I could tell you about why I don’t think human life begins at conception. I could write pages about what the legal practice of abortion does to control population growth, sustain women’s rights, and reduce crime. I could talk about rape and incest, coat hangers and back alleys, unwanted children and why my body is my property. But I won’t.
I’m here to tell you what you probably won’t have heard before: what it’s like to have to go through one yourself. Because with all the literature you can find on the pro-choice movement, with all you hear about why it should be legal and why it is not murder, you almost never, ever, hear anybody stand up and say: “I have had one, and I am not ashamed.”
So I’m saying it. I have had an abortion.
I’m just like the rest of you. I go to school, I spend too much time on the TTC, I love my family, and plan to have my own one day. Had you found yourself confronted with the burden of a pregnant belly at age 19, those of you who have ambiguous feelings on the subject, and I’m sure some of you who consider yourself “pro-life” now, would have felt just as I did, and would have chosen what I chose.
Just like millions of women every year, I did not become pregnant through any lack of vigilance. My boyfriend and I had a condom breakage, so, like any responsible couple, we got the morning-after pill.
And it failed.
We have all heard the numbers on birth control methods: pill, 99.8 per cent effective, IUD, 99.7 per cent effective. But statistics really don’t ever mean anything to you until you become one yourself.
I had taken probably more than a dozen pregnancy tests in my life. But this time, I almost knew. I had been vomiting for days, at first thinking it was a bug. I had looked at the window on the urine stick before, but I was shaking when I looked this time. And even though I was almost certain when I saw the two stripes, my heart still fell into my stomach. And I bawled.
I had done whatever I possibly could to prevent it, and yet there I was. 19 years old, with less than $200 in my bank account (not even enough for an abortion in the US). Full of ambitions and aspirations, looking forward to finishing my education, traveling, professional school; expanding my life.
In other words, I was just like any one of you. Can you be so certain that, if you had found yourself in my shoes, you would have chosen the other road?
My boyfriend (who I am still with) was visiting his family in British Columbia, and I could not get ahold of him. So I didn’t tell anybody at first, I wanted him to be the first to know. That evening, I sat alone in my apartment, trying to distract my mind with movies and television. But nothing helped. I had never felt so alone.
I knew exactly what I was going to do, and not for a moment did I hesitate.
The next day, I marched to the nearest health clinic, confirmed the urine test with a blood one, and made arrangements for an abortion. When I was finally able to tell my boyfriend, he did not question my decision, since he felt the same way.
The clinic, protected by bullet-proof doors, was not full of prostitutes and drunken, irresponsible teenagers. There was one obvious hooker there, and one very distraught girl. But there was also an older black woman, at least 40, and also a South Asian couple, the man lovingly caressing his wife’s back. I counted also a mother with a toddler, and another student, Chinese, reading a math textbook. It was like any other Torontonian vignette.
The procedure was a bit scary, as you can imagine. I chose to have the surgery where you are kept awake, because it takes only 15 minutes and I wanted to get it over with. But the doctor was kind and compassionate, the nurses warm and sympathetic. And it was over before I knew it.
I would like to be able to tell you that I cried afterwards, that I felt some sense of grief-many women do. But I didn’t. All I felt was relief. I felt like me again, with my future as open and bright as it had been a month earlier.
But I didn’t go home and sleep, as I wanted to. I went to work.
Like most of you, I have a Joe-shit job to pay the bills, and I couldn’t exactly say to my boss “I’m taking Thursday off to have an abortion.” So, like many women (as the nurses told me) I bit my lip and went to work.
We live in a society where abortion is accepted, but not openly. There is not a single fully legal thing that you can do that you will be so ostracized for talking about. We accept the act in writing, but for heaven’s sake don’t talk about it.
Women are forced into silence, just as they cannot talk about rape, sexual abuse, domestic violence, and eating disorders. Like so many of our pains, we are marginalized, sent to the counselor’s office, kept out of sight and out of mind.
We are told we have the choice; we are told that that choice is accepted. But it is not.
And yet, that choice is made by tens of millions of women every year. No matter where you get your figures from, the numbers are staggering: anywhere from one in two to one in three American women have an abortion before they are 40. Supposedly more than 40 million abortions take place every year.
Think about that. Each and every one of you knows somebody close to you-at least one woman-who has had an abortion. It could be your sister, your mother, your girlfriend, your aunt, your co-worker. Are they really all murderers?
We are not honest about how pregnancy is really dealt with in this country. Until we accept a woman’s decision, we will never achieve genuine freedom of choice. People will continue to lie about how they feel about the issue, saying one thing and doing another. Abortion is so widespread that I guarantee many of you, pro-choice and anti-abortion alike, have mothers who have had one and haven’t told you.
So to those of you who have had one, you have nothing to be ashamed of. To those of you who will have one, you will be joining the ranks of almost half the women in Canada.
And to those of you who think that if you had gotten pregnant at 19 you would have kept it, I ask you to reconsider that assumption, and reflect on what that really means. Because if you’re really honest with yourself, you’ll realize that you probably would have done exactly what I did.
Melissa Richter is a 3rd-year science student at the University of Toronto. She has not used her real name.
