11.28.2014
Media

My name is Heather. I’ve had 3 abortions. I had them at ages 21, 27 and 35. The reason why? I didn’t want children, didn’t want to go thru pregnancy and delivery. Putting a child up for adoption was simply not something I was willing to do. It was as simple as that.

Why didn’t I want children? Too many reasons to give here. I have no regrets and would likely abort if I were to become pregnant again.

How did I feel being pregnant? Like a hostage. Like my life was not my own. Like I was being invaded and colonized. I wanted it OUT of me. My life was on hold.

How did I feel after the abortion? Relief. Gratitude to the amazing, kind and wonderful people at the women’s clinics. Painfully aware of my privilege in that I lived in cities with easy access to abortion and wonderful clinics and that I could afford to pay for the procedures myself. I felt I had my life back and I could continue what I was doing before I got pregnant.

Thank You to all for this project and others like them. It’s very necessary. Sometimes I think about walking around with a T-shirt that says: 3=The number of abortions I’ve had 🙂

But I know not everyone gets an abortion because they want to and it could be triggering for some who have had abortions or fertility issues so I hesitate to do that.

(Also, a shirt that says 1= the number of times I’ve been sexually assaulted)

The idea behind the t-shirts is to put it out there instead of covering up what is a fact of life for many, many people.