I will start out with the cold hard truth: I had an abortion. It was the most impersonal experience of my life, and it has given me a new hold on the realities of society and a detrimental view of the values I held at the time. It wasn’t very long ago—in fact I should still be pregnant right now, and it is that thought that motivates me today.
I need to tell my story because I see the issue so clearly now, and my thoughts need to be shared with the masses. I wouldn’t want this travesty to happen to anyone else. There is more to this issue than most people realize, and I am here to tell what I know.
I was 21 years old, engaged to be married, and pregnant. I was very happy about the pregnancy until I told my fiancé. He wanted nothing to do with the baby. I had considered myself pro-choice my entire life, so when I was faced with the fear of being alone, young and unprepared with a baby, I chose to abort the pregnancy.
After only a few weeks of struggling with the decision, I went to the abortion clinic and received some counseling about sex education, contraception and such. This didn’t prepare me for what I was about to do—I already knew all about the pill, and I had come for an abortion. Looking back, I realize the counselor let me down because I wasn’t given the information I needed at that critical point in my life to make the right decision for my child and for me.
Then I was called into the surgical room. I was shown to the bathroom, told to remove my clothing and to sit in the chair. I sat in my cold gown, alone, until the doctor was ready to see me. First came the ultra sound. I wasn’t ready to see the baby on that screen. All that ran through my head was what the counselor said about this being a standard procedure, and that there was nothing to worry about. Then the doctor told me I was seven weeks and three days pregnant. I got up from the table and hurriedly put my clothes back on. I wasn’t ready for what I was about to do. How can society prepare a mother to abort her child? It isn’t possible.
“I had considered myself pro-choice my entire life, so when I was faced with the fear of being alone, young and unprepared with a baby, I chose to abort the pregnancy.”
I felt as though I couldn’t go through with it, but between the nurses and my fiancé, I was persuaded into coming back the next day after I had calmed down. So those same events took place the next day: there I lay on the surgical table as the nurses tried to put the IV of relaxants into my body. The doctor came in, a different doctor than the one earlier, then in the most intimate moment of my young life he took away what was my gift to the world without even introducing himself. I felt awful. The procedure was over before I knew it, and I immediately realized the severity and finality of my choice. My baby was forever dead, and it was my fault.
After the abortion, there is little to no support available at the clinics, and it is very hard to find the correct information you need to proceed with your life. Facts are hidden away—swept under the rug so that society can easily ignore them. When this “standard procedure” is over, you are booted out the door, forced to find comfort elsewhere. There are a few support groups, and plenty of counselors, but finding one that will help you can be harder than healing yourself; after all, whom can you trust? Who is there for the young girls like me, girls who have lost a piece of themselves that they will never get back?
Abortion should not be referred to as a choice and not glorified as such. “Choice” implies that there is a correct and fair procedure in place, and that it has been thought out well enough to make it a viable decision. I feel that abortion is just a bandage on society’s problems, for which they have found no other solution yet. But this bandage is not meant to heal, or to fix, but to cover up what society can’t deal with. But the bandage they provided me wasn’t big enough for what I now face.
This is a true story, written by a woman who recently had an abortion.
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