it can be incredibly easy for people to discuss women\u2019s bodies without considering women\u2019s lives, to debate hypothetical scenarios without putting a name or face to on their debate. i am not an abstraction. this is my story.<\/p>\n
a week after i got accepted into grad school, i found out i was pregnant alone in a grocery store bathroom. the first step was remembering who i was, and that i had to get out of the bathroom. that took about an hour. the next step was walking out of the store without showing the world the total haze i was in.<\/p>\n
the only thing that could make the situation feel real was by telling people, but i had no idea what i was in for. the responses i got for the next 48 hours included:<\/p>\n
\u201ctake a deep breath. you can do this. it\u2019s scary right now, but you\u2019re going to be a great mom.\u201d \u201cyou have a life inside of you now.\u201d \u201cyou\u2019re going to have the baby right? because you know that i\u2019m against abortion.\u201d \u201cdid you know that i\u2019m against abortion?\u201d \u201cwhat are you going to do?\u201d \u201cwho\u2019s the father?\u201d what does he want to do?\u201d<\/p>\n
the man that impregnated me called me in five minute intervals to make sure that i was going through with the abortion. he left money in my mailbox when i wasn\u2019t home. i never saw him again. he got to walk away a free man.<\/p>\n
not everyone i talked to was against abortion in general, but they sure did not like the idea of me getting one. abortion was a dark cloud as far as everyone was concerned. abortion was voldemort. just saying the word made me feel like i was summoning the dark lord himself. i don\u2019t think that was the intention of my peers, but when society does not openly talk about abortion as a viable option, how were they supposed to think an abortion was a viable option for me?<\/p>\n
i am the type of person that needs reassurance. it\u2019s like medicine. but for this decision in particular, i had a horrible gut feeling about what everyone was saying to me, and i knew i had to stop listening to everyone. i needed to clear my head and figure out what i wanted.<\/p>\n
i took the simon and garfunkel cd out of my car that i had been sulking to all week and put in genesis. i drove to a planned parenthood to get more information from a gynecologist, and it was the most amazing experience. i\u2019m not kidding. this doctor was calm, rational, and non-judgmental. she was the first person to assure me how legitimate of an option that abortion was. i have anxiety and previous trauma, so i really needed to know what the best option was for me mentally and physically. after discussing the options, i realized an abortion would be difficult, but would be the least amount of impact on my body and my life.<\/p>\n
at the clinic i decided to terminate the pregnancy with medication. the doctors give you one pill at the clinic which stops the growth, and another that you take at home which releases it from your system. it\u2019s very similar to having a heavy period, but it\u2019s the period from hell.<\/p>\n
i listened to all of the instructions the doctor was giving me, and suddenly i totally panicked. i had never heard of anyone going through this before. i felt so alone, i felt so dirty, i felt so scared. i kept thinking, what will happen to me after i do this? i left the clinic in a panic without taking the medication. i was so upset with myself for leaving, i definitely didn\u2019t want to go through with the pregnancy, but i was so scared of going through this alone. i decided to reach out to a family friend who has always been incredibly wise in my life, and little did i know, she had an abortion at my age. i\u2019ll never forget what she told me, \u201ci definitely wasn\u2019t ready for a child, and i knew what i had to do. it was hard, but i don\u2019t regret it. by the end of the year i was just fine, and you\u2019re going to be just fine too.\u201d<\/p>\n
that was it. that was what i needed to hear.<\/p>\n
the next day i went to the clinic by myself, and i took the pill. what came after involved a lot of pain, and a lot of grief. but one thing that did not come after, was regret. if i had to go back in time, i would make the same decision all over again. when you do look back, you need to remember that it was the right decision for you at the time you made it. in the present, the most important time in your life.<\/p>\n
i want everyone to know, that it is okay to let yourself grieve and feel emotions for this process. there is honestly no easy option when you find out you\u2019re pregnant. it\u2019s going to be a big bag of feelings no matter which path you choose, you just have to find the path that you\u2019re willing to feel for. this spring will be two years since i had it done, and i can tell you that i\u2019ve made some incredible friends that have had abortions, accepted mine, and were even happy to hear about mine.<\/p>\n
i\u2019ve had several women tell me that they\u2019re so relieved to hear me openly talk about my abortion, because it gives them hope that they could get over something like that too. i think the majority of women think in their heads \u201ci fully support women having the choice to get an abortion, i\u2019m just not sure that i could make that choice for myself.\u201d of course we think this! even though we praise women having the right to choose, how often do we talk about the actual choice of having an abortion? do we all know the different choices of abortions? do we know the symptoms and how they compare to giving birth?<\/p>\n
there\u2019s something that i want to emphasize the most here: overall, being pregnant was a traumatizing process. it\u2019s obviously something emotional enough that i felt i needed to write about it for you all to read. but, it\u2019s not for the reasons you might think. from the moment i found out i was pregnant, i knew i did not want to go through with the pregnancy. the trauma comes from the isolation and wrong-doing that came with getting an abortion.<\/p>\n
i realize that two years ago i had an incredibly difficult decision to make, but honestly, i just feel fortunate that i had the opportunity to make a decision. to women out there that have had to make any choice or faced any outcome from a pregnancy, you\u2019re not alone, and you\u2019re strong as hell, because you\u2019re facing a battle that\u2019s much bigger than yourself. let\u2019s keep reminding women and girls everywhere that they deserve to have options too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
it can be incredibly easy for people to discuss women\u2019s bodies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_世界杯2022亚洲预选赛b组 ":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[296],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20719"}],"collection":[{"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/世界杯2022亚洲预选赛b组 ?parent=20719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}