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
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