There was a truth in her sign that I had never perceived in the time before my own abortion. Back when those protesters made me furious instead of teary eyed. Some women DO regret abortions. I know that my abortion changed me and in many ways, it will always affect me. Just like my miscarriage in 2009. Just like the births of my 3 children. Just like the year that I spent trying to conceive my second child. I've changed because of those events, my perspective taking on layers of complexity, my mind more receptive to the subtleties of life, loss, and motherhood.
Motherhood reveals the solidarity of women: our bodies like a lock, and our children the key. How many women have sympathetically met your eyes in the grocery store as your toddler melts down? How many women have connected in online forums obsessively discussing their menstrual cycles, and posting pregnancy stick pictures? How many women have caught your eye just to ask when your baby will be due and regale you with their own birth stories? We avoided each other's eyes in the large waiting room before you get your abortion. There was no sense of womanhood, just the heavy static of a room teeming with emotions. We looked into our phones. We flipped through old magazines. We waited for our names to be called.
I had decided at home to refuse the drugs that partially sedate you. Out of touch with reality? I thought of my old self, who would have never gotten an abortion. I was already out of touch with reality. I felt lost, but I thought of my miscarriage, I thought of my three children. I am forever grateful for the warm nurse who touched me in kindness as I started to shake uncontrollably, my teeth chattering. "Are you cold or scared?" she asks "both" I say although mostly, the table feels too hard and the room seems too bright and no one except for me seems fazed that I'm going to kill my baby after I've brought three into this world.
The doctor was brusque and clinical. She injected me with a pain reliever and it was sharp and agonizing. The nurse clenched my hand now. Suddenly I was aware of the radio in the background. John Legend was crooning "my head's underwater, but I'm feeling fine. You're crazy, and I'm out of my mind. Could I give you all of me?". I cried silently, my ears filling up with tears, so that everything I heard was muffled slightly. I felt the vacuum pulling in short bursts without respite. I could hear the high pitched whirring of the machine dipping and fading. I can see the ceiling; the tiles have an ocean scene on them. I think it's to take us away from our circumstances, but I can't fade into anything. "Almost there". I'm not crying anymore, but the tears are still leaking out. For a minute I am just a shell. My baby is in that bucket and I am here alone. I shake my head, but I can still hear the song playing "Even when you're crying, you're beautiful too. The world is beating you down, I'm around through every mood".
Not anymore.
I think that is what they don't tell you when you go in and let them take your could-have-been baby; there are days you will feel righteous and courageous, adamant that you made the right choice. Then there are days that you will simmer in regret. But most days it is buried until you get surprise gut-punched by a protestor with a sign or a video like Jemima Kirke's recent one, detailing the obstacles she faced in getting her abortion.
Maybe a piece of them will die, like what happened to me, and they should know that. If this post-Roe V. Wade world encourages women to make the best choice, if it encourages reproductive freedoms, if it gives women the option of terminating pregnancies than it should be unabashedly realistic. Because how many women are indescribably hurt to choose abortion and feel that they must put on a good front? How many women push those feelings of grief and loss down without even feeling worthy of them? How many women have sat and whispered to themselves "I chose to kill my baby" and right after "But I miss them"? How many women are scared and ashamed to admit that? How many women never admit to having an abortion? We know we aren't allowed to express those hard emotions about our abortions, but only after we are being crushed under the weight. We don't get a circle of women to nod at us with sympathy. There is no sisterhood in the mothers who chose to abort their children.
I'm not here to tell a "positive" abortion story (I've seen others labeled as such) because I didn't have one. There is no glossing over those physical sensations, or the emotional torment, or the subsequent feelings of loss, shame, and fear. It is simply put, my story and my own lesson in humility. It is my call for a sisterhood; for more compassion and less judgment. Even within myself. It is me standing fearlessly in my experiences and still answering the abortion debate with one resounding word- Choice.
I hope that some of you will stand fearless with me and leave your stories, advice, and thoughts below.
