I actually started this diary a couple weeks ago, then let it marinate in my Draft folder. The truth be told, I was afraid. I hadn't read or heard a lot of personal accounts regarding a decision to terminate a pregnancy. Sure, there are blogs and websites and comments all over the net supporting the reason to keep abortion safe and legal, but very little as to WHY an individual chose to abort. And if and when I did actually read an account, it was about how an abortion was needed to save a woman's life or a result of rape or because of some extreme circumstance. But I never saw any account close to mine. And what was mine? I had an abortion at the age of 26 because I didn't want a child. End of story. No drama, no dire circumstances. I got knocked up and I didn't want it. And because of the simplicity of it, I told no one for years. I never wanted to share my story because I was afraid.
Well, a pretty extraordinary thing is happening. A very courageous woman named Tamar Abrams has a blog posted on the Huff Post called, "My Abortion: It's Time to Tell." She goes on to admit an abortion she had back in the 70's. She also went on to say how she told NO ONE for years, even decades. And then...another woman posted her account with abortion. Then another. Then another. Soon, there were close to 300 responses, women too afraid, too ashamed for years to talk about it, coming out and telling their stories. And it hit me.
THIS should be our strategy against those who would deny us our rights as women and as Americans. THIS is what we need to do-- TELL OUR STORIES. No more fear, no more shame, no more hiding. Roe vs Wade promised us privacy, and we have exercised that. But if we truly want to honor Dr. Tiller's memory and all the work he's done for women across this country, WE HAVE TO COME OUT AND YELL OUR STORIES FROM THE ROOFTOPS!!!! We need to put faces to the rhetoric. We need to expound HOW our choices may have saved our lives and marriages and relationships and livelihoods. We need to show those that would terrorize us into hiding that we are wholly realized individuals with families and careers and hopes and dreams and compassion, and not promiscuous sluts who terminate a pregnancy with the same amount of thought as what shade to put on our nails.
I'll start.
I was 26 years old and in my 2nd year of graduate school when I learned I was pregnant. The father? He was a one-week fling from out of town. Personally, I thought he was a horse's ass. But then again, was I looking for the white picket fence? No, just a little company.
Because of thyroid issues, I could never tolerate the Pill, it made me sick. So my only recourse was condoms. We used one that obviously had a "malfunction".
I did 2 home tests, and one at Planned Parenthood. I remember sitting in the office at Planned Parenthood. "It's positive." I watched the nurse's reaction to mine. I wondered how many times she'd delivered this news, and what was the ratio of ecstatic to terrified reactions?
When I finally looked back at her from staring at some invisible point of the ceiling, I said, "So, where do I make the appointment? With you, or do I need to call somewhere else?"
"You're sure?" she asked.
"I was sure when I walked in here."
And I was. I was sure the second I saw the results of the first home test. I was sure the first day of the missed period. I was sure the week beforehand, when my lower back hurt and my breasts swelled painfully and I had a weird craving for scallops and chocolate. And cream cheese. Right out of the tub.
I was sure when I was 12 years old and got my first period. I was sure that I never, ever wanted to be a mother. I was sure I would never, ever do to a child what was done to me. I was sure I was unfit. Because I had been told so every day of my life.
I was an unwanted child. My mother was an undiagnosed manic-depressive who developed multiple sclerosis when I was 8. I was the youngest of nine children, all of whom were unplanned and unwanted.
My mother was 17 when my then 22 year old father got her pregnant. Both were raised heavily Pentacostal in Northern Wisconsin in 1947. Theirs was a shotgun wedding. Neither knew anything about birth control or even the mechanics of conception, and continued to know nothing for the next 10 years while my mother had one unwanted child after another.
As the years progressed, my mother continued to sink further and further into madness and Valium addiction, and my father made himself as scarce as he could. My home environment was a gulag. Alcoholism, mental illness, and drug-addiction ran rampant. I remember finding a pound bag of marijuana in my brother's drawer when I was 6 years old. Nice, huh? Apparently, he was selling it to pay for a heroin addiction. I know of one brother who molested one of my sisters, and there might have been other incidents. I was lucky that I wasn't sexually abused. Honestly, I couldn't even begin to tell you how I dodged that bullet.
Unlike my teenaged siblings, I couldn't rightly start drinking or shooting smack when I was a third-grader. So I ate. And ate. By the time I graduated high school, I weighed 230 lbs. on a 5'5" frame. My mother picked on me mercilessly, calling me a "fat sow" every morning, cracking jokes to my siblings about my weight and lack of prettiness, who were more than happy to share the laugh. My poor siblings; they would do anything to receive just the slightest validation from her, just the tiniest bit of acceptance and love, even picking on a little fat girl who was their baby sister. Needless to say, at the age of 43, I don't talk to them much anymore. Just because I forgive them doesn't mean I want to hang out with them.
Anyhoo, long story short...the day I got my first period was the day I made myself that promise. "No kids. Never, ever, ever."
And I kept it.
I grieved. I cried myself to sleep for a week after the procedure. I kept apologizing, over and over, to that 8 week zygote, trying to make it-- and myself-- understand that it was the best thing to do. And then...I went on with my life.
A few years went by, and then I got the diagnosis I had known for years : Bipolar Disorder. A laundry list of meds. Lost jobs. Lost opportunities. But...no child. I didn't drag an innocent into any of the madness or poverty that ensued. I had at least done that RIGHT.
There will be those who read this and think that I am a monster. They will think I was weak, that if I just tried a little harder, if I just wished or "prayed" the mental illness away, just "snapped out of it". If I had just "kept my legs closed", I would have seen the errors of such thinking and opened my arms to God's fucking plan and blah blah blah. Well, you know what? The same people who say that are the same people who betrayed my poor crazy mother and my hapless father and sent them down a road of unhappiness and disease and addiction.
So fuck 'em.
That's my story. What's yours? Don't be afraid. I'm not anymore.
UPDATE: Thank all of you for your amazing support, courage, and personal stories. I am truly humbled and amazed, and just a little overwhelmed, LOL. Bless you all.
UPDATE #2: Oh, and thanks for the REC!!