I had an abortion in 2022, two months before Roe v Wade was overturned. In retrospect, I did it for no real reason, besides being driven by fear. I was and still am happily married; we were beyond financially stable. The only thing missing was being away from home for work, meaning no real support system besides us two, and we had no opportunity to move back to our home at that time. That alone, in the moment, seemed enough, along with the great stress my husband suffered from work. But now that time has passed, and we have been blessed with a child that was planned, I cannot help but look back and see how incredibly immature and stupid the choice to abort was.
It took less than a week to get pills in the mail, ordered online. I remember so vividly having to talk to a counselor before they could be shipped out; I received the call on international women’s day. The irony to this day makes me feel some type of way.
It is no one’s fault but mine, but I do feel slightly robbed of true informed consent. I feel brainwashed by the popular modern narrative that an abortion is no big deal – especially a pill abortion, like I had. It’s really easy once you’ve been told since you were a teenager by all these people that abortion isn’t a big deal to feel very removed from the reality of it all. Until I got pregnant on purpose, I never realized how quickly the baby forms. It never dawned on me how hollow the argument “it’s not a heartbeat it’s an electrical pulse” is until I heard my current child’s heartbeat on an ultrasound. Isn’t that the most simplistic description of a heartbeat? Our adult heartbeats are also electrical pulses – sent by a brain. A heart doesn’t beat without something telling it to. I never knew how alive a baby is even from the moment of conception. “Clumps of cells” do not grow, expand, build an entire person if they are not, by some definition, living.
Had I really, truly known all this, I would have never aborted. I wouldn’t have been able to bear it. The arguments around abortion and the fetus (which is just a stage of development of a human life) are all purposefully twisted to make it sound as nonchalant as possible. There was nothing nonchalant about what I did. It has remained in my head all these years. I look at my child and think, dear God, what if it had been you? What if I aborted you, and never knew how amazing you were? It crushes me.
I try to make peace with myself, with how utterly pointless my choice was. It wasn’t worth it, and I hate carrying around this secret, that I feel I can’t be ashamed and hurt and regretful of my abortion because it’s “no big deal.” I will never be the same and if nothing else good came from my decision, I am at least humbled to know that my opinion has changed and I will never champion for abortion ever again.
