S., 22
I found out that I was pregnant when I was in Colombia on vacation with my boyfriend at the time and my family. It was unexpected. I was 19. It was something that I wish I could have spoken about to my family, but they're religious and I wasn't sure how they were going to take it. Abortion is illegal in Colombia, so I didn't know where to turn. I had to contact a friend that I had known that had an abortion in the U.S. I had to ask her, "How do I do this? What do I do? I can't have a kid right now. I have college, and I work, that I have to do first." She basically guided me and let me know that there's Planned Parenthood,
and there's this other clinic that also does it normally, and that's where she had it done. She said that at Planed Parenthood there were a lot of protestors so she ended up not going there.
I had to call from Colombia to schedule the procedure for after I came back. I always considered myself pro-choice, even though I was really religious around that point in my life. I was like, "I don't think I would personally get an abortion, but I don't think they should be illegal." That was always my mentality. I came back from vacation, and I went to have the medical abortion. You take pills you insert either by mouth or vaginally. I didn't really feel guilty about my decision, but I felt like I couldn't talk about it. That got to me because I tell my mom basically everything. To have this sense of judgment that I felt coming—like if I spoke about it, someone might look at me differently, someone might think I'm a horrible person just because of a personal decision that I made with my body— impacted me and I felt silent.
My mom ended up finding out about my abortion in the end. She found the paperwork because I never threw it away. Then, she confronted me about it. This was two years after the fact. I was like, "Yeah, I had an abortion." She, surprisingly, took it very well. I feel like she didn't really know what to say. She was kind of like, "Ok, why didn't you tell me?" and like, "It's ok." She didn't yell or anything, so that was good. Basically, she just told me, you know, like "Be safe." It's hard, because I come from a Hispanic family so they don't really talk to their kids about sex or anything like that, so it was nice to know that she was willing to, you know? Especially because she ended up taking it pretty well.
I come from a single parent home and there was no way that I would be able to continue my education and raise a child. My mom barely had enough to support both of us at the time. I needed to make the good decision that I made.
Dr. J., 66:
Both of my abortions happened in my late 30s or early 40s, when my kids were under the age of ten. They happened two years apart. I felt annoyed when I found out. It just felt like a hassle. I knew I was pregnant extraordinarily early in the pregnancy. I went to the obstetrician who delivered my two children to get the abortions. He was able to do it in his office. He just did a medical D&C. Quite frankly, I never thought I'd end up getting an abortion. I mean I was surprised that that would happen to me because I was careful, but birth control fails.
I knew immediately I did not want more kids. It was really tough for me to be a parent of young children. I think that's the hardest thing for me personally, that I ever did. Much harder than medical school and all that. For all the big things, I think I was suited to be a reasonable parent. But for the day-to-day of a child between the ages of 2 and 6, I was very ill-suited. Because I desperately needed internal space. And you don't have it with a kid that age. When I got pregnant for the third time, I was already stretched to my limit. And actually my husband said the same thing. I was surprised, because I thought caring for little ones was more bothersome to me. But we started talking about it, and he felt the same way. We felt we had nothing left to give to another child. Now, if we'd had to, we would have made the best of it. But we had no internal resources left for another child. That's how we felt.
I think medical school forces you to just put medical issues in a box, and medical problems in a box, and to be able to disengage emotionally. Like when my mother-in-law had Alzheimer's. And I think that's how we felt about it. These days, every once in a while I think–we're so involved with our adult children, and they give us so much pleasure, and we're so proud of them–that it would have been nice to see who these other people would have been. But that's it. It's truly not a saga in our lives. It's not even a chapter. It's a blip. Which probably would enrage somebody who's pro-life.
S., 33.
I was 16 when I had my abortion. My mom had passed away, and that's when I became sexually active. I talked to the guy and let him know that I was pregnant, and he wasn't ready, because I had found out that he already gotten someone else pregnant. So, I just decided it would be best for me [to terminate the pregnancy]. I knew that I would struggle and be the main provider, especially since I was raising my sister at the time.
I had the procedure done at Planned Parenthood. It was a pretty smooth experience. At that time, I didn't see any protestors. I felt odd, but then I felt relieved. I felt emotional because I felt, "what if?" If I would have had the child, I probably could have gotten by; though I probably would have struggled. But, I think I had made the right decision because I wouldn't have been able to do all the things that I have done in my life with working with Planned Parenthood and volunteering and working in hospitals and raising my sister. So, I felt a little relieved and happy a little bit, though at the same time, I was sad, because it would've been my first child. Being pregnant should be a happy thing, instead of a sad situation.
When I did have my first child, I had just turned 28. I felt secure where I was in life for me to be able to take care of a child, even if the father wasn't there. At that time, I was happy to be pregnant. I actually was trying a few years before, and I just kept having miscarriages. My miscarriages were really emotional. I got kind of worried that it was because of an abortion that I had before. But I just realized maybe it just wasn't my time.
L, 29.
I worked at the Department of Homeland Security for eight years. I was doing the whole Blackberry, working 24 hours a day thing. I was really burnt out, and took a month away from Washington during the government shutdown. About two weeks after I had returned to D.C. with all this energy, I realized that I also felt really sick. I took a pregnancy test. I was completely shocked. My period is really irregular, so I had no reason to think that anything was wrong until I started [having] morning sickness.
When I went to the doctor, they told me I was a little over two months along. When they realized I was a federal employee, they told me they could not provide the abortion. Congress passed a law that says federal employees cannot access [abortion] within their health plan. That wasn't fun information to receive.
So then I went to Planned Parenthood, where I had to pay out of pocket. There's a clinic in Washington D.C. I was racing out of my doctor's office. They had given me the number and were like, "Listen, you've got three days to get a medical abortion. That's it." Once you pass nine weeks, you cannot get a medical abortion. I'm not exactly sure why, but I really had it in my head that I wanted a medical abortion. There was something about it that seemed like the less invasive, less scary option.
I spent about five hours in Planned Parenthood. You go in and out, you do all this stuff and you have to answer all these questions. The questions are like, "are you being forced to have an abortion?" Which I found very bizarre, because I was like, "No, I've just been trying to do this! Please let me get this through!" Then they get the package of pills and show you what to do. So you take the pills, you start the process with them, then you have to do all this stuff for the next 48 hours. It's funny now, but it turns out I had an allergic reaction to some of the antibiotics that they gave me.
They had told me to eat a big meal before I took the pills. So that night I went out with all my girlfriends who knew what was going on. We ate all this yummy food and I took the pills, and within five minutes I was violently ill. All over the street. And I was in a big party area in D.C., so cops pulled up thinking I was drunk. And I can't really talk, because I'm throwing up all over the place, and all I could yell out was, "No, I'm pregnant!" So then they thought I was drunk and pregnant.
Now, looking back, it was absolutely hilarious. But it was just a crazy situation, and at the time it just felt very lonely. And that was really awful. So I worked through it, and the whole procedure went just fine. My mom and my aunt came up and took care of me.
It's interesting, in all the paperwork, Planned Parenthood has a big part of it that says it's ok to feel relief because it's over. In the media, we have so much stuff about how it's the most heartbreaking decision of your life. The reality is that it wasn't a hard decision. The only thing that made it hard was all the barriers that were put up to not letting me have this done
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