Roar

Sharing your abortion story is a way of legitimizing the dire need for the return, ASAP, of safely-conducted, legal abortion for everyone, everywhere.

My third pregnancy didn’t work out. It’s as simple as that. At some point between my first OB visit— when I listened to my future baby’s heartbeat with joy, trepidation and excitement — and the second visit — when we could no longer detect a heartbeat — the baby died.

I wasn’t very far along. How many weeks I can’t say exactly because no one was thinking in terms of weeks back then. But, for the sake of visualizing things, let’s call it thirteen weeks.

So, there you go: I lost a baby after the current legal cut-off to qualify for an abortion in many states today. But this wasn’t today. It was a number of years ago.

My OB was calm and compassionate, reminding me that miscarriages and early fetal demise are common, especially for people like me who are over forty, with a history of cervical dysplasia and a previous pregnancy that was complicated.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“We schedule an abortion,” my OB said plainly.

It took me a moment to process this statement. Never mind how to manage the sense of loss; all the fantasies I had already had about being a mother of three; how we would cope with our new addition; how soon I’d need to wear maternity clothes; what car we’d need to drive to fit our brood of three kids. I simply hadn’t imagined needing an abortion. Even hearing the OB say that the baby was already dead, my instant thought was that it would simply be reabsorbed because it was so small. Or maybe — I don’t know — fall out? Yes, I think I thought that this dead baby might fall out of my body like my blood does every month when I get my period.

Alas, that isn’t how dead babies work. I needed an abortion. My OB mentioned something about being too far along already. Or maybe it had more to do with my risk factor for heavy bleeding. I had almost died from a hemorrhage after my second child’s birth. I was fragile.

Whatever the reason, I needed to abort my baby. My OB was old and wise. I knew he woudn’t recommend an unecessary surgery. So I scheduled one.

On the morning of the procedure, I took the subway uptown. At the clinic entrance, I was greeted by an armed guard who stood outside the building looking slightly menacing. I wondered what he was protecting—me? the building? the doctors inside?—but I didn’t wonder for long because the elevator opened and the armed guard motioned for me to step in. Then I went downstairs to the basement.

I checked in at an unremarkable check-in desk and waited in an unremarkable waiting room where folding chairs were set up in rows, many already occupied by girls and women of varying ages and ethnicities though it wasn’t yet 8 am. After a brief wait, I was called into an unremarkable procedure room. A doctor showed up. I was sedated briefly, got my abortion and came to. Then, I went to a shared recovery room where I was offered either Fig Newton’s or possibly a packet of Chips A’hoy.

While I waited to be cleared to leave, I chatted with two other women. One was an early twenty-something who got drunk at a party and didn’t even remember having sex. She was shocked when she discovered she was pregnant. She grew up in Ohio and was Catholic. Just beginning her life in New York City at a job in finance, she knew she wasn’t remotely ready to become a mother. The second woman had decided to terminate her pregnancy when she learned her child had a rare disorder she knew she couldn’t afford to support.

We all agreed it was a good thing abortion was an option.

Compared to the two other ladies surrounding me, my abortion felt unremarkable. I wasn’t overly grateful that I got one. I simply needed one because if I didn’t get one, I’d be at risk of, well, death. My abortion felt obvious. Choice over whether or not to terminate life wasn’t involved, which is the more traumatic scenario. For me, I simply had a medical necessity.

There is nothing obvious about getting an abortion today. In fact, I wonder what would happen if the same scenario befell me now?

Discussing this fraught questions with a girlfriend, she pointed out that nothing would be different if I needed an abortion today because I split most of my time between two states where abortion is still acceptable—New York and California.

“It isn’t your problem,” she said as we strolled down Madison Avenue, enjoying a lovely July afternoon.

Isn’t it, though? Isn’t abortion everyones problem? A woman’s life affects all those around her. If something happens to a mother, her whole tribe suffers.

Obviously, I speak from personal experience when I say that anyone choosing to have an abortion is doing so because it is imperative.

Anyone choosing abortion is doing so because by continuing that pregnancy, their life (and ostensibly the life they are terminating) will not go well if the pregnancy continues.

Pro-lifers think women who have had abortions don’t care about life. On the contrary, we are choosing abortion precisely because we do care, passionately. We care about our own lives, prizing it over the un-lived life of the fetus we think will be better off not coming into the world, or the fetus, like mine, that can’t because it has failed to thrive in utero.

When we choose an abortion, we are choosing not to ruin a life; we are choosing to save one: our own. What’s wrong with that? Why is advocating for your own life now a crime?

If a state is going to insist that women have babies, that same state better insist that all women who give birth get the financial, medical and psychological assistance required to raise that baby no matter what. Because that’s what it’s come down to. It’s come down to no matter what.

FYI, no matter what covers a whole lot of ground. I, for example, am the mother of a transgender teenage daughter on the Autism Spectrum. I chose neither of those circumstances; they simply happened. They are facts of my life, not choices. My complicated child really needs me alive these days as we navigate her uncertain future.

If I did get pregnant again, what would my options be today? Even though my girlfriend thinks abortion isn’t my problem, let’s play out a hypothetical. If I had to move to a red state — for whatever reason — and a baby died inside me and had to come out; and if — for whatever reasons — I could no longer afford to travel to a state where abortion is allowed, what benefit would there be in denying me an abortion?

What if I got an illegal abortion and died from complications? What if I didn’t get an illegal abortion but that dead baby killed me for reasons my OB didn’t feel like discussing back when he simply told me I had to have one?

What if I died? Right in the middle of my life? Because abortion wasn’t legal anymore?

People die all the time at inconvenient, unimagined times. Women get terminal cancer with young children. Or they have a car accident. Or they get caught in the cross hairs of destiny in some unimaginable way. Stray bullet. A piece of construction debris collides with their head while waiting at a stoplight. A balcony has a loose railing. An elevator malfunctions and they fall fifty feet to the basement floor.(You can fill in with stories from your own collection of terrible-things-that-happen-to-other-people.)

Tragedies happen every single day. But these deaths are cruel acts of fate, whereas a woman dying because she was unable to obtain a legal abortion in her state is a chosen act of legal punishment.

How has this come to be? And why are so many pro-lifers other women? (Read my next essay).

In the meantime, while we wait for the Supreme court to blow up, or for democracy to die or not die, or for the forest near us to burn, or the pond to go dry, or for our next Frappuccino to arrive, or for one of the Kardashians to bend at the waist, what on earth can we do?

If you are a powerful person, do what is within your power to do. If you have money to spare, donate to organizations that support women’s rights and democratic values.

If you are a man who cares, help us by voting for the politicians who will ensure our rights; don’t be afraid of the topic just because abortion doesn’t happen to you directly.

If you are like me— meaning just a regular ‘ol person — no one in particular — just Jane Doe — here’s what I think you can do: you can tell your story, too,or share this one or another one. Let’s validate our shared experiences in this one, still-here option: freedom of speech.

Let’s voice our collective stories and our collective outrage and, in so doing, build circles around ourselves of like-minded people.

In sharing our stories and reaching out to each other, we can create micro communities that feel safe; where we feel understood, seen and heard. From these small, safe places we can potentially move outward, to other small communities in other places, creating a kind of digital underground railroad of sympathy around what it means to be a woman today and, in that way, help each other survive. And maybe more.

What can’t we do? Give up; think it isn’t our problem; shrug and keep strolling.

Don’t we still live in a democratic society where we all make decisions together by voting? Yes, we have a Supreme court. Even so, laws are only binding based on mutually agreed upon actions. They are ideas. If enough of us disagree with an idea, it can’t bind us.

We cannot despair; instead, we must share. It is our only option. We must raise our voices however we can.

We are woman. Let’s roar.