One Year Later

Maybe everyone does this trick, but I do it regularly and always have: I think about where I was a year ago, two years ago, three, seven, twenty. Where was I? What was I doing? I think of my past selves in unison with me now--all of us on this day doing the thing that we have done or the thing that we will do.

March 14 and 15 will always stand out for me. It was on these days a year ago that I had my abortion.

Me now, I am sitting on my back porch. It's unusually warm in my northern city tonight, and I'm wearing a sundress and flip-flops. I had Mexican food and margaritas with a friend tonight. I came home to my boyfriend, who is hunched over his computer inside, hard at work. I pulled a beer from the fridge and came out here to clear my mind and think.

A year ago I was curled up with my boyfriend watching Cool Runnings as a cool early spring night blew against the windows. Earlier that day, I had had laminaria inserted in the first of a two-day procedure. To calm my nerves for the surgery day, I had requested this film from my childhood. The last time I had watched it, I realized, was when I had my tonsils out. Do I have go-to, pre- and post-surgery flicks? Apparently.

I think about this blog regularly. I mainly think about the women who land here, who send me emails and who comment. I hope that this blog has been helpful to anyone going through an abortion. I think about you and my heart is full of love and support for you. What you are going through is incredibly difficult, and you are so strong. You probably don't know how strong you are. If you ever need to ask me anything, as a woman who has been through this procedure, just as another lady out there in the world, or whatever else, please do not hesitate to email me.

As for me, I'm doing well. I'm here on my back porch tonight, taking a break from my life to return to this blog that I once needed to share my story. My abortion isn't my day-to-day world anymore. I think about it sometimes. I think about what my life might be like had it not happened--in that "What If?" kind of way. But the moment is always fleeting, and I never doubt my choice.

These days my focus is on my career, my future with my boyfriend, my friends and my family. Talking with friends and family about my experience has brought me closer to them. The abortion helped my boyfriend and I acknowledge our differences and, in many ways, work through them. I can't imagine the people we were then bringing a child into the world. These days, when we talk about our future, there are children, but our relationship is stable and the pregnancy would be planned.

I have been off hormonal birth control since June, when the dreaded Depo-Provera shot finally wore off. I have been waiting for my menstrual cycle to regulate to its own normal before I pull the trigger on a Paragard IUD. The boyfriend and I have been using condoms in the meantime. Both condoms and humans are faulty, and we've had a couple trips to the pharmacy for Plan B pills. I'm pretty certain these huge doses of hormones helped further throw off my system, but my period seems to have finally regulated. I'm planning a Paragard insertion closer to summertime. Some of my ambivalence about Paragard remains. The longer and heavier menstrual bleeding with the Paragard sounds pretty blech to me, but I'm willing to put up with it to avoid hormones for now. If and when I get it inserted, I will update here as I know a lot of women wonder about IUDs.

There is no doubt that deciding to have an abortion was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, but it was the only choice that was right for me.

If you are facing this situation and scared, I understand. I know. If you are ambivalent, I know. If you are conflicted, I know. There are so many women out there--1 in 3 of us--who know. And it will be okay. I, someone who never thought she would have an abortion--let alone a second trimester one, someone who was unwillingly shown her ultrasound, someone who experienced a rare complication post-op, I promise you that it will be okay.

If you are making this choice for you, without pressure from a significant other, a doctor, a friend, a parent, or anyone else, if you are doing it safely, and if know this is what you need, you are making the right choice for you. There are so many of us who can assure you: It will be okay. You will be okay.

If you ever want to ask me anything, again, please email. I have posted links on the sidebar that are meant as resources for women going through this experience. I used many of them when I was in your shoes. If you have a blog you'd like me to link to, or a resource you've found that you'd like to share, please email or comment, and I will post it.

I am 27, pro-choice and was (for a short time last year) pregnant. I conceived during menstruation, took oral contraceptives for three straight months afterward and then learned of my pregnancy at 13 weeks. I had a second trimester abortion at 14 weeks. I had a post-operative complication 10 days later. The odds of conception during menstruation is nearly* 1 in 1,000. I was one in one thousand, I'm okay, and you will be too.

Lots of love to you,
One in One Thousand

On choices and the course I've charted

I was in a friend's wedding this past weekend. I would have been six months pregnant exactly.

When I found out I was pregnant, in the little game of What If's that one imagines and plays out in her mind, I imagined calling my dear friend  J. to tell her: "I am sorry. I can't be your bridesmaid. I can't stand up there at the alter with you with my belly bursting out of that lovely eggplant purple dress you chose for me." I imagined drinking water while my friends toasted champagne. I imagined sitting at a table while my friends danced. I imagined that maybe I wouldn't go to the wedding at all. I imagined that I might wind up quickly married before my friends' long-planned wedding, that I might be moving in with my boyfriend during that wedding weekend instead, that I might be painting a baby's room in some tiny city apartment.

What if, what if, what if.

But instead, this is what happened:

I stood at the alter as two of my best friends joined in union as a couple. I was not pregnant and I was not married. I toasted them with champagne, and I danced to every song the band played. I was happy. Overwhelmingly so.

But still, there are moments. There was a woman at this wedding--a friend of the couple. She sang during the ceremony. She was 15 weeks pregnant.

At the rehearsal dinner, friends crowded her and touched her emerging belly and awed. She was only one week further along than where I had been when I had the abortion. My mind raced, and a lump rose in my throat. I walked away, took photos of some of the tables with the camera I had brought to help my friends document their weekend and got caught up in a long conversation with friends. Without too much effort, I breathed through my feelings of sadness, I grounded myself, I returned to my table for dessert, and I was fine.

That's what things are like these days. I think about the What If's, but I don't let them occupy too much real estate in my mind. They're there, and that's fine. Something would be wrong with me, I might be dealing unhealthily or repressing, if they weren't.

I recently stumbled upon a fabulous advice blog called Dear Sugar. Sugar responded to one letter writer who asked how he should know if he wants children, quoting a beautiful poem by Tomas Transtörmer:

'Tranströmer’s narrator is capable of seeing his life for what it is while also acknowledging the lives he might have had. “The sketches,” Tranströmer writes, “all of them, want to become real.” The poem strikes a chord in me because it’s so very sadly and joyfully and devastatingly true. Every life, Tranströmer writes, “has a sister ship,” one that follows “quite another route” than the one we ended up taking. We want it to be otherwise, but it cannot be: the people we might have been live a different, phantom life than the people we are.'

It's a stunning image, that sister ship setting course in a different direction. But the choices we make set us on the course we take. 'Thank you for this life!,' his narrator exclaims. And that is the wonderful thing: We can shout our gratitude both to the void for the beautiful improbability of our existence and to ourselves for making the choices we have to define our lives.

Help Indiana Women Out

Indiana's state House just passed one of the most restrictive bills on abortion rights seen in this country.

Most abortions after 20 weeks will now be illegal. In addition to its other restrictions, there is no exemption for women who are pregnant as a result of incest or rape and no exemption for women whose pregnancy threatens their life or may result in serious, irreversible harm.

The bill is passed, but I still feel there is so much we can do to support the women of Indiana.

I suggest making a donation to Planned Parenthood Indiana on behalf of Rep. Eric Turner R-Cicero, who authored the bill. (Or make a donation on behalf of whatever other co-signers you wish. A donation for each, by all means!)

Don't forget to include Rep. Turner's office address so you are sure he receives a Thank You note for your donation:

Rep. Eric Turner
5541 S. Harmon St.
Marion, IN 46953

See also Abortion Gang's write-up on this bill's passage.

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.

How I'm writing this blog

I'm am starting this blog almost a week after finding out I am pregnant. I feel like I have a bunch of entries to write to encapsulate the last six days of my life, and I want to try to keep the order right.

One thing I found in a couple of the limited abortion blogs that exist out there is that they're a bit disorganized. I understand why. This experience is draining in every sense. I feel overwhelmed by changing emotions--fear, anger, sadness, happiness, total wonder. Sorting through all those feelings, let alone sharing them, zaps me. I am sleeping okay, except for waking up early each morning having to pee, but I still feel exhausted all the time.

But I feel that it's important to share this experience and that it's important to keep it as organized as possible for anyone who might read it. Since I didn't start writing this blog right away, and I feel like it's ingenuine to backdate the entries since my feelings are constantly changing, I'm going to do my best to fill in the gaps, starting now.