Another Statistic

Two weeks ago this past Saturday, a man broke into my apartment and tried to rape me. I fought him off, he escaped, and I suffered only a bloody nose. I am still shaken, but I am okay, and I feel lucky.

I had just moved into a new apartment, where I was living alone, and this was my second night in the new place. I have since moved into a safer neighborhood, second floor 1-bedroom apartment. My investigation is ongoing, so I can't write much about it here. Sufficed to say, I believe the offender is in jail, caught only days ago, on his way to prison, but not for my incident, unfortunately.

Why am I writing about this here, in this blog about my abortion? There are a few reasons.

What if I hadn't had the abortion:
I couldn't help but think, within minutes after the assault, that I could have been almost 8 months pregnant when this happened. Would the offender, when he first opened my door to peer in and see who was in the bedroom, skipped on raping a very pregnant woman? Would I have even been home alone or would this have even happened, as my boyfriend and I most likely would have moved in together and be living elsewhere?

Threats to my reproductive system and my sexual identity:
Thus far, I don't feel scarred sexually or emotionally by the abortion or by the attack. I am aware that these things could impact me down the road, could seep in insidiously, and I keep a check on my sexual and emotional health and happiness.

What if I had been raped:
Because I am slightly psychic but do not learn to listen to my gut, I had this thought the day before the attack: 'It would suck to be raped if you had a yeast infection.' (I had a yeast infection at the time.) Followed by, 'It would suck to be raped if you weren't on birth control.'

The emotional toll of simply having a stranger violate my personal space and attempt to violate my body, it's hard to describe. I cannot imagine the unspoken pain of women who are raped, nor can I imagine the devastation if that rape results in a pregnancy.

That there are people out in this world who would suggest that rape does not "justify" an abortion absolutely sickens me. That they would want to further control the body and destiny of a woman whose control of those very things was violently ripped from her sickens me as well. I usually don't fill this blog with much vitriol toward those people, but fuck it. Those small-minded, self-righteous urchins should feel what that violation of space and body feels like, how it shakes you to your core, how it leaves you jumping at shadows and tree branches cracking, and sobbing at your own fear in the middle of the night, and then experience a lifetime of the product of that violation. Oh, how their hollow ivory towers would crumble.

Amazingly, one of those small-minded people is a friend of mine from high school. She once posted a link to this disgusting (and so-bad-it's-almost-funny) essay that mainly uses the movie Rob Roy as its evidential proof for this opinion. This friend called me the night following the attack after I posted a note on Facebook explaining what had happened. In tears and hysterical (Please don't call your friends who were just the victim of a violent crime if you are in tears and hysterical, by the way. It's not helpful. In fact, it's upsetting.), she said how happy she was I was okay, so glad she was that I fought, how much she wanted to hear my voice. And what might her message have said, I wonder, if I hadn't been able to fight him off, if I had been raped, if I was pregnant with the rapist's child and if I chose to terminate the pregnancy? What if I had shared that on Facebook instead?

Breaking the silence:
It's not my style to be silent. (Have you noticed?) I want to share my experiences and stories from my experiences because it is important to me that there is more understanding, more compassion, more connection between a statistic (like 1 in 1,000 women on birth control will get pregnant on their period; there is one sexual assault every two minutes) and the experience (me).

The day after the attack I wrote a letter to my friends and family. At first, I intended only to send it to a handful of friends and my family members. After I wrote and edited and started adding names to the list, I kept adding more names and more names and more... Soon, I sent the email to nearly 50 friends. Within hours, I decided to post most of the email as a note on Facebook.

Responses came pouring in. Support, advice, words of love. One woman, who I only have met on two occasions and is dating a friend of mine, sent me a private message. Four years ago, in her first week after she moved to this city, she was raped. She admired me for sharing my experience, she said. My heart slammed against my chest. This strong woman, this brave person, I could not imagine what she had been through, and she was reaching out to me. There were others out there, women I knew who had been through much worse, and I wasn't alone. None of us are.

The silence is not okay. It cloaks the experience in a shroud of shame, fear. By sharing our stories, even the most difficult, we support one another.


I am considering creating a separate anonymous blog about further issues affecting women, sexual health and my own experiences moving forward from the abortion. I started this blog with the intent to chronicle one experience, and I'd like it to exist somewhat statically, so that women going through an abortion might refer to the direct experience of the abortion and my healing. However, things keep happening to me (funny how life works!), and I would like to keep sharing. I think another blog may be the answer.

But It Wasn't

I've had quite a few hits from various anti-choice blogs recently. Evidently my raw emotions in the moment of unwillingly seeing my ultrasound (Thanks again for your subersive message and/or negligence, Dr. D.) strike chords with the anti-choice community because I referred to the image I saw in that ultrasound as looking "like a baby."

The passage, specifically, refers to the moment after my gynecologist--informed that I did not plan this pregnancy, wanted to terminate the pregnancy and that I had no desire to see the ultrasound--told me I could go ahead and sit up after she had performed the ultrasound:

I sat up and opened my eyes. To my right, the hovering ultrasound glowed, its screen facing toward me still showing the image of the fetus inside of me. I only saw it for a moment, just long enough to register a little head and nose, arms and a body curled up and facing left.

It looked like a baby.

It looked exactly like the ultrasound that I had imagined for my future.

"Can you please turn that off?" I said weakly, my eyes shut again.

All that I wrote is true. It's exactly what I felt when I was in that moment. It was so upsetting, and it was the image of why terminating pregnancies is so difficult for most women. But for so many women, it wouldn't matter if they saw a fetus at 13 weeks, an embryo at six, or nothing at all. It's upsetting. It's not a happy choice.

The fact that this fetus--this potential life--had begun to take a human form was difficult to see, even for someone like me who has never believed that life begins at conception. Still, seeing the ultrasound had a profound impact on me and on my decision making process.

I researched pro-choice, pro-life and unbiased websites. I spoke to multiple doctors. I read endlessly about the developmental process of the fetus, from conception to birth. I tracked where I was at that point and looked at illustrations of what the fetus looked like and how it had developed. My extensive and exhaustive research even drew my boyfriend and I into an argument.

"You must either want this pregnancy or you are trying to make this as difficult as possible on yourself," he said.

It wasn't either of these things.

Eventually my boyfriend came to understand that I needed to know as much as possible to make my decision. I wanted to make my choice to either bring this pregnancy to term or to terminate it after exploring every facet of our situation. I exposed myself to enlightening, helpful, painful, and even some judgmental information because I wanted to make a fully-informed decision. I did not want to have any regrets.

Perhaps it did make my decision more difficult. Lots of things did: that ultrasound, the sudden bump that appeared, reading terribly derisive websites that called me a baby-killer...

Ultimately, and I have said this before too: "My choice was right for me, my partner and the potential life I carried for 14 weeks. I am grateful to be 26, unmarried and without children, paving a life path that is right for me and that will allow me to flourish as a woman and, one day, a mother."

But the above has also been quoted by both pro-choice and anti-choice websites because, simply, we have different basic beliefs. I don't believe life begins at conception. I also don't believe life begins when a potential life begins to look "like a baby." I believe life begins with sentience, something medical studies (including this JAMA article on fetal pain) find does not begin until the third trimester.

The pro-lifers believe that life starts at conception. I appreciate and respect that belief, though I do not agree with it.

I can understand how a pro-life blog might balk that I saw an ultrasound that looked like a baby and that I could still make the choice to terminate the pregnancy. I appreciate that opinion, though I do not agree with it and I do not respect any individual who believes they are worthy of judging me or my decision.

I will not force my beliefs upon any other individual, and I would ask and expect that other individuals would do the same.

For what it's worth, what I do believe is this:

I believe that I want to provide the very best for my future children.

I believe that I want to give myself the very best in my life to be able to do so.

I believe that I want to be financially sound so I am not scraping by (or helping support my parents) when I have children.

I believe that I want to have a strong, warm and loving home (and not be living out of a bag in my car, bouncing from my apartment where my parents now stay to my boyfriend and his roommates' place) when I have children.

I believe that I want to be in a solid partnership and marriage when I have children.

I believe that I have a right to choose when having children is right for me.

I believe that by living my life the way I want to live it, developing my independence and growing as a person, I will be the best damn mother to my future children.

I believe that this experience has profoundly changed me.

I believe that I am already a more patient, less judgmental and more open person.

I believe that--after years of patience, excuses for anti-choice friends and desperately seeking an understanding middle ground--I am no longer going to tolerate the damaging anti-choice rhetoric that threatens this country, intimidates and judges my fellow women and impinges on tolerance, rights and progress.

I believe now more than ever before that women (not just in this country, but across the world) deserve the very best and so rarely get it.

And I believe that in my life I will help at least some of those women find the support, strength and services they deserve.

Yes, seeing that ultrasound hurt then and it still hurts now, but I made the choice that was right for me. Ultimately, it looked like a baby, but it wasn't.

Dream Babble and Judgment

I haven't really remembered my dreams much in the last couple weeks. I had a few nightmares (other friends were pregnant; I was about to give birth; I already had one kid and was pregnant again), but I think that my subconscious mind mostly graciously granted me heavy sleep this month so I could truly rest. Unfortunately, that wasn't in the cards last night.

After a long, late night of heavy emotional conversation, I fell asleep around 4:30 AM. I slept restlessly, dreaming nightmares of my abortion happening at a protestor-heavy clinic. I woke several times before I fell into what seemed like a regular old dream:

In this dream, I am at my favorite coffee shop in the city.

(FYI: I adore this place. However, I haven't spent much time there since January because my usual absolute NEED for ONE LARGE AMERICANO PER DAY dissipated when I was pregnant. Coffee, let alone espresso, was revolting. I showed up there a few times this past month for a bagel or cookie, and the staff was baffled as they'd call out a 'Hey!' and a 'Where have you been?' and then start brewing me an Americano before I could stop them. At one point, one of the baristas said in frustration, 'Why don't you order large Americanos anymore? It used to be so easy!')

In this dream, I am at the coffee shop and I am telling the manager that I had a dream with him in it. Then, I "awake" from my dream, find myself at the coffee shop again and say, 'Weird! I just had a dream where I was telling you that you were in my dream,' and then I woke up for real, feeling very confused.

I didn't feel like that dream had much to do with anything, but it did leave me thinking that I might give a morning Americano a try today. I swung by my coffee shop on my way to work and ordered a small one.

As I stood waiting and thinking about the dream that had led me here, I overheard two of the baristas discussing a woman who comes in regularly.

"She just stares at you blankly," one guy said.

"Maybe she's in love with you," the second male barista suggested.

"I mean, she's beautiful, but what's going on with her?"

At this point, I smiled to myself, wondering who this young woman is and how she manages to so affect these two guys.

"Yeah," the second barista said, "but now we know: She's PREGNANT," he pointed at his left hand, "AND unmarried." He rolled his eyes.

Whoa. What?!

With that, my Americano was ready and the second barista offered me a flirty, twinkly-eyed smile and wished me a great day. I felt like he had just punched me in the chest. This guy has been handing me Americanos for years now, but I looked at him differently this time.


When I was still making my choice, I often wondered if I had chosen to bring my pregnancy to term: What judgment would there be if I showed up in my usual places, showing my pregnancy and unmarried?

There's an amazing thought: As an unexpectedly pregnant single woman, you are subject to judgment no matter what.

If you choose to terminate the pregnancy, the anti-choice trolls will clang their bells and beat their chests and scream about the unborn children.

If you choose to carry the pregnancy to term, the small lowlifes will point at your bulging stomach and your unringed hand and whisper their assesment of your low character.

If you choose to carry the pregnancy to term and get married, there will be those people who look at your wedding pictures, trying to discern the bump in the white folds of your dress, and pityingly remark how it's just too bad, isn't it?

Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. Damned if you don't and you get married.

Not that everyone in this world is a judgmental dick. I'm not that cynical. But man, I felt like I saw a shining example of the reverse judgment I might be receiving right now. That moment was a small glimpse into an alternate reality.

I believe in synchronicity, and I don't think it's a coincidence that I had this dream that led me to a morning coffee for the first time in weeks, only to experience what I did there.

I went to bed last night weighted by judgment from some self-righteous anti-choice urchins who had linked to my blog last night, weighted by my own self-judgment and fear. I woke up and went for a coffee and saw what kind of judgment is reserved for unmarried women like me who do choose to bring their pregnancy to term.

Judgment is everywhere. I made a mistake last night in internalizing some of it. Thanks, beautiful Universe, for slapping me out of it and reminding me that ill-informed conjecture and graceless judgment are the products of narrow minds and small people.