A post-abortive woman writes:
“At age 26 a second marriage ended with my third abortion. It was now legal in Arizona, so I didn’t have to run away. It was neat, clean, and fast. I woke from the anesthetic sobbing. The nurse, trying to comfort me, repeated, “It’s all right, dear. It’s over. It’s over.” I knew – that’s why I cried. But I didn’t talk about it.
The American Psychological Association announced recently that “most women who have abortions experience a sense of relief,” rather than “any lasting psychological trauma.” I felt that relief – every time.
I got on with my life, as everyone around me advised…
For so many years – I resisted – thinking about the abortion. It always hurt too much. After the first one, I would count years by their ages. I’d imagine how old each child would’ve been that year. After the second, after the third, it became too difficult to carry their ages. I knew it was a hurting thing to do. I accepted the abortions as done, as choices, awful choices, between fire and ice, between rocks and hard places…
I didn’t have three abortions because I was a bad, but simply a hurting girl, alone and denying a part of myself I could not accept. No one told me that a woman, a girl, who chooses to end a pregnancy has the right to mourn. I thought that since I had chosen abortion, I had given up that right.”
Quoted in Ruth Colker Abortion and Dialogue: Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, and American Law (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992) 51
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