I am 41 years old. I regret many things in my past, but you want to know one thing I absolutely do not regret? Having an abortion.
While my abortion is no one’s damned business, having an abortion helped me become who I am today: a loving mother, a valuable employee, a good friend, and a smart, strong, resilient woman.
I have weighed the benefits and consequences of sharing my story for some time, but the recent chipping away of abortion protections in Oklahoma has made it necessary for me to speak out.
Benefits: My genuine hope is that by speaking my truth, others will do the same. I hope that men and women alike will be shaken from their apathy or complacency and see how restricting reproductive health services violates human rights and harms people.
Consequences: I’m sure writing and sharing my story could hurt my reputation, or make my family and loved ones feel uncomfortable, ashamed, or embarrassed. Maybe I could lose my job. Maybe people I think are friends will be so morally opposed to my decision that they end the friendship. Here’s the thing: I can live with all of that. Why should I hide who I am, the path I have taken, or shy away from very real discussions? This is my life, and this is my abortion story.
Before I get into my story, it is important to state this very plainly–I blame no one for my pregnancy besides the person who impregnated me. I chose to have the abortion. I would make the decision a hundred times over again, without blinking and without regret; however, current laws in this clusterfuck of a state would prevent that.
The perfect storm that led me to having an abortion at 15 years old is not an uncommon one: unfavorable circumstances in my early years–divorced parents, culture of poverty and ignorance, alcoholism, addiction, mental health problems, some abuse and neglect, very few resources. I grew up without much conversation about my body and how things work–we certainly didn’t talk about safer sex options, consent, or even proper names for my body parts. I clearly remember coming home at age 12, embarrassed about starting my period at school, and being told I “couldn’t whore around anymore” because I could now become pregnant. I did know, as was the gospel in my family of origin, that the worst thing that could happen to me would be to “get knocked up by sixteen or be a lesbian.” True words. I feel like such a rebel on both counts, in hindsight.
In 1995, I was relocated by state intervention, moving from Colorado to Oklahoma, away from my friends, and had to start over in Cordell-freaking-Oklahoma. New friends, new school, new family dynamics, same poverty and ignorance. I made some bad choices and started hanging out with kids who were also troubled. There were drugs, there was drinking, and there was very little supervision. There was sex.
In my mind, the act was something I felt compelled to do in order to be tolerated by the males I so wanted to like and care for me. I was but a girl, navigating social situations the best I knew how. As it turned out, the older boys took a liking to me, and my upbringing made me an easy target. I was dating an 18 year old man and had several friends, both male and female, in my group. The boy I was dating was abusive but said he loved me, and would coerce sex, often unprotected sex, as a condition of being my boyfriend or treating me, I don’t know, like a human?
The summer of 1996 was a busy one for me, lots of socializing and doing things unsupervised teens do. I remember going to a house party alone in July or August and drinking too much. I fell asleep, and awoke to my friends raping me–one was 16, one was 18. I went home and was shocked that people that supposedly cared for me would do that to me. I carried on, trying to break up with the boyfriend who wouldn’t go away, and attempting to get the police to take my rape report seriously.
By the time school started, I decided I would carry on despite that crappy summer. But then I started feeling sick. My stomach was upset, things smelled awful, and I was always tired. I was surprised when my doctor informed me that I was pregnant in September of 1996. The first words out of my mouth upon learning this was, “I do not want to have it.”
I went home, felt the shame and humiliation I felt I had been assigned to feel, and despaired. My mother helped me get the abortion. I think she knew that me having a baby at 16 years old would destroy me and any future I could hope to have.
We went to a clinic in OKC, and for the low price of $600, I was able to have an abortion. They took me into the clinic, instructed me about the procedure and recovery process, and performed the abortion. I remember I had chicken McNuggets and fries on the way home, as a girl might. I had abdominal cramping, not unlike menstrual cramps, and felt tired. I was good to go after a couple days.
What I was not prepared for was the unspoken vow I had made when “taking care” of this situation: “I will not tell anyone about this, because this is shameful and embarrassing.” I was also not prepared for the boyfriend holding this against me: “You killed my baby, I’ll tell everyone.” My own brother learning about the abortion, and confronting me as if I didn’t have a right to make decisions about my own body.
I wasn’t prepared to process it alone. In later years, I would often use the rape to justify having an abortion, but now I know, rape or no rape (oops, it WAS rape, statutory rape), I would have had an abortion.
What would my life have looked like had I not chosen to have an abortion when I was 15 years old? I might not have been able to graduate high school. I might have married the boy who was so awful to me. I might have been made an outsider in my town. I may have spiraled into full blown substance dependence and ended up having child welfare called on me due to my undeveloped prefrontal cortex doing the best it could to parent and survive in a world that doesn’t give two shits for poor, uneducated teen moms. I might have been abusive and negligent. I might have committed suicide. I would have most certainly faced poverty, even more poverty than I had previously known, and taken the child into that poverty.
This is all conjecture, but I know me and I know that being a mom at 16 was beyond what I could have handled. So then what? Have my parents, who were struggling with raising us anyway, raise the baby? Be a sister-mom? Give it up for adoption? Why would the world ask me to do these things when I was a child? No. I refuse to chew through that again–the answer is I had an abortion and it was the best thing for me at that time.
Oklahoma and other states have decided that women cannot be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies, their own health, and their own lives.
Oklahoma and other states are wrong.
I hope you are as outraged as I am. I hope you write your legislators, sitting in their offices making choices about the autonomy and well being of women–you, me, our sisters, mothers, aunts, cousins, friends–and tell them that women have the ability to make the best choices for them, should be able to make these decisions, and should have access to the resources they need to have the medical care they need.
I hope you are willing to think and talk about abortion much as I have done here, learn about abortion, and learn that it is not this morally deplorable thing these rich politician dudes in fancy suits want you to believe it is. Abortion is a personal thing to be decided by the one who has been impregnated.
I urge you to support women, believe women, and trust women. We know what is best for us.
And if you greedily read all of this, and have concluded that I am awful, that people who have abortions are awful, and that this whole thing is disgraceful and awful–well, I would ask that you kindly butt out of my business and fuck all the way off.
Holy shit, you all, I’m going to need you to hold me up.
Not Without Fault 