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.