Dealing With Mothers...

I had a friend who was pregnant. She found out she was carrying twins pretty early one, but then one died, which is pretty common with twins. She was very upset by it. She already has one son and I wanted to say "Yeah, well, that happens, you'll still have two children and you can have a third any time."

 While on one level I certainly understand her pain on the other level I feel bitter. She can have as many children as she likes. She is primarily a stay-at-home mom with a light part-time job. She will have two children, which is what she thought she'd have as it was.

I wanted to tell her that I knew what it felt like. I wanted to say that I'd had an abortion, that whether or not I wanted children my disease had made the decision for me, that sometimes being with my nephew leaves me so depressed I don't want to leave my bed.

I didn't tell her though. I listened to her talk about jewelry commemorating her children and I kept quiet. I feel so much more intimidated bringing it up to women who have children. I feel like their first instinct will be to wonder how I could have done it or else they'll just pity me.

As someone who is disabled I have an extreme aversion to pity. Empathy, even sympathy, I'm fine with. The trouble is it can be hard to tell the difference, especially springing something like that. on a person.

Whether it is guilt or fear or just being uncomfortable with women who have what we couldn't or what we didn't want, it's hard to tell these women. Hard to open up and say "Your reason for living, your utter joy, caused me to have a traumatic experience." In some ways it's a version of reality that exists through the looking glass, an alternate way things might have played out if circumstances, age, our just our own selves were a little different.

On The Day That Became The Day

I was lucky. I was knocked out during my abortion. It wasn't really general anesthetic, just enough to put you in an almost dreamlike state. I'm rather sensitive to medications, so I don't remember anything. It took them a long time to get the IV into my arm, there was classic rock playing too loudly and it felt so wrong, it felt so disrespectful. The male doctor in charge of the procedure acted as though I was invisible.

One minute I was lying there, numb in my heart, severe pain in my arm from their IV attempts, and the next I was awake leaning on my mother stumbling out the door. I don't remember getting out of the bed or putting on my clothes. It was the same when I was knocked out to have my wisdom teeth taken out - I'm told I wouldn't lay down, that I just kept trying to stand, falling over, and asking to leave until they finally let my mother walk me out.

I was so hungry. You don't eat before the 'procedure' and I'd had two straight weeks of twenty four hour a day morning sickness. Finally it was over and my belly was empty and numb. We drove through Arby's and I had a greasy, over-sauced Reuben. My mom filled my prescription for antibiotics while I sat in the car, just numb. Relieved too, but full of hurt feelings that I chose to bury instead of face.

My physical healing came easily. I did not experience the severe cramps or continued feelings of pregnancy after the abortion was done. In so many ways I was lucky, and I knew that all the time. That's part of why I couldn't accept the emotional repercussions of the abortion. I was so much luckier than a million other women. I wasn't raped, I wasn't a teenager, I didn't have family or friends judging me or disliking me (not that I told anyone as it was), I had been on birth control, so I knew at heart that I'd done everything I could have done to prevent this situation. That's supposed to help you know, being in the 1% of people whose birth control fails.

So there I was, a lucky girl, a "relatively easy tragedy," as a singer once put it. Yet I still felt so hurt and so beaten up inside along with my relief. To reconcile relief with so many mixed feelings is a big job, and not one that any person can get through by themselves. There wasn't anyone to talk to. Since I became disabled I have very few friends. My one good girl friend has a lot of issues with sex, including PTSD from rape and physical abuse in her past, I didn't feel I could put all this on her. I felt like she'd see it as my mother did "You didn't abort a baby..."

I know that. I understand that. It only makes it worse to know that full well yet to be scarred emotionally from something that was over so quickly. As a very rational person it made me crazy to think about the conflicts in how I felt and in how I thought I should feel. Again, I don't regret this, I didn't have a real choice given my medical condition, but now I'm able to admit how much I've bottled up, how much I need to get out of my system and still know that I did the best thing for me, for that child, and I'm still allowed to be upset and hurt. I'm allowed to grieve this experience.

That's the first step. It took me eight months to get there, to that first giant step, and another eight months to find a place I could start letting go of all that baggage.

The Rocky Path of Healing

Here is a guest post from a woman who has struggled much in her life, but has found a path to healing that works for her. Whether or not you yourself are religious I think we can all agree that healing is most often found in community, in being open and honest, and having faith - wherever that faith may be gathered from. Her fierce devotion to the truth and in being open enough to find someone who she knew would support her and help to heal is something I greatly admire, and I hope I can have that courage too.

When I woke that morning, I knew everything had changed for me. I knew I would never be the same. The loss, devastation, destruction, and defeat I felt were a giant vice on my heart. That day would be the beginning of a new chapter and not one that I wanted to start. That day I would destroy someone I loved with my whole heart and I had no way out.

You see, my parents didn’t want to be grandparents yet. They only wanted “my problem” to go away. And I had no where to turn, so I was defeated, deflated, and heart broken that that day I would terminate my pregnancy, and I would never be the same again. A child, conceived in love, by a child would cease to exist. My oldest would never take a breath, never smile at me, never live to his potential, never graduate high school, never have a first love, and never provide me with a grandchild.

Fear gripped me. Anger burst in my heart, and hatred followed; hatred for everyone involved but mostly self-hatred. Hatred that would follow me for many years and that brought with it attempts at self-destruction. My heart broke into a million pieces and left me broken too.

My parents, mom lapsed Jewish and dad lapsed Catholic, had raised us outside of faith. So I turned to self-medicating for nearly the next decade. My medication was in the form of love, or what my experience said was love. Promiscuity—sex —with whomever I happened to be dating. I also tried self-medicating with alcohol, but after two rape attempts, slipping college grades, and feeling ill each morning, I left that drug behind.

While I dated around those nine years, I used my abortion as a sort of litmus test for the guys I dated. Sometime early in dating them, I would casually mention that I had had an abortion. I listened to their responses, sure that if they came back with hatred or disgust, I could walk away. None did, but none came up with the right response either-the one that would bring me to my knees-to a God I had made weep without knowing it; until I met my husband.

There’s no other answer to me than that he was sent for me from God. The first time we met, it was electric, or maybe magnetic is a better metaphor. It was like our hearts knew before either of us spoke. But darn, he was a Christian, surely when I tell him about my past, he’ll run. That didn’t happen, he never ran. What did happen is that the light of Christ’s love shone in him as I briefly told him of my past. Tears shimmered in his eyes, although he’d never admit to it. His compassion brought me to tears as he merely said, “If you ever need to talk.”

After meeting and marrying my husband, we tried unsuccessfully for almost a year to get pregnant, which is not long by many infertility standards, I know, but to me, it was devastating. Had I thrown away my only chance for a family a decade ago? I felt punished and felt as though I had punished my husband as well.

Then during a baby dedication service at our church, the pastor prayed over all the women and men who wanted a family, but their wombs were closed, and within a month, I was pregnant. Within a month after that, I gave myself to the Lord and was baptized, pregnant, in a pool with our dog, a Steeler’s jersey, and alongside my husband, who rededicated his life to Christ.

Our miracle son was born and nine months later, we decided to try for more children. Months passed. Again, those feelings of devastation and punishment were forefront. I needed help, badly. I was back to my old familiar friends of hatred and self-loathing.

Eventually I found help in the form of a post-abortion Bible study. I still wasn’t pregnant, but I was beginning to learn about forgiveness and that God wasn’t punishing me.

While I never got pregnant again-even with modern medical treatment-I am sure that God has blessed me. He has given me a loving husband, loving extended family, my oldest son, and two more beautiful children through adoption here on earth. He has granted me first hand knowledge of his forgiveness and grace.

I still have a lot of healing to do. My heart has begun to mend, but the scabs holding it together which have replaced the self-hatred, are easily torn free. Forgiving myself and those who coerced me doesn’t come easily, but, now, with God, I have the assurance that when I move on from this life on earth, heaven will be filled with family. The child I so devastatingly destroyed 18 years ago is there waiting for me, as well as those precious medical intervention babies that didn’t survive within me. And for now, that has to be enough.

When the Choice Isn't Yours

The term is pro-choice. It's 'choice' for a reason - because it's not about whether or not you would ever have an abortion, it's about having the freedom of choice to do whichever you feel is best for you.

However, for many women there is no choice. For me there was no choice. My disease chose for me; it left me no options. There are many women dealing with various and sundry medical issues and whether or not they want to have a child, they can't. So they get pregnant, often even when using birth control, and the only thing they can do is have an abortion.

After it's over, the 'procedure,' women like me are left with such mixed feelings it can be impossible to sort them out. I never wanted to have kids, and I still don't, but there is the awful niggling knowledge that even if I did want them, even if I'd wanted that child, I couldn't have it. Being left with no real voice in the matter is painful. It hurts to feel you have no control over your own life, over something so personal as your reproductive system. Even worse to have doctors tell you that they can not tie your tubes because you're a woman and you're young and you might want children - even when they know full well that this disease will never let you have that.

On top of that there is the reaction of our bodies - one day you had 'symptoms' of pregnancy and then suddenly it was gone. One day you had a potential life in your hands and the next day you did not. So your own body turned against you and put you through this 'procedure' and you are all at once relieved and numb and hurt and full of grief. It is grief for your own life and for the issues that drove you to this place and trying to reconcile the relief you feel with the sadness is impossible - it leads most women to only feel guilty.

I can honestly say that I do not feel guilty and I do not feel regret for my decision. But I, growing up in a family full of such strong love, feel regret for the love that I think was lost, the love that would have surrounded any child in your family. I know exactly how loved that child would have been because I have eight nieces and nephews.

My mother says that love is never lost, only transferred, just like energy. Some days I can focus on that and feel I am transferring that love to my nephew. Yet that's not the only love that was love. I also lost the love of a child, an unconditional love that warms you, that has always warmed me even though I know for sure I don't want children. I feel it from my nephew and it makes life worth living when I am at my most depressed, but even if he reaches for me first when his parents are away, it is not quite the same.

Yet how do I reconcile the fact that I don't want children, the fact that I did the only thing I could do, with the fact that I feel so grief-stricken. It's not easy. One month I am fine, my normal self, and the next I am barely getting out of bed, depressed beyond reason, crying every day. When Tess (psuedonym) spoke about PTSD it made me reevaluate my symptoms and wonder if I, and millions of other women, aren't suffering more from PTSD than anything else. Therapists don't mention that though, doctors don't mention that, no one wants to say that an abortion can cause these things.

It's important to see the world in shades of grey, not in black and white. It's important to admit that even though abortion is the right choice for many women, and that they should always be afforded that choice, it can still cause many issues afterward. It can still make you hurt and grieve even when you don't regret your decision.

We need more doctors and therapists who can understand this, who can listen and empathize. We need our families to give us support and comfort even if they disagree with our decision. The anomosity of our loved ones is probably the main reason that many women never get over this. They never feel they can speak honestly about what they went through and simply bottle it up for the sake of their friends and families, because god forbid they make anyone feel uncomfortable. God forbid they let themselves show the pain they feel, or ask for help or empathy from loved ones.

It is a conspiracy of silence, and most of the world is guilty of it.

Guest Post - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

This is a guest post from a woman who has suffered extremely from having to be awake during her abortion, an experience that haunts any woman who goes through it. I was lucky in that my disability status meant that Medicare paid for my sedation - not a full general anesthetic, but enough to put my overly-sensitive system into La-la Land.

Pro-choice and child-free - that's always been me.

My partner and I had been together nearly 12 years, had both agreed we didn't want children. We planned our lives together accordingly. So when I discovered last year, at the ripe old age of 35, that I was pregnant I wasted no time making an appointment at the clinic for the following day. There was no room for any debate in my mind not only because of my lifestyle choice, but because I had been taking a prescription for a health condition that was pretty well guaranteed to cause severe abnormalities in a developing fetus. Even if I had wanted a child it simply couldn't be from this pregnancy.

I had thought I was only about six weeks along and could take the pills to terminate my pregnancy, thought it wouldn't be so bad, maybe like a really bad period. I was surprised when the nurse said I was nine weeks and needed to prep for surgery. I just needed to decide whether I was going to pay an extra $80 for the sedation or go through the procedure with nothing but an ibuprofen tablet. I opted for the sedation, but oh how I wish I had looked for a clinic that offered general anesthesia!

The sedative they gave me was a joke. I was wide awake, aware of every single thing that was happening and felt absolutely everything during the whole procedure. After it was over it was several minutes before I could stand because my belly hurt so bad. But by the time I walked out of the clinic I was so utterly relieved not to be pregnant anymore that I was almost elated that day. It actually took several weeks for the PTSD symptoms to manifest.

First I found myself crying a lot. Almost daily. I couldn't sleep, or else I was sleepy all day. Nightmares. Awful, terrifying dreams about violation and violence that woke me up in the night clutching a tear soaked pillow. I was a nervous wreck. Any sudden loud noise would send my heart racing. An ambulance siren on the road made me shake so badly I had to pull my car off the road and stop. Any violence on tv would trigger near panic and force me to leave the room or change the channel.

Then came the flashbacks, the horror movie that was stuck on repeat and played out over my whole body over and over. Everything. The pain, the sounds - all of it - would just overwhelm me and twist my daily reality into a kind of bad dream I couldn't wake up from. I lost focus at work and my performance deteriorated. I stopped going out or returning friends' phone calls.

I became depressed. My sex drive was utterly gone. The thought of physical intimacy made me nauseous and paralyzed with fear of another pregnancy. I started hypervigilantly recording every detail of my menstrual cycles and stockpiling herbs, pills and spermicides.

My previously peaceful relationship with the man I love took a steep nose dive. We fought and we were on eggshells around each other when we weren't fighting. I insisted I could not resume our physical relationship unless one of us had permanent surgical sterilization. I told him I'd rather die than be pregnant again, such was the terror I felt at the possibility of going through another abortion.

Now, 8 months, many therapy sessions, a pile of anti-depressants and a vasectomy later, my boyfriend and I have worked through our disagreements and re-committed to each other and to our relationship. My PTSD symptoms are getting better. Life is getting back to normal. But I had no idea that it would get so bad, that a 2 to 3 minute procedure could cause such lasting trauma to my psyche. I would never have suspected because I had been through it once before when I was 16. Even though I had an abusive mother and manipulative boyfriend at the time, the abortion I had nearly 20 years ago was less traumatic because I was put under for it. I have no memories of the procedure and that seems to have made all the difference.

Despite the psychological distress I have had as a result I do no regret my decisions to abort. I can only imagine how much more traumatic it would have been to go through nine months of an unwanted pregnancy and give birth to a child that would likely have severe birth defects if it survived at all. I am glad I had a choice. I just wish it had not been so unnecessarily hurtful.

It is absolutely barbaric that the medical community makes general anesthesia the exception and not the rule for this procedure. The fact that women are expected to tolerate so many painful violations of their most private parts by doctors throughout their whole lives is unnecessarily cruel. I call upon any doctor reading this to stop the torture and offer real, compassionate, less painful and less traumatic options for women wishing to end their pregnancies. I ask you that when a young woman says she never wants children and seeks a permanent solution to her unwanted fertility that you take her seriously instead of assuming she will change her mind. I call upon the medical community to find us safer and more effective forms of birth control. I call upon you to work to educate women (and men) about their birth control options and to warn them of the physical, emotional and psychological cost not just of abortion, but of pregnancy in general BEFORE it happens to them, before they have to make the heavy choice. I call upon women to demand better from their healthcare providers.

The trauma I experienced did not have to happen. It could have been avoided if there were more people like the author of this blog, women who are not afraid to speak out and tell their story. Too many women have been silenced by political agendas on both sides of the abortion debate - the lifers wanting to guilt trip and vilify women who have made a hard life decision and the choicers seeking to shush any mention of abortion causing a woman any grief at all. If more of us speak up and speak out, demand better care and the right to whatever birth control we choose, then maybe no more women will have to suffer like I have suffered.

Wish You Were Here

Parents are difficult territory for women post-abortion. Not only parents that they see in the course of every day life, but their own as well. On one hand there's the intense imaginings of "What if my mother had had an abortion..." but secondarily there is a fear that any mother, and especially your own mother, will judge you for not bringing that child into the world.

Fathers can be just as bad and even more judgemental since they are more removed from this horrible experience. After my abortion I was afraid to tell my father. He loves his grandchildren so much, he would have loved my child so much. I still can not tell him, I can not willingly give him that hurt. Equally I couldn't tell my sister for many months - the proud parent of a four month old baby (at the time of the abortion). She was still so lost in "new parent adoration" that I couldn't imagine her understanding. I could only see her clutch her baby tighter and look at me in shock and pity. I'm still not completely sure that what she doesn't feel for me is pity.

Many women find just going into a store can be a traumatic, memory triggering experience. They're so sensitive after their abortion that the sight of diapers or the baby things aisle brings them to tears and meltdown. I suppose I am made of harder stuff. I sometimes cry with my nephew or looking at my own baby pictures, but it takes more than a display of strollers or a stranger with their child.

I once supposed I was made of such hard stuff that the abortion would not affect me. I cried over a lot of things, but I thought I could survive this. I wrote a poem beforehand, an apology for what my medications were no doubt doing to that cluster of cells, only eight weeks old.

I had considered abortion an option in high school if I were to become pregnant, but I was a safe girl and didn't face that choice. I was a safe woman when this child was conceived, but it happened anyway. Knowing that I was part of the 1% failure rate didn't help. Knowing that I tried to prevent this didn't help. Knowing that my health already teetered on the edge of failure and that it could not sustain another life didn't help. Knowing that my medication may have already ruined any chance it had to live didn't help.

No matter how pro-choice you are, it doesn't make it any easier. No one's politics makes this heartache go away or lessen. The only thing we can cling to is our list of reasons. The only thing we can embrace is the idea that they were our reasons, no one else's, and as such are valid, no matter what anyone else thinks. That's what I tell other women, but in truth I tell myself that my life will always be stunted, will always be standing still while everyone else get jobs they love, get married, and have babies.

I've seen first hand just how hard it is to be a parent, even in the most prepared situations. And I've seen first hand just how hard it is to not be allowed to be a parent, to not be allowed to face that struggle smiling at the good fortune to love a child and be loved in return.

A Miscarriage of Support

An abortion is not seen in the same light as a miscarriage. It is not seen by your friends or family as the loss of a child, as papable and real as any loss, and just as deep. Whether or not the pregnancy was intended or wanted, it hurts. It hurts to have that spark of life inside you, to feel the effects of it, and then to have to let it go.




Yet I feel that most women who have experienced miscarriage would feel right at home with women who've had abortions. A loss is a loss is a loss. There are some who say "You chose this loss, you don't get to feel sad about it." Yet we do that all the time. We break up with lovers because we know long-term it's no good, but we still feel sad about it. We give away something we'd been hoarding because we know we don't have the space but though we had good reasons we still miss it or feel a little bad. We do this type of thing all the time and it is nothing compared to the potential of a child's life.

But we should move on. We should let it go as casually as we wash our hair. Friends and family want us to stop talking about, to stop making them feel awkward.

That's okay though, right? We can call upon the community of other woman who've had this loss. With the benefit of the internet we can even do it from the privacy of our own homes. That is, if we're willing to brave the forum trolls, the anti-choice contingent.

Even with all of the forums, all of the categories of support, the online hugs, knowing all these women know just what you're going through, it is not enough. It is never enough. To not have anyone to hug in person, to not have anyone to lean on and cry on. That physical bond is extremely important, especially after experiencing such a physical loss.

Most women's closeness to parents or siblings doesn't usually extend to extensive conversations about abortion, especially since often their opinions differ. Therapy is often more judgemental than helpful. The women are subjected to a therapist who has no grasp on abortion, no idea how the emotional trauma mirrors miscarriage. The awkwardness continues if the therapist is a man or an older woman.

The woman, the patient involved, has no idea as to the political leanings of the therapist. She may hide her real feelings and try cover up more of her grief for fear of being judged, we all fear that. An older therapist can put the woman in mind of a parent and make it even more difficult to open up enough to really begin healing.