“My abortion was in 1979. It was just right out of my divorce. My son, who is now 35, was only two at the time. And I felt like I had no choice.
I was very uneducated. I thought there was no life before a certain time. I had no idea that at 12 weeks when I aborted my baby, the baby was developed and had a heartbeat. I just didn’t have any idea. We didn’t have any education back then. It was just like, ‘do it, get out and that’s it.’
And I didn’t deal with it for a long time. I believe it can take women years to deal with the abortion, the emotions. That’s what happened to me.
Once I did get remarried and had a husband and they raised three children. But I began to be really depressed. I began to be really ugly to my children. I didn’t know what was wrong.
After she dealt with her abortion on a postabortion healing weekend:
You’ll always remember the anniversary of the abortion. You’ll remember the anniversary of what their birthday would have been. I still cry. I still have emotions, but it’s okay. It still hurts, but it don’t hurt like it did then….. I wish I’d never been able to make that decision.
From a woman who had both an abortion by pill and a surgical abortion:
“The pill 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.”
She described using the abortion pill as:
“the worst experience, the most physically and emotionally painful thing, that I’ve ever been through.”
“Rose” a 27-year-old woman who had two earlier such abortions, underwent an abortion by pill. She says:
“The experience was awful on many fronts – talking about it with my husband tonight, he said he remembers calling nursing staff on at least two occasions during the 24 hours after my taking the tablets, as we were worried at the nausea, pain and amount/size of blood clots. He was informed this was normal and that if symptoms continued past three days to call back.
Overall the worst part of the RU-486 was the sheer amount of time it took for me to “terminate” my baby: with each and every large clot of blood – which I literally could feel passing through my insides and then out of my vagina – was a reminder of the fact I was terminating a baby, for which I felt hugely saddened. More than I realized I would.
It was three days of nausea, high temperature/sweating (I was worried about infection), cramping, lots of blood, distress and swirling emotions, thoughts, etc. I would never ever go through that again.…
I absolutely support a woman’s access to abortion – but I think RU-486 and a prostaglandin is the wrong way to go.”
Renate Klein, Janice G Raymond, Lynette Dumble RU-486: Misconceptions, Myths and Moral (North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex, 1991, 2013) Kindle edition
“I found it very difficult to be in the presence of children, babies, pregnant women, because they were conscious and subconscious reminders of the abortion and the incredible loss that I know and feel.”
Angela Lanfranchi, Ian Gentles, Elizabeth Ring – Cassidy Complications: Abortions Impact on Women (Ontario, Canada: The deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research, 2013) 346
“I cried all through the abortion. I cried a lot. Afterwards, too. The doctor, I think he was pretty upset, too, that I was taking it so hard. He was trying to calm me down, saying, you know, “It’s really a hard decision for you,” and I was saying, “Yeah, it is,” you know, through my tears, “Yeah, it is; yeah, it is.” I’m over here shaking and crying. Because it’s interesting, but your emotions play so much a part of what’s going on, that I began to get chills. She had to cover me and turn on the heater.
Then when they took me out into the recovery room, I went there and I laid down there and I was trying to keep calm because there was another woman there and I didn’t want to upset her because I was upset. I asked the counselor if she could get my sister. She went out and got Maria, and Maria came in and I started crying all over again. And she was saying, “Well, what’s wrong? I thought this was what you wanted to do.” I says, “Yeah, but it doesn’t make it any easier, you know. It is what I wanted to do. This would have been my last baby.” And I just started crying.
The counselor came in and said, “I’m really glad you’re crying.” I looked at her and said, “Why??” She said, “See that lady over there, she was trying to hold it in, and watching you cry, she’s letting it out.” And I looked over there, and sure enough she was crying too. So then I started calming myself down. She was sitting there crying, and she got herself dressed to leave; she came over and she says, “You know, I want to thank you.” She says, “I really needed to do that and I was really holdin’ it in.”
Sumi Hoshiko Our Choices: Women’s Personal Decisionsabout Abortion (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1993) 88 – 89
What kind of “right” is this that women fight so hard for, that leads to so much tears and pain? Are abortions really good for women?
A woman describes the first two of her four abortions:
“It was this huge clinic; it was so impersonal. It was just like we were moved through like cattle. It was just like a factory there. It was so efficient, and so sterile, and so big. It was like a mass production line…
The second one, I went right away; it was really early. It was the same kind of big Chicago clinic. I remember it being even more efficient, more factory like the second one, and that bothered me more this time.”
Sumi Hoshiko Our Choices: Women’s Personal Decisionsabout Abortion (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1993) 182, 185
“… It has taken me a long time to recover from the experience. I know the memory will never go away – it will be with me forever, absolutely forever. I feel I should never forget it. On the anniversary of the abortion I go to church and pray.”
Paula Diperna “Abortion, the Great Debate” Ladies’ Home Journal November 1985, 201
The Abortionist is a book written by an illegal abortionist in 1962. This is the contents of a letter that was written to the abortionist.
“I recall fighting my way out of the black void into which the drug had plunged me to hear myself screaming hysterically, “I want my baby! Give me back my baby!” And as I sobbed away, you tried to console me, telling me it was over and that everything was all right.
But everything wasn’t all right. Lying there, I felt only disgust at myself. I had broken nature’s most sacred code, the propagation of the human race. That was the trust for which I had been placed on earth and I had violated it.
But life is also survival of the fittest and, in some way, I knew I was not fit to bear a baby or to be a mother…
I hated myself, I hated the father of the child and vowed never to see him again.…
But you I do not hate. You have given me a second chance. When everyone else turned their back in scorn, you were willing to allow me the responsibility of deciding whether I wanted my child. You made me feel I still had the dignity due to every human being.”
Dr. X, Lucy Freeman The Abortionist (London: Victor Gollacz LTD, 1962) 43 – 44
There is so much self-hatred and post abortion regret in this testimony, yet she does not blame the abortionist who did the abortion. She seems to be unable to admit that abortion was a horrible mistake, no matter how upset it made her.
From a woman who had an abortion but does not regret her choice. She still had a terrible experience.
8 week old fetus
“I first did an ultrasound, which they wouldn’t let me see. They said I was exactly 8 weeks along. I asked, “What does it look like,” picturing a little thing with arms and legs. They said very curtly, “It looks like a tiny fetus,” and shut off the machine.
Then I went into a room to see a counselor, who asked me how I felt about it, if I was being forced to do this, etc. I told her I have a crap job, I live alone, I’m in debt, I’m trying to finish college, I’m not in a relationship with the father, and it just was not the right time. I told her how I was very scared of the actual procedure and she told me it was like bad menstrual cramps, and that I’d be given drugs to ease the pain. I felt better and she had me sign a million papers. I was given a blood test, and then we (the counselor, me, and the father) all went upstairs….
After more waiting, my name was called and I went to a large room where several other women were sitting, all in hospital gowns. I was asked some more questions, then told to wear the gown and use the restroom. Once I came out I was given several pills, including valium, vicodin, ibuprophen, and some other pill to help my uterus shrink to normal size. Then I was told to sit and wait for the drugs to kick in.
I waited about 30 minutes, and soon I was the only person waiting. I was told that when I became drowsy, they would perform the procedure. I was feeling tired, but wasn’t sure if it was from the lack of sleep or the drugs kicking in. A nurse came and told me it was time and we walked to different room to do it.
I sat on the table and lied down, and had a nurse on my left, and the doc and another nurse at my feet. I was tired, but remembered what the counselor had said about it being like cramps and wasn’t as scared. The nurse next to me held my hand and I felt the doc put in the speculum, then the cotton swab. Then I felt this shooting pain and was told they were numbing my cervix. Then I felt the worst pain of my life. I was sobbing, yelling, thrashing around as the nurse held me down and kept telling me to relax, I was doing great, it would be over soon, etc. It felt like forever. I remember hearing the doc say, “Hush up, it’s not that bad.”
I felt like I was being tortured. I’m not exaggerating; it was the worst pain I have ever experienced. After it was over I still had stabbing pain in my abdomen and could feel myself bleeding everywhere. I was sweating everywhere and absolutely weeping. The nurse who held my hand helped me sit up and then she and another nurse slowly put my legs together to get my underwear on. The two of them walked me to a recovery room and had me sit in a chair. I was still sobbing, feeling the pain and begging them to let me lie down. They wouldn’t let me and plopped a heating pad on my belly, which didn’t help anything; adding to my sweat, already dripping off me. I wouldn’t stop asking to lie down, and as I sat there, three nurses muttered to each other if they should let me or not. Finally, they said I could, but that I had to use the toilet first. I didn’t even have to go.
I was helped into the restroom, and really get fuzzy at this part. The drugs finally hit me, all at once, and I fell off the toilet and onto the floor. I remember hearing the nurses say, “Stay with us! Stay with us!” but I was too tired to care. I vaguely remember being lifted onto a rolling bed, and conked out. I was dimly aware of the nurses around me, checking my blood pressure and checking my bleeding (I soaked thru my underwear, the gown, and the sheets). …
I fell back asleep and what seemed like a minute later they woke me up to tell me I had to leave because other patients were coming in to recover. A half hour had passed in reality. They helped me get dressed, then put me in a wheelchair. I couldn’t keep my head up so I was slumped over and falling asleep again. Later, the father told me it freaked him out to see me in a wheelchair and not moving. He said the nurse told him that “the drugs hit her pretty hard,” and left it at that. He put me in the car and we drove home. I slept the whole way….
I do not regret my abortion, because I believe that it was not the right time for me to have a child. I do not believe I murdered anything, because one cannot murder a soul. I believe that the soul, the life of the child will return to me when it is the right time. The same night, I wrote a letter to him (I know my child would have been a boy) explaining why I did what I did and asked for him to forgive me. That night I dreamt of my future son, who told me one day I’ll be his mum, and a good one at that. One day.”
Martha Bayne, who is pro-choice, describes her abortion in college and later miscarriage.
“When I got pregnant at 20, in college, the choice was clear. There was the 45 minute drive to the closest clinic… Afterward, there was pizza….
In the months that followed my abortion I flailed. I don’t remember much, but I do remember the waves of panic. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t breathe. I landed in the emergency room a few times, hyperventilating, numb, convinced I was dying, and my boyfriend was stuck with the fun task of feeding me daily doses of Xanax as I crawled along the semester finish line. After that, I dropped out of school for a while.”
As a working adult, she got pregnant again. She intended to have another abortion.
“[I] could barely take care of my cat. I could not have afforded a child, by the sheer economics of time.”
She went back and forth, trying to decide. Then she had a miscarriage.
“When I saw the first blood I felt a wash of relief, which I quickly plugged with a sandbag of denial.
Perhaps the best-known fact about miscarriage is that no one talks about it. But what they really don’t talk about, when they’re not talking about it, is how much it can hurt. In your heart, yes, and also your guts…
My roommate begged me to go to the ER. And when, hours later, after one final pelvic – splitting contraction, it slid down my cervix with a pop, a 3 inch oyster of blood and tissue and what looked like the tiniest tiny fingers. I yelped, surprised…
It plopped into the toilet and sat there till I scooped it out into an empty hummus container. I poked at it with the end of a plastic spoon. Turned it over. It was so small, this thing that loomed so large.… “
She brought the baby to her doctor, but did not give it to him and kept its existence a secret. She then buried the baby.
“I buried my 7-week-old embryo, my oyster, on the banks of the Iowa River.”
The day after the miscarriage, she was driving between Iowa city and Chicago for a talk she was giving out a book. She wrote:
“I kept having to pull off the interstate and cry. I cried for blotchy days – in the car, in bed, at the clinic where I applied (fruitlessly) for retroactive Medicaid to cover the bills the pregnancy left behind.”
Martha Bayne “Knocked over: On Biology, Magical Thinking, and Choice” Kim Wyatt, Sari Botton Get Out Of My Crotch: 21 Writers Respond to America’s War on Women’s Rights and Reproductive Health (South Lake Tahoe, California: Cherry Bomb Books, 2012) Kindle edition
This story shows that we women mourn the loss of our children. Abortion causes suffering because it’s a death, and leads the mourning, just like a miscarriage does. Even a person who is pro-choice and writes an article in a pro-abortion book called “Get Out Of My Crotch” still has a conscience.
