From a woman who had an abortion but experiences something she calls a grieving process:
“I will have to reconsider my response as a grieving process, and one that has never ended. I made the absolute right choice to have an abortion, and I was relieved, even happy at the time. I have never once regretted the decision, yet there are feelings surrounding the loss of a potential child that remain with me.”
Helen Susan Edelman, “Safe to Talk: Abortion Narratives as a Rite of Return,” Journal of American Culture 19, no. 4 (1996)
The abortion clinic was part of a national group. It was a very cold and sterile environment. First, going into the lobby was a large seating area where it looked as if we were cattle going to slaughter. Women were crying and some were yelling at family or friends. It was a humiliating experience for me. I was alone with my best friend. Thank God for her. I don’t think I could have survived this experience without Kat.
I was seen by an ultrasound technician to determine how far along I was. I was 13 weeks. I asked to see the sonogram and was rudely told, no, I could not see it as it could cause me to change my mind. I was then taken back to talk first to a nurse and then to a doctor. I was given Misoprostol. It was supposed to induce labor, and I was able to go home after the first dose was given. I had to go through the post op surgery area when I was leaving and saw probably thirteen girls who had just had abortions. Some were still drugged up while others were crying. It was horrifying. I went home and had an at-home abortion. It was painful and scary.
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.
“3 years after my second abortion I started having nightmares in which I saw myself in a baby parts cemetery and holding a dead baby in my arms and crying for the ones I lost. I was… holding a dead baby and trying to bring him back to life.”
T Burke & DC Reardon Forbidden Grief: The Unspoken Pain of Abortion (Springfield: Acorn Books, 2002) 124
“I remember the clinic was very odd. It was set back from the street. There were lots of trees outside. It was a sunny day, and I remember the contrast with the clinic itself being so dark for some reason. There were so many people in there, and it was very ‘factoryish’ for some reason. I don’t remember any individuals. I don’t remember particular kindnesses. It was very business-like in some ways…. I remember that vacuumy sound, after the nurse had set up the equipment, and the doctor came in and very briefly sort of suctioned it out… I do remember—probably the worst part of the experience—being in the room with all of those other recovering women and the moaning of at least one other woman and thinking ‘Oh, God, this is sort of hellish.’ …
I remember the room being dark, and that is almost incorporated as a physical sensation. It seemed grim. The sound of the vacuum cleaner, the suction, seemed almost grotesquely juxtaposed with the New Age music that was playing in the room. I knew it had to be done. … The whole thing felt grim; there was nothing good about it. It was definitely exacerbated by that moaning, that I’ll remember till the end of my life, as we were all recuperating in [the recovery] room together. And then having to be escorted out the back because there were protesters in the front. It was a very sobering experience. I think it would have been really traumatic had I been raised religiously…
I remember the doctor and nurse being kind of abrupt, not hostile or mean or anything, but just abrupt. There were so many other people there. I didn’t feel comforted by anybody. I think they did what they had to do. I think they were probably feeling pressured. I do remember thinking, ‘God, how awful this would have to be to work in a place that was picketed every day.’ I think that felt stressful. I think there was a more stressful environment in the first clinic, among the people working there.”
Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 113-114
From a pro-choice author who interviewed post-abortion women:
“Linda’s initial reaction to both abortions was a deep physical sensation of sadness; she recalled a period of time after each procedure when she felt an overwhelming sense of loss. Reporting on her response to the first abortion, Linda said, “I felt astonished at how sad my body felt. I was really amazed. It’s like feeling sad in your chest, but it wasn’t emanating from my chest—it was emanating from my womb. It was an ache that was more than just the ache of the D and C [dilation and curettage]. It was a terrible feeling of loss. And it was physically based. It wasn’t just all the stuff in my mind about, ‘I should have had a baby, or I shouldn’t have had a baby.’ It was just the fact of this rich environment being robbed. And so it made me feel a kind of fragile feeling, like, ‘Take everything very slowly because you’re so sad. You have to be careful with your feelings.’ And it was even harder three days later. I went back to work teaching, and I was with all these little kids.”
Linda experienced a similar kind of sadness after her second abortion.”
Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 127
“My first recollection is I’m out on the gurney before going in the room, and the anesthesiologist has put an IV in, and I’m concerned about what kind of drugs he’s given me. It feels like he’s just patronizing me: ‘This is just some Valium. Don’t worry.’ And I can feel the burn when it would go into my veins. So then, once I went in to start the procedure, as I recall, it started hurting immediately. I could keep feeling the burn of the Valium going through, and so they just kept giving me more and more. And that’s when I felt delirious, when I just shouted for Jesus to forgive me. I had no control, and I thought that it was gonna kill me. I didn’t expect that pain. … I’ve thought since that maybe I was further along than they thought, and maybe that’s why it ended up being so difficult.”
Before the procedure began, Beth recalled “wishing I could die so I wouldn’t have to do this. I felt very guilty.”
Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 114-115
“My boyfriend came with me. He was in the room when they did it. He saw the fetus and it really flipped him out. What I remember poignantly about the whole experience was I was drugged and I went home, took a nap, and when I woke up he wasn’t there. He left a note… It was clear that he was f*cked up emotionally.
I called my best friend and told her what had happened.… I went over and we got riproaring drunk. I got really happy when we were drunk and we were toasting my abortion – “Here’s to your abortion!”… Later, my friend’s sister came up and expressed this sympathy – my friend had told her. I remember saying, “What? What’s this sympathy? What for?” I guess I was really detached from it…
I think I was kind of callous about the whole thing… I treated it like a procedure. I had to go and get a procedure done on my body. It didn’t seem quite real.
It certainly made me take birth control seriously. I was a little lax about it until then, but I knew I didn’t want to go through it again, the pain. It was very painful. And the shame that I had…”
She broke up with her boyfriend shortly after the abortion.
Anna Runkle In Good Conscience: A Practical, Emotional, and Spiritual Guide to Deciding Whether to Have an Abortion (San Francisco: Jossey–Bass Publishers, 1998) 51-52
“I remember feeling like I was on an assembly line. The doctor whooshed in and whooshed out. The procedure was pretty quick, and it hurt a little bit. I felt like I was going to throw up afterward and I told the nurse and she gave me a little tray but I really needed just a few minutes in that room just to calm my stomach and calm myself and I felt like they really just wanted me out of there to get the next person in.
Afterward I was sent to the recovery area… There was this woman on my left who was just sobbing and sobbing… I wish I could have talked to the women in the recovery area and all the people who worked there would just disappear. We were going through the same experience but we were totally isolated. They are giving you cookies and water and dealing with you on a physical level, but every woman in the room was going through an emotional experience, and none of us is going to turn to the person next to us and talk about it.”
Anna Runkle In Good Conscience: A Practical, Emotional, and Spiritual Guide to Deciding Whether to Have an Abortion (San Francisco: Jossey–Bass Publishers, 1998) 52-53
A postabortion woman wrote the following letter to her aborted baby, who she named Grace:
“Everyone close to me was affected by that awful day – none more so than you and I though. We were in this sad nightmare together, weren’t we? I felt very depressed after I let you go – many days were hard to face, some I didn’t. I told myself it was hormones. I was told to expect this by the terribly cold staff at the clinic – the ones that sent me into a tiny cubicle with a pad, a paper gown and said, “Wait till we come and get you.” They don’t even look at you in the eye. They don’t seem to know your pain, and I hope they really don’t understand what they are doing.
They put my legs in stirrups and got out their vacuum but forgot to tell me how much I would miss you. How this day would never go away. How I would dream about you eight years after that day. They forgot to tell me how I would get to the day when even making a cup of tea would make me cry because the memories refused to go away. But I don’t really blame them Grace – it was me.
After a few months I went into denial… I can’t tell you what I thought in the many years in between – the truth is that I tried to forget. I tried very hard not to think about you at all. You crept up on me at times and sent me into a spin, but only temporarily – I would shut down and move. In my heart I knew you were always there though.
So why now Grace?… Was it because I had a little girl? Is it because my family on this earth is complete? Or was my time up? I don’t know the answer for sure, maybe it was all these things…
I didn’t want to give you an identity for fear it would undo me. Grace seemed a natural name for you.… I hope you like it.”
Anne R Lastman Redeeming Grief: Abortion and Its Pain (Balwyn, Vic: Australia: Gracewing, 2013) 43 – 44
