Editor’s Note: This letter was written in response to Joshua Bryant’s and Jay Ballard’s articles about the proposed Amendment 26 in the Oct. 4 issue of The Reflector.
Recently, The Reflector ran two opinion pieces, for and against the passage of Amendment 26. They were both well researched and well written, but they were not both well received. Joshua Bryant’s anti-passage piece had a few positive comments, while Jay Ballard’s pro-passage article had one highly antagonistic comment – one male attacking another male for a lack of apathy toward the female plight. As a teenage mother who attempted an abortion, I can speak knowledgeably about the “choice” of abortion.
I realized I was pregnant. My peers, the media, the whole world told me there was an easy way out of the mess I had made of my life. I went to Planned Parenthood; I made the “choice”. The workers there played informative movies that depicted an RU-486 abortion as a 36-hour process that would leave me feeling relieved and happy. All I had to do was take two RU-486 pills at the clinic, then take four Misoprostol pills 24 to 48 hours later. A few risks were mentioned, but I was told that very few women ever experience negative effects from RU-486, which shuts off progesterone to the baby, or Misoprostol, which causes the woman to go into labor and birth the dead baby. This language, of course, was not used. Soothing words like “tissue” instead of “infant,” and “pass” instead of “birth” were used. I was told I might experience nausea, headache, back pain, pelvic pressure and a lot of bleeding — the exact symptoms of labor. I was sent home with propaganda and a head full of good-sounding excuses: “I’m too young to have a child,” “I have my own dreams, I would regret continuing this pregnancy;” “I’m unfit to be a mother at this time…”
I came back a week later to receive my pills. It was then the doctor examined me and discovered, contrary to her earlier estimation, that I was not four weeks along (at which time the embryo already has a brain), but almost nine weeks. The use of a chemical abortion is not recommended after eight weeks. The doctor refused to let me see the ultrasound. The doctor told me, “There is more tissue than we expected, so the termination will be more difficult, but you should be fine.” She didn’t tell me that my baby had arms, legs, fingers, toes, eyes and itty-bitty ears. She tried to talk over the sound of my child’s heartbeat, telling me I had come here for a reason; I had made this “choice” for a reason. I distinctly remember, I can still hear and see when I close my eyes, her persuasive voice saying, “What other choice do you really have?” as she held out the RU-486 to me. “What choice? I have no choice,” I told myself. “I have to keep this from everyone. No one can ever know that I am pregnant.”
I took the pills. I got the other prescriptions, one for the Misoprostol and one for an extremely strong pain medication. I walked out. Three hours later, I was in the hospital. My parents had found me, and I told them what I had done. They took me to the hospital, where a well-meaning nurse banished them from the room to tell me that I could still “continue in the way I had chosen.” Those words echo in my mind daily. I realized all my excuses; all the pressure I felt from myself and the oblivious world around me; all the selfish motives of hiding, lying and escaping responsibility had pushed me into that abortion clinic. I finally made my real choice, when the nurse closed the door on the outside world and presented the reality of “the way I had chosen.” I chose to listen to the heartbeat I had heard in the clinic, which was still echoing in my mind. I chose to watch the ultrasound, to see my child in fuzzy black and white. I chose to supplement my progesterone to the level of four times the pregnancy normal, praying that this might save and sustain my child. I reveled in every heartbeat, in every visit to the doctor that ended with, “Everything’s progressing along just fine.” I chose to deliver my daughter into this world, into the arms of a mother who had innumerable faults and had made many mistakes but had finally made one good choice.
I do not regret my daughter. She is, honestly, the best of all possible outcomes for my life. I am, however, plagued with regret every day. The clinic, the exam and words of the doctor, nurse and fellow patients haunt me. The morbid vision of my daughter, with tiny toes and fingers and a face, floating in bloody toilet water, weighs on me. I cannot imagine how I would even function if my daughter had died because of my actions.
Joshua Bryant mentioned there is a stigma toward unwed mothers in the South. Only twice in more than two years since I became pregnant have I ever felt at all criticized for being pregnant or having a child, and these two instances were merely condescending words. My family, friends, church members and even strangers have been supportive, loving and kind. My daughter wins over old ladies at the grocery and my fellow collegians. She brings a unique joy to me I had never known and could never know if I had stuck to the “choice.”
Abortion is not a choice for freedom, as it is marketed. It is a pressed decision, the first instinct of the scared and guilty that ends in pain, death and regret.