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.
"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"
ReplyDeleteI argued with my docs from the time I was 23 and they refused to discuss surgical, permanent solutions with me. I want to go back and slap every single one of them and say "are you happy you caused this?"
The paternalistic attitudes of the medical community infuriates me to no end! It needs to stop. It makes women suffer needlessly.
"So your own body turned against you and put you through this 'procedure'"
I felt the same way for a while, like my body had betrayed me. I am trying to let that go now. As a pagan I believe we are all made of the same stuff, the divinity of mother nature, and thus my body could not ever betray me anymore than mother nature could.
"But I, growing up in a family full of such strong love..."
You are lucky there. i would have been afraid to bring any child of mine into my family of origin as abusive and cruel as they are.
"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?"
Some days I think it's the PTSD. Sometimes I think it's just anger about my lack of birth control options all these years. I can't take hormonal birth control, causes all kinds of havoc with my mental and physical health, and while at my older age I probably could have talked a doc into doing a tubal for me now, especially after this has happened, with the PTSD I suffer from now I think they would have to tranq me with a dart gun from a hundred yards to get me into surgery ever again.
My point is that this didn't have to happen if my doctors would have taken me seriously instead of assuming they knew my own mind better than I did, and that definitely causes me grief. Societal assumptions that all women want and should have children is untrue, unfair and causes much needless suffering.
For many women, just like you, my dear, bearing a child is a terribly health-risking proposition, and to force them to use less reliable forms of birth control instead of surgical sterilization is to put them at risk for having to choose between their own health and a potential child, and that is terribly, terribly cruel.