Unfortunately, my abortion was traumatic. I was in college and hid everything about the pregnancy/abortion from my parents.v
I took the train to see my boyfriend over 600 miles away — he’d made all the arrangements. I borrowed money from two trusted friends and paid them back later.
Despite my abortion being performed in a more liberal state, I had to sit through a “consultation” about the horrors of abortion. I had no pain killer until afterwards, when they gave me a tylenol with codeine.
I thought that was the end of that. Six months later, my parents found out and threatened to disown me. My father said, “You’ve killed our first grandchild.” I ended up marrying my boyfriend out of guilt — as a way to atone for having the abortion.
I didn’t speak about my abortion for over ten years. Finally a friend and I shared our stories. Then I wrote about it in a book I published and all of a sudden other women were opening up about theirs, too.
I never regretted my decision to have an abortion. But I regret the amount of fear I felt because of other people’s reactions and how that fear caused me to make other decisions I wish I hadn’t made. Sharing our stories with is the only way to understand and support each other.
18 years later I had an ectopic pregnancy that was classified as an abortion. Without the procedure, I would have died of internal bleeding and left my three kids motherless.