Category: Abortion by Pill: Stories

From one woman who had an abortion by pill:

“I had my medical abortion a few days ago at slightly less than 8 weeks. It was the most painful experience ever in my life. On top of emotional pain, when the second pill was taking effect, I had the most indescribable excruciating pain for more than 6 hours. It almost killed me… I wonder if child birth is even more painful than this… There was just so much pain that I could’t even cry… Maybe I should have chosen surgical.

Now that it’s been a few days, I feel so different. I feel all alone again with an empty womb. All those pregnant feelings are gone, I don’t feel like a mother anymore, I’m myself again… Perhaps it was really those crazy hormones working… Now I’m calm, sad to have lost a child but it was an informed decision made by choice. “

LiveJournal

A woman shared her experience with abortion pills on LiveJournal:

“I took my four pills at 2:45. I was fine for about an hour, than the heavy cramping started. This was easily more painful than my recovery from gall bladder surgery which I was pretty surprised about honestly. I took my anti nausea meds before taking the four pills, and then I took a Tylenol with codeine. None of which touched me. I ended up vomiting repeatedly in the bathroom for about 10 minutes. I decided to take a hot bath. This helped a lot at first, I got out of the bathtub and laid on the couch.

About thirty minutes into laying on the couch, I was in agonizing pain, pacing up and down my kitchen, randomly screaming and crying(part of that is probably because I apparently suck at handling pain). This went on until around 7:30. At 7:30 I decided a hot shower might help, I was going nuts with pain at this point and had puked again, I just wanted anything to get rid of the pain. Ten minutes into my shower I had a giant clot of some sort…it was flesh colored and the size of a standard coaster almost. After that I bled a lot and I’m still bleeding, I had one blood clot after that so far. I do feel pretty queasy right now though.

Right now I feel crampy but I am okay…I won’t lie, I cried a little after it happened. But I know this was the right choice for me.

LJ

LiveJournal

A woman named Solome describes what happened when she took the abortion pill:

“I made an appointment and went to the clinic.  They said I could take the pill because I found out in the early stages. A part of me thought that as long as they didn’t go in there with any metal tools and suck it out, it would be different and less gruesome. Boy, was I wrong!  The time between my visit and my appointment went by really fast. I was numb and completely disconnected from everything around me. I would start crying as soon as I left work until I fell asleep at 4 or 5 am. I would walk down the street crying, or in the train, or when I saw babies and pregnant women.

I went to the clinic on a Thursday afternoon and took my first pill. I was given prescription pills for the next day. It took about 30 minutes for the cramps and bleeding to start. I remember thinking, “OK, so this should be over in an hour or so.” But it wasn’t. During that time I felt like my inside was being torn and sliced to pieces. I had blood all over my legs and went in the tub to wash them. The cramps got so bad I couldn’t even move. I couldn’t even cry. It was worse than anything I’ve ever seen on TV. All the labor and contractions they show was nothing compared to this. I couldn’t get to my phone to dial 911 and go to the emergency room. I lay there for hours thinking, “I deserve this; I brought this on myself.” Right before the fetus came out, I started vomiting everything I had in my system since that morning. Then I bled some more and hurt some more. I started praying curled up in blood in the tub, for the first time in years. I don’t remember the last time I prayed before this happened. After hours of hurting, I finally felt a huge physical relief, and the pain was immediately gone. I managed to get up. When I turned around .I saw the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen my entire life. I saw my child. It was at that moment that it finally sunk in properly. I really had been pregnant.  I had been carrying the life I created inside of me until that very moment.

Right after that, I cried and cried for hours. I put my child in a little box and kept saying I was sorry for what I had done. I was weeping and screaming, but nothing could turn back time. I felt like a part of me died. I felt angry. I felt guilty. I felt like my world was coming to an end and that I was the most terrible person on this earth. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. It was the most beautiful thing I ever created, and I destroyed it.”

Solome “The Worst Mistake” Priests for Life

Lillian, age 24, had a surgical abortion two years before the interview. She describes her second abortion, which was by pill:

“And so this time, it was more horrible than the first time because this time I was older, so I was more aware of what it was to be a mother, and besides, the method was really… really hard, because it was a medication. There were 30 of us in a room smaller than this one, in a square, waiting like laying hens, waiting to lay our eggs, and it’s super painful because you have contractions, it’s really, really painful, so there you are in a room, all the girls hurting and rolling on the floor and all waiting to push out the egg, and the nurse who comes in and says: “OK, well, now go for it, you’re losing blood, put it in the pot.” And afterward, she looks in the pot and everything, and then, well, then it was really hard, because I actually saw it, and I felt it come down and I saw it, you know, unlike the first time, when I didn’t see anything.”

Luc Boltanski The Foetal Condition: A Sociology of Engendering and Abortion (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2013) 149

A woman shared the following testimony on the Priests for Life site:

“I made an appointment and went to the clinic.  They said I could take the pill because I found out in the early stages. A part of me thought that as long as they didn’t go in there with any metal tools and suck it out, it would be different and less gruesome. Boy, was I wrong!  The time between my visit and my appointment went by really fast. I was numb and completely disconnected from everything around me. I would start crying as soon as I left work until I fell asleep at 4 or 5 am. I would walk down the street crying, or in the train, or when I saw babies and pregnant women.

I went to the clinic on a Thursday afternoon and took my first pill. I was given prescription pills for the next day. It took about 30 minutes for the cramps and bleeding to start. I remember thinking, “OK, so this should be over in an hour or so.” But it wasn’t. During that time I felt like my inside was being torn and sliced to pieces. I had blood all over my legs and went in the tub to wash them. The cramps got so bad I couldn’t even move. I couldn’t even cry. It was worse than anything I’ve ever seen on TV. All the labor and contractions they show was nothing compared to this. I couldn’t get to my phone to dial 911 and go to the emergency room. I lay there for hours thinking, “I deserve this; I brought this on myself.” Right before the fetus came out, I started vomiting everything I had in my system since that morning. Then I bled some more and hurt some more. I started praying curled up in blood in the tub, for the first time in years. I don’t remember the last time I prayed before this happened. After hours of hurting, I finally felt a huge physical relief, and the pain was immediately gone. I managed to get up. When I turned around .I saw the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen my entire life. I saw my child. It was at that moment that it finally sunk in properly. I really had been pregnant.  I had been carrying the life I created inside of me until that very moment.

Right after that, I cried and cried for hours. I put my child in a little box and kept saying I was sorry for what I had done. I was weeping and screaming, but nothing could turn back time. I felt like a part of me died. I felt angry. I felt guilty. I felt like my world was coming to an end and that I was the most terrible person on this earth. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. It was the most beautiful thing I ever created, and I destroyed it.”

Solome “The Worst Mistake” Priests for Life

A woman shared her story about taking the abortion pill. She describes what happened after she realized she was pregnant:

“I announce the news to the dad who tells me right away: “abortion”. I break down and cry, I try to get him to change his mind but to no avail. He is scared and me too, I have to admit. So out of love, I decide to abort. At the hospital, I tell them that it is against my better judgement that I’m asking this abortion, that I do it “out of love for my man”.

Then I take the two first pills, everything goes OK. I go back home. The next day, I’m having horrible pains and enormous blood loss, it was a nightmare and I thought that the worst had passed. I collapse from exhaustion and the next day, I wake up surprised to not see anything happening.

At night, I find myself alone. At 7pm, first pains. The more time goes by, the more I’m in pain. Around 11pm, I begin to feel dizzy and faint. I call the  [paramedics]  who tell me that it’s normal.

I spend two hours on the toilet, emptying myself of my blood. I’m still in a lot of pain, I cry, I scream and I totally regret my choice. Having no strength left, I decide to go to bed. I fall asleep for 20 minutes and I wake up bathed in blood.

My man sees in what condition I am and he calls the [paramedics] again, who want nothing to do with it. A couple of minutes later, I have an urge to push just like for childbirth and here I find myself with my “baby” in my hand. A never ending nightmare!

At 7 am, I get up, exhausted and I go to the hospital where I explain what happened and that I lost the baby. The midwife calls the gynecologist who comes right away, does an ultrasound and confirms that I lost the baby and that I had a brush with death because of the hemorrhage.

Today, I sincerely regret my choice when I see how much I’ve suffered while being abandoned; that they let me suffer alone.

I’m telling myself that the life of my baby was more important that “that love” for a man. I suffer from insomnia and nightmares; I’m feeling exhausted, angry and destroyed.

I don’t know what to do, I need advice to help me overcome this ordeal. It’s been 2 months and I can’t forget, I feel disgust for my man. Thank you for your help.”

Posted to Facebook, translated from French, March 24, 2016

One woman who shared her testimony with Silent No More, said:

I was given the RU-486 abortion pills the same day I went to the abortion clinic. They didn’t explain the process to me beyond when to take the pills. Side effects, possible complications, and what to expect during the abortion were not even mentioned. I had the abortion alone in my apartment, and it was by far the most painful experience of my life. It took at least two months for my body to recover.

Testimony found here.

A woman who had an abortion by pill says it was “emotionally scarring.”

“[Abortion by pill] was the worst experience, the most physically and emotionally painful thing, that I’ve ever been through. The pill (RU-486) for me was the experience of having a baby. Contractions for 10 hours, sweating, screaming, being by myself. It was emotionally scarring and physically horrible.”

“Scientists Will Gather to Discuss Safety of Abortion Pill” New York Times May 11, 2006

From a woman who had an abortion by pill (i.e. medical abortion)

“[I] wouldn’t wish that my worst enemy should go through a medical abortion. The pain plus the uncertainty as to whether the abortion had really taken place was awful.”

Vivian Wahlberg Memories After Abortion (Oxford: Radcliffe Publishing, 2007) 32

Read more women’s accounts of taking the abortion pill

Read about the health risks of the abortion pill here.