ldragoon has posted about it and makes excellent points. And thus, today, I am blogging for choice, even though I did not officially sign up.

When I was 19 years old, I was with a Very Bad Man. The kind of man you never want to imagine your daughters or sisters or cousins ending up with, the kind of man who, with no trace of humor or irony, tells you that if you ever cheat on him, he will kill you. The kind of man who hits the wall next to you when he's angry, and tells you next time it will be your face. The kind of man who systematically isolates you from all your friends and even your family, so no one will know what kind of control he has over you. And he does have control, because he has all the money and he has all the power, and you are twenty-two years younger than he is and don't know anything about anything. So, you end up with waist-length hair and you stop trying to make friends and you basically don't do anything except work in the V.B.M.'s comic book store. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

And then suddenly, despite using birth control, you end up pregnant.

And that's where this story starts...


I was 19 years old when I had an abortion. I had gone in to the doctor for a routine checkup, as V.B.M. at least paid for medical stuff, and I had been feeling poorly. He needed me to work, you see, so I had to remain healthy. Shockingly, I got a call a few days after the checkup and they informed me I was pregnant.

Just like that, boom, you're pregnant. How far along? Oh, only a few weeks. Congratulations!

Except, not. I wasn't so keen on the idea of congratulations. Because suddenly, with crystal clarity, my nineteen-year-old brain realized that if I were to give birth to the baby, I would never, ever, ever be free of V.B.M. And even though our relationship was still fairly new, and thus, not nearly as bad as it would finally end up, I knew in my heart of hearts that this guy was the Wrong One.

I did not even pause for breath, I immediately asked where I could get an abortion.

The person on the other end of the line stammered and told me about the clinic, A Woman's Choice. But, they informed me, I was too early, I would have to wait until I was six weeks along.

So, I did. V.B.M. didn't even question my decision. My mother did not question my decision.

The day came and I went in to have my procedure. There were about fifteen of us, and they made us sign waiver after waiver, and they made us watch a video about the horrors of abortion. Most of the women and teenage girls left after that. Everyone looked as though they had just finished crying, or they were openly weeping. Of the fifteen who went in to the waiting room, only three of us actually went through with the procedure. I was one of those three. I was taken into a sterile room and had a sonogram administered to find out where the embryo was- it was almost impossible to find, it was so small. After that, they put me in the room where I would have the procedure done.

It was not a pleasant procedure. They claim your cervix has no nerve endings in it, and thus you will not be able to feel the needle when they inject the stuff that is supposed to make you dilate. This is a lie, as it was painful. They claim that you will be numbed and won't feel the machine that sucks the uterine lining (and the embryo) out of you. This is also a lie, it's very painful. I rolled the lucky draw on the staff members as well, and got a doctor and nurse who literally were as brutally efficient as possible. Thus, they did not properly put the uterus vacuum machine behind the little curtain they were supposed to, so I was clearly able to see everything being sucked out of me. It's not appetizing. I still can't watch hospital shows because of this, it makes me remember how all that blood and tissue looked shlurping down the clear hose into the biological waste container.

Of course, it goes without saying that I cried the entire time. It hurt like hell. Also, they impress upon you very firmly that if you move in any way, or twitch in any way, there is a chance of uterine perforation, and thus, you can be rendered sterile in a second. (Oh, or you could die.) In fact, they make you sign multiple forms that absolve the clinic of any and all responsibility, even if the doctor does completely screw up and destroy your uterus. You volunteered to have the abortion, thus, you have no rights. You can't even complain.

After the abortion, I was told I would bleed for quite some time, like having a really bad period. I also would not be allowed to have sex, use tampons or put anything into my bits for six weeks, as it could cause a deadly infection. It was really horrible. They give you two cookies and a tiny dixie cup of juice immediately afterwards, also, just like after you give blood. They sort of prop you on a couch with this tiny cup and your two tiny cookies on a cocktail napkin, and you're supposed to eat these things so your blood sugar levels don't plummet and so you don't pass out. And honestly, you can't even think of anything, much less remember how to chew, at this point. I remember I felt completely hollow, and I remember thinking it was mean to give you two dry-as-dust cookies and this thimble-full of juice, because there was no way you could make the juice last long enough to wash down both cookies.

I remember after the procedure, I was shell-shocked. I was extremely out of it, for weeks. I could not look at babies. I couldn't even think about babies without crying. V.B.M. was kind at first, but soon degenerated into his usual bad behavior when it was clear that he couldn't have sex with me. I was very depressed and miserable for a very long time after my abortion, and sometimes had flashbacks to it, especially when seeing movies with abortion scenes in them. (I'm looking square at you, Wild at Heart, and you know why.) Ever since the abortion, my already bad periods just became worse and worse, and these days my period can nearly cripple me for three days out of the eight days it lasts.

I've had three miscarriages in the years since I had my abortion, always in the second month. (I use birth control- but no form of birth control is 100% effective, and I am living proof.) I worry that I will never be able to have a baby on my own, even though my procedure was apparently "easy" and "went well", with no actual complications. I want a baby, even though I am still desperately afraid of being pregnant. But, I'm 37 years old and thus, my chances are already pretty small. If I ever get to visit Japan, I know I will leave offerings for the jizo statues, the ones that are said to protect and guide the souls of unborn babies. It seems right.

I think about everything I have now in my life, and I know I would not have any of it if I had not had that abortion. Would I ever have another one? No, it was too painful to go through a second time. Will I fight to the death to let other women have them if they need to? Hell yes, I will. Because I don't want any other girls to end up shackled to those Very Bad Men that are out there, simply because they were too young and too dumb to know better. And I don't want any other girls to die because of botched kitchen table abortions. No girl or woman on this planet has an abortion because she thinks it'll be cool and no one EVER uses it as a form of birth control. It's a horrible, mentally draining, emotionally devastating procedure. But it is sometimes a necessary procedure. It can save lives.

Lord knows, it saved mine.