The True Story

The true story is that abortion is one of the most misunderstood procedures in the world.

Women who go through it grieve. Some grieve hard for the rest of their lives. Some never get over it. Some heal after a few years. Some have phases, months and months of being okay and then sudden depression and grief over the abortion, up and down like waves.

There are those who want to demonize us and there are those who support our right to choose (even when many would never choose abortion for themselves). However, neither want to talk about it, or let us talk about it. There is a fear of being seen as "pro-abortion", and that reduces the grieving woman to silence. She doesn't want to bother her friends and family, or she's afraid they will hate her or give her more grief for it. They don't understand that she already grieves, that she sometimes forgets reality in the face of the pain from that loss.

And there's the rub. It is painful. It is emotionally scarring. It is a wound we will carry for our whole lives. I want the world to understand. I want you not to understand our reasons, why we made our choices, but the aftermath. I want you to understand the agony of it. The permanence of it. I want you to understand that it will last our whole lives and we will always carry it with us. I want you to understand that it is loss as real and palpable as a miscarriage for a desired pregnancy. I want you to understand that one in three women have had an abortion, and I want you to understand that they need support, they need you to listen to them.

This is a true story. This is my story, and hopefully it will include the stories of other too - because we're all different. This was my child. You can argue that I did not lose a child, I lost the possibility of one, but it all hurts the same. And in truth this is what we're all grieving: the possibility. 

This is not a story of regret. I do not regret my choice (in so far as I had any choice at all). I only regret the lost possibility, and meanwhile I mourn my child. This is a not a story of condemnation or judgement. It's just the truth of a situation that most people are afraid to talk about.