. Still, I had no pain.
The person next to me, a large black woman, moaned and groaned. Every few moments, she would loudly and somewhat incoherently complain, "I HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM! I HAVE TO TAKE A SHIT!!" but the nurses looked over their shoulders at her and said, "no you don't, that's just the cramping," and "it's ok, that's normal, you're fine. You don't have to go to the bathroom." I wished she would just shut up and let me sleep. But no; every few minutes, there was the moaning and the shouting. Sometimes, I managed to ignore it.
After a while, I have no idea how long, it was time for me to surrender my chair and let the next person in the line of stretchers have it. Again, I felt like processed livestock. Someone got me dressed and out to mom and my friend. I remember climbing into the back seat of the Isuzu Trooper, sluggish and floppy and feeling the beginnings of cramping. Someone drove us home, where I crawled into bed after taking some painkillers.
The cramping wasn't too bad after I finally came fully out of the anaesthesia, and I had no emotional twinges, no second-guesses. I was relieved to have the whole thing over with. The crimps lingered for only a couple of days, and the whole affair was very non-traumatizing. I still remember the feeling of being helplessly strapped down, but that was in a safe environment; everyone there was going to help me, not harm me. I don't want to think about that feeling in a different sort of environment. My abortion was safe, reasonably pain-free, and not difficult to procure. My memory doesn't serve well on the costs...this was about eight years ago, and I believe it may have been around $700. I was thankful to be done. Despite the initial fright of being in the operating room and so helpless, it was not a terrible experience.
Months later, I had a dream.
In the dream, I was back in the operating room. My body was unconscious, but my consciousness lingered overhead. There were doctors working between my legs and a searing pain burned through me. The pain was nearly unbearable, but I remained calm, letting it wash over me. There was a sudden commotion; the masked and gowned doctors were speaking urgently, but I couldn't tell what they were saying. Something was going unspeakably wrong. Pain shot through me.
And then there was crying - a baby's crying. A blue, discharge-covered infant fell out of my body and onto the floor of the operating room. The clinic staff were all horrified and stopped in their tracks for a moment as the baby screamed at the top of its lungs. In that moment of their pause, my hovering self saw the baby begin to crawl, still blue and covered with slime, across the slippery, bloody floor, crying in that extreme and genuine way that very young babies can. My consciousness went to the floor, and the baby crawled toward me, eyes slitted in its screaming cries, pain ravaging my body.
I woke up, still feeling the sharp, jagged cuts to my uterus. Almost in the very second I woke up, this thought echoed through my head: "The mind may have been asleep, but the body still remembers." There was a part of me that endured the cuts, the prying, the scraping, even if the part of my brain that registers pain was temporarily knocked out. My body underwent extremely painful things, those cuts happened, and somewhere, my body remembers them.
The image of the child being born during the abortion lingered for awhile, but ultimately, I was not traumatized by the dream. I recognized it as my subconscious expressing fears and maybe working a thing or two out. I still viewed the abortion as having been okay, even if my body had endured some pain. It wasn't something that I wanted to do again, but I was okay with having done it.
I would have thought I'd learned my lesson, but sadly, the stabbing pains were just foreshadowing.
Six years later, I became pregnant again. I remember peeing on a home pregnancy stick with my boyfriend waiting in the living room. The stick turned the wrong color, and I went out and told him. We were only three or so months into our relationship, but we had Plans. We were madly in love. And neither one of us wanted children, ever. The decision to have a second abortion was easy to make. I told him I'd had one before, and that it wasn't a difficult procedure.
I was working for a major international corporation at the time, and I had great health insurance. I remember walking outside of the office building where I was a low-level manager, and asking the young man who answered the health insurance's customer service line, "Hello, yes. I'm calling to ask whether you guys cover abortion?"
"Uh," he stammered, but quickly regained composure. "I believe we do, let me check your policy." I heard computer keys tappity-tapping, and soon he said, "Yes, the examinations, the ultra-sounds, the procedure, everything would be covered; however, general anaesthesia is not." I was happy to hear about the procedure being covered, but I was alarmed about being conscious. Thanking him, I went back to work.
That night, I researched local abortion physicians and called around, asking about the prices for general anaesthesia. Most of the costs were well over $1000! I was shocked. That was absurd. I decided to gut it out and just go with the local injection and the "light sedative" the doctors' offices had talked about. I made the appointment downtown; unfortunately, they couldn't get me in for almost two weeks. My breasts were getting really sore, I was insanely cranky and I couldn't sleep worth a damn. I hated being pregnant.
A few days before the procedure, I sent an email out to my team, the six men whom I directly supervised. They were various ages, from slightly younger than I was to old enough to be my father. One was from Poland, one from Thailand and one from a Middle Eastern country that I can't recall at the moment. All of them knew my boyfriend, the father. In the email, I explained why I was going to be away for a few days and why we'd made the decision to abort. Even as I was writing, I had no clue why the hell I was telling them this, apart from generally being an honest person. Perhaps I wanted sympathy, perhaps I wanted them to know that I wasn't just taking a fun vacation.
We all sat near each other, and they had to walk past my desk to leave the area. As each one walked by on their businesses, they offered sympathies and absolutely no judgments. They were a good group of guys. On the day of, my boyfriend drove us into the city. The clinic was a private practice in a 1970's-ish three-story building. We were the only people in the waiting room, and it was quiet and very doctory, not at all like the people-processing plant from the first time.
The assistant called me into the exam room. I looked around at the equipment and saw a large, clear plastic cylinder where, soon, the contents of my uterus would be. It was a little unsettling, but I'm pretty good about Medical Procedures, more curious about than afraid of them. The doctor came in, a woman that I now remember in my head as looking like Miranda Bailey from Grey's Anatomy, but she assuredly didn't. I remember being a somewhat stern-looking, short and plump black woman in surgical scrubs.
She explained, very briefly, that they would give me an IV sedative to help with the pain and to help me relax, then they'd give me a local injection to numb my cervix. After that, she would insert an instrument into my cervix to dilate it, then she would begin the procedure. I would hear something like a soft humming sound from the vacuum pump and I might feel some pressure. Ok, I was ready.
They got me into the stirrups, and the assistant injected me with the Demerol cocktail in my arm. I began to feel woozy right away and thought, "Maybe I'll just sleep through the whole thing!" I remarked how fast-acting the drugs were, but remained conscious. The doctor sat between my stirrupped legs. Due to the curtain between us, all I could see when I looked down at her was the top of her face. She told me I'd feel a sharp pinch as she gave the local, and she was right. She waited a few minutes for that to take effect as she readied the other equipment. We were all set. She told me I might feel some pressure as she inserted the dilating instrument inside my cervix.
As she inserted whatever it was, there was some sharp pain, but it was not unbearable. The local had not taken effect yet, evidently, and the sedative certainly wasn't taking the edge off of anything. In fact, I felt remarkably clear-headed and not at all woozy or sedated. The doctor waited a few more moments before trying again. I gritted my teeth and she got it in there. I took some deep breaths, as I was clenching and making things more difficult.
The pain continued, abating only slightly after she got the dilation instrument finally situated. My cervix did not like it, and I felt like it was trying to spit it out. It also felt like the instrument had teeth on it, digging into the powerful muscles trying to evict it. Finally, my cervix was open far enough, and it was time.
You may have heard the term "D & C" before, which sounds nonchalant, casual, almost cute. "D & C" stands for "Dilation & Curettage," which also doesn't sound overtly awful. What it involves is the dilation of the cervix and then the insertion of a "curette;" a long, loop-shaped knife, which is then used to scrape the contents of the uterus away from the uterine walls. A cannula is also inserted and used to suction away the remains. I'd thought I was having a simple suction aspiration, which is the same procedure without the knife; I was wrong.
I have an extremely high tolerance for pain. I was not prepared for what was ahead.
As soon as she began the scraping and cutting, my insides screamed. It felt like she was scraping the inside of my uterus with a branding iron. I was trying to be strong and stoic, but my ragged breathing gave me away.
"Sweetie, you have to relax, you have to breathe."
"I'm sorry...I'm sorry...it just doesn't feel numbed. I can feel everything!"
"Ok, just breathe."
She paused for only a quick moment. I have no memory if she gave me any more local or nothing at all; all I remember was the stabbing pains and feeling like I was going to die.
"Let's try again." She went back to it with the same result. My hands clenched and unclenched and I tried very hard to breathe deeply and normally, but my breath kept coming out as jagged grunts. "Ok, you have to push through this, we're almost halfway done here, it's ok, try to breathe." Clearly, she thought I was a total wimp. I said, one more time, "I don't think the drugs are working."
"If I stop now, it'll hurt more to stop and start again than it will to finish up. You can do this."
I forced myself to lie there, as still as stone from the waist down, as this woman scraped the inside of my body with a knife. Occasionally, I would hear the hum of the vacuum pump. Mostly, it was just the cutting and the agony.
Finally, after an internal eternity, it was over. She covered me with the paper curtain and took my feet out of the stirrups for me. "Is there someone in the waiting room we can bring in for you?" My emotions were rushing down on me like a tidal wave and I barely managed to choke out my boyfriend's name before sobs overtook me.
He came in to find me wracked with sobs, and I remember his face so clearly. He stroked my head and he was obviously deeply troubled. "No more of that," I said through tears. He remained silent, and I couldn't speak anymore. I couldn't explain that I was not crying because I had ended a pregnancy, but because I had just been brutalized. I felt like I had been attacked. Victimized.
After 15 minutes, I was allowed to leave.
My boyfriend drove me home, not realizing that hitting large bumps would make my insides feel like I was back on the table. We didn't talk, I couldn't talk; I was too horrified. I was trying to process the emotions I had from lying there and letting those brutal cuts happen to me. I wondered if this doctor was secretly anti-abortion, punishing women by not numbing us properly, forcing us to endure what I'd just gone through. I resented her, whatever her reasons were.
We never really talked about it, my boyfriend and I. He got a vasectomy.
Four months later, I got pregnant.
This time, I was filled with dread. I was humiliated. I told no one but him, because once is an accident, twice is negligent...but three times? Three times is simply unforgivable. Three times is a hooker in the bad part of town who has no respect for herself or for human life. Three times is a junkie sleeping with anyone while she's high. Three times displays such a callous disregard for life as to be unconscionable. Three times? A woman so stupid, so unthinking, so unfeeling, should be forced to have that child. Besides, maybe all this time, she was meant to have that baby. Maybe this is her last chance. Maybe this is her miracle; after two abortions, surely her insides must bear scars! And the vasectomy? What are the odds?
I was so shamed. I had never felt so ashamed in my life. I had all of those thoughts in the last paragraph and a million others. I knew that I was a horrible person, beneath human. A person convicted of multiple drunk driving offenses would be better regarded than I would be, should anyone find out. I think my boyfriend was disgusted with us both.
Although I was still employed at the same giant corporation, I wasn't going to have two abortions on record there. Fortunately for me, the "abortion pill," then dubbed RU-486 (Mifepristone & Misoprostol) was in its final phase of study before being approved. A local clinic was conducting studies, and all care would be provided free of cost. I signed up immediately. I wasn't at all sure what to expect, but anything would be better than the last time.
The clinic was either Planned Parenthood or a city or county equivalent. It was a free/low-cost clinic that provided women's health services. I went in, had a vaginal ultra-sound, received a lot of literature and information and made two appointments to take the doses of pills. I made sure that the actual expelling of the fetus would occur on a weekend, so I wouldn't have to miss any work. The staff told me that if I had any questions, any concerns, day or night, there was a 24-hour nurse hotline I could call, no matter how silly the question might seem. The staff were very supportive, caring and friendly.
At the first appointment, I took the first drug, Mifepristone. They told me this could cause the abortion to occur on its own, but that I would likely need to return for the second medication, the Misoprostol. The first drug causes the fetus to die and the second induces contractions. The Mifepristone did not cause any cramping or contractions at all, so two or three days later, I went back for the Misoprostol. The staff also gave me two Vicodin to take, in case the cramping got to be too intense. I took the Misoprostol at the clinic and took the Vicodin home.
I planned a day of bed rest. For a few hours, nothing happened, and then I began to get some light cramps. I took the Vicodin, figuring they would get worse. My boyfriend was in his office in the basement, so I did this all alone. The cramps got more and more intense, but it was not unbearable; it was like menstrual cramping times six or eight, maybe. The Vicodin definitely took the worst out of it, and there was only about 15 minutes during which I was in a lot of pain.
There are gory details in the following paragraph; you might wish to skip ahead if you are squeamish.
When the first major wave of cramps subsided, I went into the bathroom, sat on the toilet and something that felt large slid out of me. It wasn't painful; it was just an odd sensation. I looked down between my legs and saw a blood clot almost the size of my palm lying at the bottom of the bowl. I put a maxi pad in my underwear, stood, and looked down into the water at this thing that had just been expelled from my body. I was fascinated by it. A morbid part of me wondered if I could see the fetus in it and I looked hard at it, seeing nothing.
With a weird feeling I can't really identify, I flushed the mass down the toilet, unable to help myself from thinking about unwanted goldfish. A short time later, another (smaller) wave of cramps came along, another (smaller) mass was expelled in the bathroom and that was that. I went down and told my boyfriend it was done. He barely looked away from his computer screen. Later, I found out that he'd been surfing porn online for most of the time I'd been upstairs having the abortion. I was so hurt and so angry by that. It makes him sound callous and horrible, but as a whole person, he is not. He was just unable to deal with his feelings and so turned to something that comforted him; masturbation.
As much as he and I loved each other, our relationship fell apart a couple of years later. During our break-up talks, it came out how much the abortions affected him, his feelings about sex and our sex life. We were never good at communicating with each other, and I hadn't considered how the abortions might have affected him. He wanted children even less than I did - it simply didn't occur to me that he might have issues about it, and even if it had, he likely wouldn't have talked about them.
So, there you have it. My abortion stories.
I still carry shame with me to this day, but I know other women who have had multiple abortions, and I know it's not just reprehensible women who have. Mags, one of my best friends, has had three, also. That's one of the things that has bonded us so tightly together, the guilt and shame and understanding.
The one positive aspect of my experience is this: I am in an unusual position to be able to compare three different abortion procedures. My personal feeling is that the medical abortion (the RU-486 pills) is the way to go. A woman can be in the comfort and privacy of her own home (or wherever she chooses,) with supportive friends or alone, and it is non-invasive. There is no surgery, no cutting, no sense of violation that might accompany a surgical abortion.
My experience with the conscious dilation & curettage may have been unusual or even totally abnormal; it's possible that it's not normally excruciatingly painful. Even so, I would recommend general anaesthesia if at all possible for surgical procedures. There are more risks associated with any experience with a general, but the risks are so small that I consider them preferable to being awake through the procedure.
With the internet so widely available now, women are doing more searching online for abortion experiences to learn what to expect. I'm sharing this to help those women, to help any woman who has had one or more abortions to feel less alone, less ashamed, less guilty.
These are our bodies, and if we choose not to bear children with them, that is our choice, our right. I would never recommend a reckless attitude about getting pregnant or having an abortion; there are risks and there are potential side-effects. There is pain. If you don't want kids, it's better to not get pregnant at all, of course. Stay in school, kids, and so forth.
But having an abortion, or two, or three, or five, does not make you a bad person. It will not necessarily scar you for life, either physically or emotionally. It will not always ruin your chances to have a baby in the future. It does not have to cause you unspeakable emotionally suffering and guilt. If you don't have the guilt, you are not a horrible woman, a failure in any way.
If you have had an abortion experience, I hope that you will write about it. You can always do it anonymously, as I have done. It releases some of the shame to tell the truth, to stop hiding what I've endured and why. This is the first time I have told my story, start to finish, to anyone, and I'm glad that I decided to do so. I know I don't have a wide readership, but if you know someone who might benefit from reading this story, please pass it along. If you have judgment on me that you need to unload, please feel free to do so; I will honor your feelings and believe me - you can't say anything that I haven't already said to myself. Words like "irresponsible" are certainly appropriate here.
Thank you, anyone who has read this far. In this regard, I am not "just like you," I suspect; but maybe there's one woman here who feels that kinship.
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In this post, I have no witty or sophisticated voice; this is just me, saying things that I need to say now. This is all Truth, and I hope that it helps...well, anyone. It will help me to tell these stories for the first time. The first time ever.
Sometimes, Telling the Truth happens in stages. We lie to cover up something we're ashamed about entirely. After some time passes, we begin to tell the truth, but embellish it with smaller lies to make ourselves look less bad to our audience and even to ourselves. We rationalize, we adjust. Later, we may tell the story fully, and there is a relief that comes with that. Now that I have incorporated The Truth into my internal and external dialogue, I feel better. My internal truth did not reconcile with what I was telling others, and therefore, there was a disjointedness, however small, with how I moved through the world.
Some of you will judge me harshly. I respect that. After the first act of the story, you may feel uncomfortable, some judgment creeping in around the edges, but perhaps you'll still be sympathetic. After the rest of it, more of you will judge me much more harshly than you might expect. There is little tolerance for this sort of thing. Your opinion of me will change when you read this post; I can almost guarantee it. However, there is an off-chance that this post will find its way to someone who needs it. I'll explain more at the end.
When I was 25, I had an abortion. For many women, having had an abortion is a secret. Some of us keep it entirely to ourselves, some of us tell our closest friends, some of us tell a spouse, but virtually none of us feel absolutely no shame for having had one, regardless of the circumstances. It is something we try to hide from employers or potential employers. It's not something you bring up just out of the blue.
I shared that I'd had an abortion with my friends, or if the subject came up in conversation with people I'd met. I have told my long-term boyfriends. I told my mom. I have not told my father, the rest of my family or my current, newish boyfriend. I have not told my current boyfriend because he wants to have children, and, even though it's unlikely that we'll ever have them together, I'm not sure how he would react to me having had an abortion.
I am fairly well-adjusted about abortion; I was raised in a liberal household and well-educated about sex, pregnancy and abortion. I do not have a cavalier attitude about abortion; rather, I have a pragmatic one. I have never wanted a child. I don't think I would be a good mother. I am not especially fond of children. I don't want to pass down my genes. I don't want to have a growing, thrashing person inside of me for 9 agonizing months. For my whole life, I have recognized that it is of absolute importance that each person be allowed to decide what happens to his or her own body. Rape terrifies me. Torture gives me nightmares.
For these reasons, I am very, very glad that abortion is legal in this country. I cannot imagine being forced, helpless, to allow a child to grow inside of me. Or worse, being forced to find a back-street abortionist who would more than likely cause more harm than good.
These are scary times in this country; Roe v. Wade is under attack, and while it seems that more politicians may be taking a slightly more centrist approach, abortion rights are being eaten away.
Because abortion is such a secret, the conservative anti-abortion people may not be aware that their daughter, granddaughter, niece, best friend's daughter, high school sweetheart, neighbor, wife or cousin have had one. If they were aware of how many of us have made that choice, it would shock and scare the pants off of them. It might make them dig in their heels and say, "This must stop! This is an abomination! Look how many innocent children have been murdered!" It might also make them reconsider that position, engender empathy within them for what their loved one has perhaps gone through, and terrify them that if abortion were not legal, perhaps their loved one wouldn't be there today.
I am not a disadvantaged person. I travel, I have two college degrees, and I "knew better" than to get pregnant. I am here to share my story of How Shit Can Happen, Even to Those Who Know Better.
There was no broken condom or bad vasectomy; I got pregnant because I was an idiot with a strong sex drive. I was having a lot of sex with a dear friend of mine, and we usually used condoms. One night, we were having a really, extraordinarily wild time out on the couch, far from the nightstand with the condoms in it. He stopped just before pushing himself inside me and said, "wait, is this ok?"
I lied.
"Yes," I whispered; "I can't get pregnant right now." In truth, I had no idea where I was in my cycle or even what day of the month it was; what I wanted was for him to fuck me until we both screamed. I didn't want to stop the momentum to get up, go into the bedroom and laboriously put on the loathsome condom. Also, the man in question had only one testicle; how fertile could he be?
The sex was amazing.
I got knocked up.
Children have never been in my mental picture. The image of my life has not been rife with the pitter-pat of tiny feet.
Immediately, I knew that I had to get an abortion, and quickly. My friend, the father, agreed to pay for the procedure and to go with me. Also, I called my mom. It seemed the thing to do.
I wrote a few journal entries about how I thought I should feel guilty or angst-ridden or torn, but I wasn't. The truth was, I didn't want that little peanut growing in there. I wanted it out of me before it turned into a person.
On the day of the procedure, I drove my mother and my friend down to the clinic. I was cheery and talkative... and speeding. On the way to my abortion, I got pulled over by a State Trooper and I got a speeding ticket. I remember joking about it not being a good day. We all laughed.
I never use the LJ-CUT feature; however, given the sensitive nature of this subject, I shall.
Once at the clinic, we all went inside and I signed in. There were perhaps two dozen young women there, some with their partners, some with friends, some alone. Some were crying. Many did not look anywhere but into their laps. All spoke in hushed whispers.
After quite a long time, a nurse shuttled all of us into a side room, where we were required to watch a video about Abortion. In very affirming tones, the video told us What To Expect but that abortion wasn't the only choice. We could bear our unwanted children and adopt them out, and sometimes, the woman who ultimately decided not to get an abortion were the most grateful of mothers, et cetera. We were herded back into the waiting room like cattle; I felt like I was being processed, a nameless, faceless baby factory.
I resented the hell out of that video at the time; I felt as if the pro-lifers had somehow struck a blow to our right to choose, and were trying to get us when we were most vulnerable. Now, with some time and perspective, I realize that a lot of those girls might have had no idea what to expect or what their choices were. I sat through the video, then rejoined my mom and my friend. We were the only three in the room who didn't seem to be covered in a pall of sadness. We quietly talked and even laughed a little. I wasn't emotional - I was fine, honestly and truly. I almost felt guilty for being fine, for not being riddled with doubt.
Periodically, a nurse with a clipboard would come out and call a name. The young woman would get up, walk to through the door with her head down, and be gone for anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes. Then they would come back, sit down, and resume their vigils.
My name was called. The initial call, as it turns out, was for a urine test to confirm the pregnancy. I have a bladder with massive stage-fright. My bladder freezes like a bunny when there is any pressure to perform. I sat in that bathroom, trying to squeeze out one or two drops for over twenty minutes. I couldn't do it. I raged at my quivering, empty bladder, which had been deprived of liquids for over 12 hours, thanks to surgical policy.
Finally, I gave up. I went back into the waiting room and sat down again. The nurse told me to let her know when I was Ready.
Fifteen or twenty minutes later, I tried again. After a long, heated battle with my bladder, during which I alternately cursed at it and coddled it, I finally got nearly a whole eighth of an inch of liquid to drip out, drop by drop. I was proud of that urine. I presented it to the nurse and back into the waiting room I went. A few of the girls smiled at me as I told Mom and the father that I'd managed to go.
After another long wait, they began calling us in again. This time, it was for The Procedure. I was called into a large examination room, given a paper gown and told to completely disrobe. I obeyed and sat, perched on the edge of the padded examination table, waiting.
It was at this point, all alone in this cold, sterile room, that I began to get scared. There were cheerful paintings on the wall that said to me, "We are trying to comfort and cheer you up; don't be frightened, little one." I don't remember what the paintings were of, now, but they brought tears to my eyes. That someone would think to put colorful paintings in a room that housed hundreds of frightened, emotionally ragged women, touched me very deeply.
An elderly male doctor came in with a female assistant to do a cursory exam. He confirmed that we were going to use general anaesthesia and then he gave me a routine looking over. He put his stethoscope to my chest.
"Oh! Your heart is beating like a frightened little bird! It's going to be ok."
I fought back tears until they left the room soon after that, and then I let them come. I didn't feel like a frightened little bird, not really...I felt a little stark, I felt ... I suppose I was more frightened than I cared to admit. I sent some apologetic thought-feelings to the being in my belly, some explanatory words, and told it to come back someday if that's what was supposed to happen. My mother, who had a miscarriage prior to my birth, said that she believed it was me all along, that I had come back a second time.
Shortly after the doctor left, I was taken to another room, where I received an ultrasound to (re)confirm the pregnancy and to determine at what stage the fetus was. The details are hazy, but I remember tentatively asking to see the ultrasound. It was a staticky, nonsensical mess. I couldn't even identify a mass that might be a baby. I asked the u/s tech to show me, wondering if, when confronted with my child's sonograph, I would suddenly change my mind. She circled a tiny smudge on the paper, and I pretended to be able to see it against all the background noise of the image. Back to the exam room.
Soon, I was admitted into the operating room. I climbed up onto a ludicrously tall table, where my legs were splayed out into stirrups and my arms strapped to boards running perpendicular to the length of the table. Lying there, strapped to a table in a freezing cold, utterly white room, nearly naked, I felt more vulnerable than I ever have in my entire life. I felt obscenely crucified, with my arms strapped down, sticking straight out to the sides, my shamefully pregnant nether region on display for anyone who walked across the south end of the room.
Four or five men and women bustled purposefully around the room. One got me going with an IV. I remember trying to be polite, but I'm certain that my eyes were as wide as saucers and showed my extreme unease. Someone explained that I would very shortly be asleep and that when I woke up, it would all be over with. It was cold and noisy, and I was strapped down and helpless. Utterly helpless.
A faceless person told me to count backwards from ten. I believe I got to eight.
I slowly came into hazy consciousness in a hallway on a stretcher. There were a few other stretchers in the hallway, each containing an unconscious or semi-conscious post-op young woman. We were all unattended, left like dead bodies in this quiet, dim part of the clinic. I felt no physical pain. Without struggle, I let unconsciousness overtake me again, glad for the nothingness.
Phasing in and out of consciousness, I slowly became aware that I needed to throw up. I have had that reaction to anaesthesia before. As I was recognizing the symptoms of barfing, I weakly hailed a distant nurse, who helped me struggle to the bathroom. I violently vomited a small wad of spittle. It was unproductive, but I felt so much better. I don't remember going back to the stretcher.
I woke up on queue. Literally, a line of stretchers waiting for one of a row of Lazy-Boy recliners against a wall. I didn't care about the recliners. I was fine in my stretcher, where I continued to lapse into dreamless sleep. I woke up, closer to the recliners. I woke up, next in line. I woke up, already in the Lazy-Boy, without any memory of having been relocated. Still, I had no pain.
The person next to me, a large black woman, moaned and groaned. Every few moments, she would loudly and somewhat incoherently complain, "I HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM! I HAVE TO TAKE A SHIT!!" but the nurses looked over their shoulders at her and said, "no you don't, that's just the cramping," and "it's ok, that's normal, you're fine. You don't have to go to the bathroom." I wished she would just shut up and let me sleep. But no; every few minutes, there was the moaning and the shouting. Sometimes, I managed to ignore it.
After a while, I have no idea how long, it was time for me to surrender my chair and let the next person in the line of stretchers have it. Again, I felt like processed livestock. Someone got me dressed and out to mom and my friend. I remember climbing into the back seat of the Isuzu Trooper, sluggish and floppy and feeling the beginnings of cramping. Someone drove us home, where I crawled into bed after taking some painkillers.
The cramping wasn't too bad after I finally came fully out of the anaesthesia, and I had no emotional twinges, no second-guesses. I was relieved to have the whole thing over with. The crimps lingered for only a couple of days, and the whole affair was very non-traumatizing. I still remember the feeling of being helplessly strapped down, but that was in a safe environment; everyone there was going to help me, not harm me. I don't want to think about that feeling in a different sort of environment. My abortion was safe, reasonably pain-free, and not difficult to procure. My memory doesn't serve well on the costs...this was about eight years ago, and I believe it may have been around $700. I was thankful to be done. Despite the initial fright of being in the operating room and so helpless, it was not a terrible experience.
Months later, I had a dream.
In the dream, I was back in the operating room. My body was unconscious, but my consciousness lingered overhead. There were doctors working between my legs and a searing pain burned through me. The pain was nearly unbearable, but I remained calm, letting it wash over me. There was a sudden commotion; the masked and gowned doctors were speaking urgently, but I couldn't tell what they were saying. Something was going unspeakably wrong. Pain shot through me.
And then there was crying - a baby's crying. A blue, discharge-covered infant fell out of my body and onto the floor of the operating room. The clinic staff were all horrified and stopped in their tracks for a moment as the baby screamed at the top of its lungs. In that moment of their pause, my hovering self saw the baby begin to crawl, still blue and covered with slime, across the slippery, bloody floor, crying in that extreme and genuine way that very young babies can. My consciousness went to the floor, and the baby crawled toward me, eyes slitted in its screaming cries, pain ravaging my body.
I woke up, still feeling the sharp, jagged cuts to my uterus. Almost in the very second I woke up, this thought echoed through my head: "The mind may have been asleep, but the body still remembers." There was a part of me that endured the cuts, the prying, the scraping, even if the part of my brain that registers pain was temporarily knocked out. My body underwent extremely painful things, those cuts happened, and somewhere, my body remembers them.
The image of the child being born during the abortion lingered for awhile, but ultimately, I was not traumatized by the dream. I recognized it as my subconscious expressing fears and maybe working a thing or two out. I still viewed the abortion as having been okay, even if my body had endured some pain. It wasn't something that I wanted to do again, but I was okay with having done it.
I would have thought I'd learned my lesson, but sadly, the stabbing pains were just foreshadowing.
Six years later, I became pregnant again. I remember peeing on a home pregnancy stick with my boyfriend waiting in the living room. The stick turned the wrong color, and I went out and told him. We were only three or so months into our relationship, but we had Plans. We were madly in love. And neither one of us wanted children, ever. The decision to have a second abortion was easy to make. I told him I'd had one before, and that it wasn't a difficult procedure.
I was working for a major international corporation at the time, and I had great health insurance. I remember walking outside of the office building where I was a low-level manager, and asking the young man who answered the health insurance's customer service line, "Hello, yes. I'm calling to ask whether you guys cover abortion?"
"Uh," he stammered, but quickly regained composure. "I believe we do, let me check your policy." I heard computer keys tappity-tapping, and soon he said, "Yes, the examinations, the ultra-sounds, the procedure, everything would be covered; however, general anaesthesia is not." I was happy to hear about the procedure being covered, but I was alarmed about being conscious. Thanking him, I went back to work.
That night, I researched local abortion physicians and called around, asking about the prices for general anaesthesia. Most of the costs were well over $1000! I was shocked. That was absurd. I decided to gut it out and just go with the local injection and the "light sedative" the doctors' offices had talked about. I made the appointment downtown; unfortunately, they couldn't get me in for almost two weeks. My breasts were getting really sore, I was insanely cranky and I couldn't sleep worth a damn. I hated being pregnant.
A few days before the procedure, I sent an email out to my team, the six men whom I directly supervised. They were various ages, from slightly younger than I was to old enough to be my father. One was from Poland, one from Thailand and one from a Middle Eastern country that I can't recall at the moment. All of them knew my boyfriend, the father. In the email, I explained why I was going to be away for a few days and why we'd made the decision to abort. Even as I was writing, I had no clue why the hell I was telling them this, apart from generally being an honest person. Perhaps I wanted sympathy, perhaps I wanted them to know that I wasn't just taking a fun vacation.
We all sat near each other, and they had to walk past my desk to leave the area. As each one walked by on their businesses, they offered sympathies and absolutely no judgments. They were a good group of guys. On the day of, my boyfriend drove us into the city. The clinic was a private practice in a 1970's-ish three-story building. We were the only people in the waiting room, and it was quiet and very doctory, not at all like the people-processing plant from the first time.
The assistant called me into the exam room. I looked around at the equipment and saw a large, clear plastic cylinder where, soon, the contents of my uterus would be. It was a little unsettling, but I'm pretty good about Medical Procedures, more curious about than afraid of them. The doctor came in, a woman that I now remember in my head as looking like Miranda Bailey from Grey's Anatomy, but she assuredly didn't. I remember being a somewhat stern-looking, short and plump black woman in surgical scrubs.
She explained, very briefly, that they would give me an IV sedative to help with the pain and to help me relax, then they'd give me a local injection to numb my cervix. After that, she would insert an instrument into my cervix to dilate it, then she would begin the procedure. I would hear something like a soft humming sound from the vacuum pump and I might feel some pressure. Ok, I was ready.
They got me into the stirrups, and the assistant injected me with the Demerol cocktail in my arm. I began to feel woozy right away and thought, "Maybe I'll just sleep through the whole thing!" I remarked how fast-acting the drugs were, but remained conscious. The doctor sat between my stirrupped legs. Due to the curtain between us, all I could see when I looked down at her was the top of her face. She told me I'd feel a sharp pinch as she gave the local, and she was right. She waited a few minutes for that to take effect as she readied the other equipment. We were all set. She told me I might feel some pressure as she inserted the dilating instrument inside my cervix.
As she inserted whatever it was, there was some sharp pain, but it was not unbearable. The local had not taken effect yet, evidently, and the sedative certainly wasn't taking the edge off of anything. In fact, I felt remarkably clear-headed and not at all woozy or sedated. The doctor waited a few more moments before trying again. I gritted my teeth and she got it in there. I took some deep breaths, as I was clenching and making things more difficult.
The pain continued, abating only slightly after she got the dilation instrument finally situated. My cervix did not like it, and I felt like it was trying to spit it out. It also felt like the instrument had teeth on it, digging into the powerful muscles trying to evict it. Finally, my cervix was open far enough, and it was time.
You may have heard the term "D & C" before, which sounds nonchalant, casual, almost cute. "D & C" stands for "Dilation & Curettage," which also doesn't sound overtly awful. What it involves is the dilation of the cervix and then the insertion of a "curette;" a long, loop-shaped knife, which is then used to scrape the contents of the uterus away from the uterine walls. A cannula is also inserted and used to suction away the remains. I'd thought I was having a simple suction aspiration, which is the same procedure without the knife; I was wrong.
I have an extremely high tolerance for pain. I was not prepared for what was ahead.
As soon as she began the scraping and cutting, my insides screamed. It felt like she was scraping the inside of my uterus with a branding iron. I was trying to be strong and stoic, but my ragged breathing gave me away.
"Sweetie, you have to relax, you have to breathe."
"I'm sorry...I'm sorry...it just doesn't feel numbed. I can feel everything!"
"Ok, just breathe."
She paused for only a quick moment. I have no memory if she gave me any more local or nothing at all; all I remember was the stabbing pains and feeling like I was going to die.
"Let's try again." She went back to it with the same result. My hands clenched and unclenched and I tried very hard to breathe deeply and normally, but my breath kept coming out as jagged grunts. "Ok, you have to push through this, we're almost halfway done here, it's ok, try to breathe." Clearly, she thought I was a total wimp. I said, one more time, "I don't think the drugs are working."
"If I stop now, it'll hurt more to stop and start again than it will to finish up. You can do this."
I forced myself to lie there, as still as stone from the waist down, as this woman scraped the inside of my body with a knife. Occasionally, I would hear the hum of the vacuum pump. Mostly, it was just the cutting and the agony.
Finally, after an internal eternity, it was over. She covered me with the paper curtain and took my feet out of the stirrups for me. "Is there someone in the waiting room we can bring in for you?" My emotions were rushing down on me like a tidal wave and I barely managed to choke out my boyfriend's name before sobs overtook me.
He came in to find me wracked with sobs, and I remember his face so clearly. He stroked my head and he was obviously deeply troubled. "No more of that," I said through tears. He remained silent, and I couldn't speak anymore. I couldn't explain that I was not crying because I had ended a pregnancy, but because I had just been brutalized. I felt like I had been attacked. Victimized.
After 15 minutes, I was allowed to leave.
My boyfriend drove me home, not realizing that hitting large bumps would make my insides feel like I was back on the table. We didn't talk, I couldn't talk; I was too horrified. I was trying to process the emotions I had from lying there and letting those brutal cuts happen to me. I wondered if this doctor was secretly anti-abortion, punishing women by not numbing us properly, forcing us to endure what I'd just gone through. I resented her, whatever her reasons were.
We never really talked about it, my boyfriend and I. He got a vasectomy.
Four months later, I got pregnant.
This time, I was filled with dread. I was humiliated. I told no one but him, because once is an accident, twice is negligent...but three times? Three times is simply unforgivable. Three times is a hooker in the bad part of town who has no respect for herself or for human life. Three times is a junkie sleeping with anyone while she's high. Three times displays such a callous disregard for life as to be unconscionable. Three times? A woman so stupid, so unthinking, so unfeeling, should be forced to have that child. Besides, maybe all this time, she was meant to have that baby. Maybe this is her last chance. Maybe this is her miracle; after two abortions, surely her insides must bear scars! And the vasectomy? What are the odds?
I was so shamed. I had never felt so ashamed in my life. I had all of those thoughts in the last paragraph and a million others. I knew that I was a horrible person, beneath human. A person convicted of multiple drunk driving offenses would be better regarded than I would be, should anyone find out. I think my boyfriend was disgusted with us both.
Although I was still employed at the same giant corporation, I wasn't going to have two abortions on record there. Fortunately for me, the "abortion pill," then dubbed RU-486 (Mifepristone & Misoprostol) was in its final phase of study before being approved. A local clinic was conducting studies, and all care would be provided free of cost. I signed up immediately. I wasn't at all sure what to expect, but anything would be better than the last time.
The clinic was either Planned Parenthood or a city or county equivalent. It was a free/low-cost clinic that provided women's health services. I went in, had a vaginal ultra-sound, received a lot of literature and information and made two appointments to take the doses of pills. I made sure that the actual expelling of the fetus would occur on a weekend, so I wouldn't have to miss any work. The staff told me that if I had any questions, any concerns, day or night, there was a 24-hour nurse hotline I could call, no matter how silly the question might seem. The staff were very supportive, caring and friendly.
At the first appointment, I took the first drug, Mifepristone. They told me this could cause the abortion to occur on its own, but that I would likely need to return for the second medication, the Misoprostol. The first drug causes the fetus to die and the second induces contractions. The Mifepristone did not cause any cramping or contractions at all, so two or three days later, I went back for the Misoprostol. The staff also gave me two Vicodin to take, in case the cramping got to be too intense. I took the Misoprostol at the clinic and took the Vicodin home.
I planned a day of bed rest. For a few hours, nothing happened, and then I began to get some light cramps. I took the Vicodin, figuring they would get worse. My boyfriend was in his office in the basement, so I did this all alone. The cramps got more and more intense, but it was not unbearable; it was like menstrual cramping times six or eight, maybe. The Vicodin definitely took the worst out of it, and there was only about 15 minutes during which I was in a lot of pain.
There are gory details in the following paragraph; you might wish to skip ahead if you are squeamish.
When the first major wave of cramps subsided, I went into the bathroom, sat on the toilet and something that felt large slid out of me. It wasn't painful; it was just an odd sensation. I looked down between my legs and saw a blood clot almost the size of my palm lying at the bottom of the bowl. I put a maxi pad in my underwear, stood, and looked down into the water at this thing that had just been expelled from my body. I was fascinated by it. A morbid part of me wondered if I could see the fetus in it and I looked hard at it, seeing nothing.
With a weird feeling I can't really identify, I flushed the mass down the toilet, unable to help myself from thinking about unwanted goldfish. A short time later, another (smaller) wave of cramps came along, another (smaller) mass was expelled in the bathroom and that was that. I went down and told my boyfriend it was done. He barely looked away from his computer screen. Later, I found out that he'd been surfing porn online for most of the time I'd been upstairs having the abortion. I was so hurt and so angry by that. It makes him sound callous and horrible, but as a whole person, he is not. He was just unable to deal with his feelings and so turned to something that comforted him; masturbation.
As much as he and I loved each other, our relationship fell apart a couple of years later. During our break-up talks, it came out how much the abortions affected him, his feelings about sex and our sex life. We were never good at communicating with each other, and I hadn't considered how the abortions might have affected him. He wanted children even less than I did - it simply didn't occur to me that he might have issues about it, and even if it had, he likely wouldn't have talked about them.
So, there you have it. My abortion stories.
I still carry shame with me to this day, but I know other women who have had multiple abortions, and I know it's not just reprehensible women who have. Mags, one of my best friends, has had three, also. That's one of the things that has bonded us so tightly together, the guilt and shame and understanding.
The one positive aspect of my experience is this: I am in an unusual position to be able to compare three different abortion procedures. My personal feeling is that the medical abortion (the RU-486 pills) is the way to go. A woman can be in the comfort and privacy of her own home (or wherever she chooses,) with supportive friends or alone, and it is non-invasive. There is no surgery, no cutting, no sense of violation that might accompany a surgical abortion.
My experience with the conscious dilation & curettage may have been unusual or even totally abnormal; it's possible that it's not normally excruciatingly painful. Even so, I would recommend general anaesthesia if at all possible for surgical procedures. There are more risks associated with any experience with a general, but the risks are so small that I consider them preferable to being awake through the procedure.
With the internet so widely available now, women are doing more searching online for abortion experiences to learn what to expect. I'm sharing this to help those women, to help any woman who has had one or more abortions to feel less alone, less ashamed, less guilty.
These are our bodies, and if we choose not to bear children with them, that is our choice, our right. I would never recommend a reckless attitude about getting pregnant or having an abortion; there are risks and there are potential side-effects. There is pain. If you don't want kids, it's better to not get pregnant at all, of course. Stay in school, kids, and so forth.
But having an abortion, or two, or three, or five, does not make you a bad person. It will not necessarily scar you for life, either physically or emotionally. It will not always ruin your chances to have a baby in the future. It does not have to cause you unspeakable emotionally suffering and guilt. If you don't have the guilt, you are not a horrible woman, a failure in any way.
If you have had an abortion experience, I hope that you will write about it. You can always do it anonymously, as I have done. It releases some of the shame to tell the truth, to stop hiding what I've endured and why. This is the first time I have told my story, start to finish, to anyone, and I'm glad that I decided to do so. I know I don't have a wide readership, but if you know someone who might benefit from reading this story, please pass it along. If you have judgment on me that you need to unload, please feel free to do so; I will honor your feelings and believe me - you can't say anything that I haven't already said to myself. Words like "irresponsible" are certainly appropriate here.
Thank you, anyone who has read this far. In this regard, I am not "just like you," I suspect; but maybe there's one woman here who feels that kinship.