From the Norma McCorvey: I Pit Thee!
I gladly provide this thread to those women who have personally experienced the excercise of a choice made available through Roe vs. Wade. I ask one thing only. Please provide some perspective as to how long ago it was that you made this choice. I would also like to thank those women who share their story with us.
And finally, let the rest of us please not judge or debate these stories. Thankyou.
I’m afraid I screwed the link. it should be http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=5743150#post5743150
Ok, I’ll gladly start. thank you grienspace, I’d forgotten. Mine is probably one of the simplest stories out there. Please pardon spelling mistakes and grammar.
I was 19 years and 11 months when I had sex for the first time. Despite having no knowledge of it other than strict instructions from my parents to not even look at guys, I picked up enough knowledge to know to wait, even though I’d had opportunities before then.
However, I never learned about birth control. Don’t get me wrong, I knew there were such things in a vague fuzzy way, but I never really understood them.
I loved my boyfriend very much. It was the kind of love they call a lightning bolt, comes out of the blue and leaves you reeling. We waited two months before having sex. I had sex exactly 29 days before my 20th b-day, and by my birthday I knew I was that dreaded word - late. I must have caught almost the first time.
We barely even had to discuss it. He told me he was willing to do whatever I wanted, to marry me if that’s what i wanted, but there was no way i was destroying my life that early.
I went to Planned Parenthood. they were exceptionally kind to me. The fee was $300. i remember it, because I was pre-med, and I remember thinking how cheap it was compared to most hospital things. We split it right down the middle.
The nurses and counselors had two long talks with us to make sure we were sure. they said we could have more talks/time, if we wanted. They gave me phone #'s to call at all hours of the day or night. To this day i donate regularly to Planned Parenthood for their kindness to women like myself.
Well, I went in to have the abortion one rainy day. The doctor was very business-like, and efficient, which was fine with me. I don’t like overly-friendly doctors. the nurse held my hand, and I’m so glad she did, because it hurt. It hurt like the devil, and made me cry out. I remember it was the first time I had ever screamed in front of a man since I was a child. the doctor did everything he needed, then the nurses put me into a side room and one of them brought in my boyfriend while I cried. the whole time I sat there they would sort of stick their heads in to make sure I was OK, didn’t need someone else other than my boyfriend, etc. After only a little time, though, I was able to leave. We took a cab home (no car).
I never once doubted myself. I never reconsidered. I never even thought of it as a “baby”. To this day I don’t regret one bit. I have never looked back. I never think what that ball of tissue would have become.
I love children, I really do. I’m fairly sure I never want my own, however. I am plenty happy spoiling other people’s.
While I am here, I would like to say a few words about Planned Parenthood. they sure do get a bad rep because they do abortions. But that’s not all they do. When I had no women in my life to help me, they were there for me.
As soon as I could afterward, I went to the school nurse and got a prescription for birth control pills. I hope you can still do this in colleges.
After some time, my parents found out. i was careless, and they found a receipt and immediately assumed the worst. Woo, did they flip out. this started me down the path to being kicked out of their home. They wanted me to marry an Indian guy, immediately, to “become their daughter again”. So that was the biggest consequence, and I know it wasn’t because of the abortion. It was because my parents were not ready and willing to treat me like an adult and therefore teach me adult things. they didn’t realize how Americanized I was - and how much I liked being American.
While I’m at it, I’ll add one more thing. Should I get pregnant today I would most certainly abort again. I truly do not believe you are ready for a child until you think you are ready for a child. (Sometimes not even then, but we’re not talking about that, are we?) I am not in a place financially or emotionally to take responsibility for a child.
My boyfriend and I are no longer together. We did not part amiably, but it had nothing to do with the abortion. he and I were far too immature to pursue such a serious relationship. But I will always be eternally grateful to him for being there for me.
Well, that’s my testimonial. I’m fairly sure that is more information than I have ever shared with the SDMB, but I wanted to share it. My story is on that website, too, I forget the name, where women share their stories. It’s under “Elenia” - my old screen name.
Thanks for reading.
Aiee. :smack: I am 29 now, so it was just about ten years ago.
Bear in mind that the nature of this sort of sensitive topic is such that a lot of people who have traumatic experiences are reluctant to talk about it.
It happens that there is going to be a large gathering of women who regret having an abortion this weekend in DC. It’s called “Silent No More” because a lot of them suffered in silence for years before speaking up. This site has the details if anyone is interested:
http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/events/index.html
I supported a friend who decided to abort.
She was, at the time, separated from an abusive husband who threatened to kill her if he caught her with another man (never mind the dozen women he cheated on her with). Her parents were religious fundamentalists and had nearly cut her off for getting a divorce. The man she was dating was shiftless and already had a daughter from a previous relationship. He didn’t like using condoms, but wasn’t about to get off his butt and provide other birth control.
When she found out she was pregnant, there really wasn’t any question about what she would do. Her boyfriend had no interest in marriage and could barely support one child, her estranged husband was a threat, her parents would have summarily disowned her, and she never really wanted any children anyways.
I helped her figure out where to go, helped her figure out money, and took care of her after she returned. I offered to go with her, but she opted to take her boyfriend. Later she told me that she really wished she’d taken me up on my offer. Since then, she’s tried three or four types of hormonal birth control, but has difficulty with them. She would love to get her tubes tied, but finds that most gynecologists are extremely reluctant to do that for a young woman with no children.
As for myself, the worst I’ve had is a scare when a condom broke. I went out and got the morning after pill - which was really rough on my system. I’m of the opinion that if I get unexpectedly pregnant, I would do my best to keep the baby. If I couldn’t, I’d carry it to term and put it up for adoption - an open adoption. The only circumstances I can see myself aborting would be if there were something wrong with the child, or if my own health were in danger.
I hope I’m not the last poster to this thread. I’m posting about it even though it’s completely out of character for me to share such a personal experience on a public message board. I believe it’s important for women to stand up and be open about such an important issue.
About three years ago I dated a man who worked as a police officer in Phoenix. He made grand statements often about his integrity and manliness and how one should always strive to do the right thing. One weekend I went up to visit him, and at the appropriate time, I informed him that I was ovulating, and warned him of my position as Most Fertile Woman of the PlanetTM. Handed him a condom. Three weeks later, I call and tell him that even though I haven’t missed my period yet, I know I’m pregnant. Mr. Conscientious blows me off and cuts off all contact. :rolleyes:
I went to a doctor, got RU-486. Prepared myself for ‘the time’ with blankets and pillows on the couch, the remote, some water, and some Vicodin. Alone. It hurt BAD for a couple of hours, and then it was over. I never doubted my decision, and I never regretted it.
A couple of weeks later I found the condom tossed behind the bed.
I am not a female.
When I was 22 and she was 37, (a different she from the one I now claim), we had a mechanism failure and she got pregnant. We were both unemployed misfits of limited means, and her mom was sufficiently highly placed in the social services hierarchy of the city that if she’d gone in for a Medicaid abortion (there were such things in those days but they had been restricted to inpatient basis, meaning admission to the hospital) her mom would have been informed by a dozen people that her daugher had been hospitalized.
So although it was entirely legal to obtain an abortion, it was awkward and impractical to avail ourselves of it before exploring alternatives, and we read up and decided to try brewing a natural abortifacient based on mistletoe berries.
She got awful cramps and we were afraid it was an overdose… really we didn’t know what we were doing, going with one source and assuming it was accurate and equallly applicable to everyone and so forth… it didn’t do the two of us any good as a couple, she had a female friend come over who didn’t like me and I felt excluded and guilty of having caused a pregnancy, and she felt that I was not present and backed off and left her to cope with it on her own. Anyhow, it worked and she had a clotty miscarriage about 18 hours later.
Within two years I had obtained a vasectomy to prevent unintended pregnancy from cropping up again. I remember being really frightened about what it would mean if she hadn’t also wanted to terminate the pregnancy, although we had discussed it in passing previously on a “what if” basis, which helped a lot.
I was the support person for a friend in college. She was 19 and had a lot of health and family problems. Her cycles were so irregular she didn’t have any inkling she was pregnant until she went in for her annual pelvic and they told her she needed to call her boyfriend right now and tell him she was 4 months or so pregnant. They’d been broken up for months by that time, and had just had one last go for old times’ sake. Keeping the baby wasn’t an option for her, at 19 and with no education and no job, especially given the birth defects the baby would likely have due to her health issues. Her mother was…well, to put it kindly, the woman was batshit crazy. The summer before, this woman had pulled out a gun and held it to my friend’s head, saying that any babies my friend decided she didn’t want had better go to Momma. She’d kill my friend before letting some stranger have her grandbaby, etc., etc. Giving a baby to a raving lunatic who makes death threats was entirely out of the question, and risking the raving lunatic making good on her threats was entirely out of the question. So she had an abortion.
We wound up having to go to Ohio because she was so far along (the first clinic she went to said she was 26 weeks, based on ultrasound. It was estimated to be three day procedure, with her getting something to dilate her cervix the first day and her being dilated enough to have the abortion done early the third day. There were protesters outside the clinic. They weren’t like the protesters you see in movies screaming and throwing stuff and waving pictures of bloody dolls, just a handful of old people silently walking a small area of the sidewalk with poster with Bible verses. Still, I parked as far away from them as I could and still be in constant view of the security guard, just in case the crazies were on their lunchbreak. We had to show the guard two forms of picture ID, let him look through our purses and my backpack, take off our jackets and shake them out, and then get waved with one of those hand-held metal detector wands. It made me so sad, and so angry, that violent nutjobs had made it necessary to go through all this just to get into a medical office.
I did a lot of sitting and waiting in a small room with some comfortable couches and chairs. It wasn’t like hospital waiting rooms, where you get talking with other folks about who they’re here to see and what’s wrong with them. We all just kind of sat there in our own little silent worlds. Someone was playing solitaire, but nobody came and hung over his shoulder to tell him that black six would play on the red seven. I did some homework and tried not to watch the clock.
Late that night she started having a lot of cramping, but the pain meds they’d sent with us seemed to be working pretty well. Next morning, though, she woke up in a lot of pain and pretty feverish. I kept damp cloths on her forehead and worried a lot about her spiking a dangerously high fever before the clinic opened.
The day at the clinic was pretty much just like the day before for me. I sat and read physics and pretended not to watch the clock. She came into the waiting area in the early afternoon to say that since she wasn’t quite as far along as they’d thought and she was dilating faster than anticipated, they were going to do the procedure that afternoon. So I sat and waited some more. Afterward we got some dinner and went back to the hotel for our stuff and drove on back to school.
About two years ago I discovered I was pregnant. I used condoms almost all the time except - whoops. I had also been told I couldn’t have children, so I wasn’t that concerned about pregnancy. Wouldn’t you know it. Surprise.
It was during a troubled point in my life with a looming DUI conviction and time in the House of Corrections for it. (I admit it - I was, and still am, a flawed person.) Things were crazed, and this was another stress I simply couldn’t handle.
Compounded to this was a feeling that I simply was not fit matermal material. When I was a kid, I played that I was babysitting the dollies, never that they were my babies. Also, I am in that minority that doesn’t feel a response instinct when they hear a baby cry; instead, it gives me a feeling of anxiety and the need to leave. (Hey, I’ve read a lot about this - you know, having everyone say “when are you going to have kids” and knowing I just didn’t want to.)
I even lived with a man who had a son and tried to play mom for a while, or at least a maternal role. I was lousy at it. And he was a good kid, too. It was my failing, not the child’s.
Cut back to the whole preggers thing. It just was…not…feasible. It was much more complex than I am laying out here, but - hell, I shouldn’t feel the need to justify it, anyway. One of the things I hate.
I found out on a Tuesday. By Saturday, I walked into the clinic for my procedure. My BF was in California (I was still living in the Midwest preparing for my move after the DUI thing), and I didn’t really have anyone to tell, so I went alone. Yep, walked through the prostesters on my own, too. Jeeze. It’s hard enough. That just made it even harder, but also strengthened my resolve in a way. Pissed me off, too. Hurt me, too. Like I am not intelligent enough to know the arguments on my own and, having weighed them, come to the only viable conclusion for ME.
Anyway. Had the procedure. Went home. Cried a little. That’s the thing I hated - not being able to grieve. Yes, I did this thing. But I felt like I had to not be able to grieve in order to get away from the negativity attached to it. Pro-lifers would see it as a sign of remorse. No, what I felt was not remorse - it was grief… Pro-choicers would see it as a sign of weakness in my stance on “a woman’s right to choose.” All I wanted to do was grieve.
But, two years later, would I have made that same decision? Yes. Unhesitatingly. Do I ever have moments where I regret not being a parent? Only when I wonder who will carry on my line or want my papers or memorabilia after I am gone. Or who will take care of me in my old age, as I will for my parents. But I am still not maternal material. And he is not paternal material.
Jeebus, I have all I can handle with my cat and dog.
Anyway. I was raised in a a very catholic home. My mom even worked for a RTL organization and is still very involved (not the fanatics, though). I respect her beliefs. I am sad I can never share my story with her. But I somehow think it’s better she never know anyway. Grandchildren and all, you know.
My bf and I celebrate the day we found out - in an odd way, since I was told that I couldn’t have children, we have decided it was the strength of our passion and love that changed the science. And so we celebrate.
And then we move on.
Yes, I would do it again. I am not haunted by babies crying in the night or anything, and I am not making fun of those who are traumatized enough to hear that. But I was and am certain of my decision. And I don’t feel I will ever have that traumatic feeling later on, either.
So, long story short then, I guess. Yes, I did. Yes, I would again. Yes, it made me sad. Yes, it was still the right decision for me.
Inky.
What exactly did you want to grieve about?
Grieving over the thoughts of what might have been, or what life could’ve happened. Grieving over the fact that I am not maternal material, sure. There’s a part of me that feels like somewhat of a misfit for it. I know I am not alone, but it doens’t change the fact that I am just not suited for what woulods seem like my biological role.
Grieving over the fact that 40 years from now, who knows how life would’ve turned out. Grieving over the fact that I am not wired that way. Grieving over the fact that I am simply not responsible enough to parent anyone, and with my genes, I would really hate to pass them along to anyone. It’s simply not fair to do to a person. A mini-me would be punishment for any parent.
Grief in the fact that I had always been told that I couldn’t have children, and now here I was faced with a dilemma. Having accepted the fact that I wouldn’t be a parent seemed almost forgiveable in the face of the scinece of it.
There were a whole lot of feelings, but grief was definitely one of them. Grief that what my body did might someday become a person (I don’t believe in the instant of conception means consciousness or life). I stand by my decision, but I still grieved.
Does it make sense? I dunno. I honestly don’t. But it was right for me.
Inky
No that makes sense just wanted to know exactly what it was.
Loss.
Loss … isn’t that what we ALL grieve about? About missed chances, and what-might-have-been.
About how we could have been loving, giving mothers with a smiling curly-haired child. But cruel circumstance sometimes does not allow for it.
Hugs to all ladies in this thread. And special prayers for the one child I never gave the chance to live.
Yes but grieve isn’t something I normally associate with a choice. Just asking for clarification 
Well, treis, I guess it sort of depends on what kind of choices you’re used to having to make. Grief isn’t something typically associated with “best of all possible options in this best of all possible worlds” sorts of choices, where you’re picking the best of a good lot, no. But with best of a bad lot sort of choices, it’s pretty standard.
I don’t have any experience to share, but I wanted to thank everyone who did. Although I take precautions - hormonal birth control and usually condoms too - I still worry “what if?” I hope I’m never in that situation, but if I am, it’s comforting to know we have a non-judgmental community here and that there are women who have been there before me. Talking about it can’t be easy, but it is appreciated.
I’m Not Sorry also features stories of people who view their abortion experience without guilt or shame.
I was 27. MY live-in boyfriend and I had not been using birth control for nearly a year. Well, one day at work I threw up my lunch and I just knew. I bought a home test and lo and behold, positive. We talked about it and he definitely didn’t want to keep it…I had been thinking that maybe we should just go for it, get married, etc. After all, we had been together for over three years at that point. But when I realized he wasn’t supportive of that I agreed to abort. Went to the clinic, got a test and scheduled an abortion. Went in a day or two later (no protesters) and they were business-like to the point of being complete assholes. I got two advils beforehand. The procedure hurt so bad I almost passed out. I went into the recovery room and threw up my advils along with my breakfast. They didn’t offer me any more painkillers. I waited an hour or two and my boyfriend took me home. This was in the spring of 2002. My boyfriend and I broke up a few months later; I had realized we had different ideas about where our relationship was going.
Looking back, I would have done it again, but I would have insisted on more strong painkillers. The pain I had to endure was obscene. I don’t mind a brusque nurse but the pain really sucked. However, now that I’m 30, I wouldn’t have another abortion. Even if I had to do it alone, I would keep it, partly because I’m ready for it, partly because I couldn’t stand the experience again. For the first couple years I’d get sad in January when the baby would have been born. Didn’t think of it this year until I saw this thread.
Thank you to everyone for sharing your story. I don’t want to derail the purpose of this thread, but I have a question that is related to the experience itself.
I’m pro-choice, but I’ve never had the procedure. I was under the impression that they put you to sleep, but from these stories, it seems you are awake AND in pain?
How terrible. Is this the common way for it to be done?