How did I miss this on Sunday?
One woman, now in her 40s, tells the story of her reproductive life: Two unintended pregnancies, one abortion, three births. I like this essay because it blurs the lines between “women who have abortions” and “women who have babies.” More often than not, they’re the same women.
Her essay also emphasizes the shame that women still feel about the choice to terminate pregnancies, and the shame that they feel about getting accidentally pregnant in the first place.
I had neglected to use birth control only once, one unexpected and regrettable night, but there it was: I was pregnant, just like the girls I had presumed stupid for being shocked that they were pregnant “after just the first time!” This predicament had no happy answer for me, and I hurried anonymously past the line of screaming protesters outside Planned Parenthood. “You made your bed, now lie in it” resonated strongly as I lay in the recovery room, limp and exhausted. Raised Protestant, I felt the pain was deserved, for my irresponsibility.
I hear this over and over again from educated, pro-choice women who feel they “should have known better.” And this shame isn’t problematic just because it makes women feel unnecessarily guilty — it can have very real medical consequences when women aren’t comfortable sharing their history with their doctors.
On medical forms in the next years, I confessed my abortion when asked. But after I had my first child, I stopped. What doctor could tell how many times I’d been pregnant? Why have to stand in that shadow over and over? When my husband and I moved to a small, rural, conservative town after our second child was born, I had a new reason not to tell: the fear that I might be judged on moral grounds. At the only OB-GYN practice in town, there were Bible storybooks in the waiting room, and one of the doctors, a woman, wore a large gray metal cross.
How many young women do you think would feel comfortable asking that doctor for birth control pills?
But the soul of her essay comes at the end, where we walk away with the necessary reminder that this is all very, very complicated:
The second time I was pregnant when I didn’t want to be, I was 40 years old. Two kids in school, a teaching job I loved, my life all set. Condoms weren’t perfect, apparently, and so much for the diminishing fertility of the older woman. There were so many reasons not to have another child: my first two childbirths were hard, with two babies in intensive care. They emerged healthy, but I didn’t want to test my good fortune again. Not having planned to be pregnant, I hadn’t taken the right vitamins, with folic acid to prevent spina bifida, and I had wine at Thanksgiving. I was older now, at a higher risk for genetic problems. And I felt empty and tired, having spent the preceding six months trudging through life after my sister-in-law’s death from breast cancer. This just couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t tell anyone.
I cried and made appointments for an abortion in two different cities (the procedure was not available in our town). The first clinic was so crowded that my husband and I finally gave up — we had to pick up our children from school. The next week, when I thought I was miscarrying, I felt relieved. But the ultrasound technician said it must have been a twin, “because you’ve got a live one in there.” Later, in the second city, feeling both dread and happiness, I decided to be pregnant: at the mall, I bought a soft cap for the new baby.
Over the next few months, other mothers in town came to me and whispered their “so sorry”‘s and their stories of crying alone in their cars when they were pregnant with the third one. They pointed quietly at their toddlers as we all swooped in and out of the elementary schools to help serve breakfast or carry in the science-fair projects, or to pick up children for swimming or piano. A small tribe welcomed and comforted me with their stories as I came to accept my secret and commonplace plight.
Of course I love our third child, who arrived safely and won the prize for the least amount of time spent in intensive care (three hours) and most months of being breast-fed (20). And he loves me back. Life is never sweeter than when we peel an orange together, or when he grabs my hand and points to the couch. “Want to snuggle?” he says, and we do, his arms around my neck, both of us perfectly content.
If I’d had a second abortion, almost no one would have known. I would just be the college professor with two kids, lipstick on and library books returned on time, and, however much I might have to say, I wouldn’t tell the story.