In the first week of March this year, I saw one too many ill informed Facebook posts that were aimed at abortion. It prompted a lengthy post of my own, and I’m expanding my stance here. An abortion is also known as dilation and curettage or D&C. It is the name of a medical procedure, separate from the decision to end a life.
I like to think of myself as a life bringer. I had my 3 boys in 2001, 2003, and 2006, before becoming a surrogate mother in 2008, 2010 and 2012. The last one was a twin pregnancy. I then had my own twin pregnancy and miscarriage in 2017.
I’ve carried 9 children underneath my heart at one time, and 7 of them are out in the world being loved by their parents, immensely. They are miracles. I love life.
I’ve also had an abortion.
My Last Pregnancy
When I found out I was pregnant in 2017, it was after a sleepless night where my back pain kept waking me up. I was job hunting at the time and thought it might have been stress. I went to the California Hospital of Culver City on February 17. The pain was so bad, I learned I was allergic to Morphine that night. The pain was on and off, all weekend. I felt a dull ache in my back and through my chest. Sunday night, I kept waking up in pain and vomiting. It was bad, but the relationship I was in, was new enough that I didn’t want to wake him up and bother him with it. In the morning, I asked my boyfriend to drop me off at the ER on his way to work (2 miles away). I insisted he wouldn’t have to wait with me. He told me to call an ambulance and left. (The emotional abuse started early, but the verbal abuse didn’t start until a few weeks later.)
I called 911 and after the ambulance ruled out a heart attack, they drove me to County Hospital. It was my gall bladder. Before they admitted me and transferred me to Kaiser Permanente on Monday, February 20, I found out that I was 3 weeks pregnant. It was so early that the test on Friday (just a couple of days before) was negative.
After only dating for six weeks, we were pregnant, and we weren’t in love. My first thought was that I didn’t want the pregnancy. I wanted pain relief. Being with child meant I couldn’t take something that might hurt the pregnancy I didn’t want in the first place.
Within days, I decided I couldn’t go through an abortion, and adoption was the better choice. Someone would benefit from it, even if it wasn’t me. Because of my history of pulmonary embolisms and Factor Five Leiden, I was immediately started on Lovenox injections. I had to self inject blood thinners daily, with a plan to reverse the effect with Vitamin K at birth, so we wouldn’t bleed out.
We rekindled our romance and talked about a future. He wanted to name the baby Samir or Samantha. I was still on the fence, and went along with what he wanted, hoping our relationship would improve.
My doctor didn’t mince words. She let me know early that there was a great chance I would miscarry, and tried to convince me to abort to save myself from the difficult pregnancy ahead. I changed doctors and my second doctor said the same thing. She also offered to walk me through whatever my choice was.
I was going back and forth with the idea of abortion, adoption, or keeping it. I had an ultrasound on my gallbladder, but the tech was nice enough to show me the growing sac in my uterus. The baby was too small to see at that point. Days later, on the 27th, I was admitted to the hospital again because of the pain.
The pain from my gallbladder, constant rotation of narcotics and the toxicity of my gallbladder infection meant I was being monitored closely. It was still the first trimester, and I was wheeled in for an emergency gall bladder removal on March 1. They would have preferred to wait until the second trimester.
After the procedure, I went home with a rounding belly and an inattentive boyfriend. That night, I decided I didn’t want to live like that. I sent a group text to my family and in the morning, my brother, nephew and niece came over to change my locks while I told him it was over. (This is when the verbal abuse started. I would later let him in and back out of my life several times, and learn it only takes about an hour for me to change four doorknobs and four deadbolt locks on my own.)
On March 7 at my post operation obstetrics appointment, I found out that my child split into identical twins. There were two tiny sacs with two blipping heartbeats on the ultrasound monitor. In an instant, I knew I wanted these children. They were a miracle I was given, and I would fight for them. My boyfriend and I celebrated moments of connection between his manic moments of verbal abuse and constant control.
This was three years ago, this month.
The Day My World Paused
April 19, was planned as a normal day for me. It was a Wednesday and my boys were going to their Dad’s house after school. I had a doctor’s appointment and Kid2’s IEP the same afternoon. I was broken up (again) with the boyfriend. Some random fight made him move out again, and I was okay with that.
Just before the second trimester, around week 11, I went in for the Nuchal translucency exam. The ultrasound technician was friendly and talkative, until suddenly, he wasn’t. He excused himself to get my doctor, even though my appointment with her was in a few hours.
Their heartbeats stopped about a week prior, and I didn’t know something was wrong until he became quiet and excused himself.
I would have loved to reabsorb my lost twins. I would have patiently waited to birth them naturally. This was not an option. The first person I told was one of my sisters. I felt strong enough to call and tell her. The minute I heard her voice, and she heard the pain of my silence, I lost my composure and cried out my news.
My perinatologist felt it was medically necessary to have an abortion, even though I tried to convince her to let me reabsorb them. I walked over to my obstetrician’s office from the perinatologist as my world shattered around me. She confirmed what the perinatologist said, and scheduled my abortion. In my grief, I was prepared to look for more opinions.
I told my boyfriend over the phone. His first reaction was to blame me and hang up on me. His second reaction was to be present for me in a way I had never experienced from him before. I was supported in our grief at first.
I left the doctor’s office and went straight to my son’s school for his Individualized Education Plan meeting. When I got to their school, my oldest was outside, having fun with his friends. I remember watching him laughing and wondering how he would react to my miscarriage. He wasn’t thrilled about the pregnancy, but my younger two wanted their new siblings. I never imagined Kid1 being hateful, and he wasn’t. He was compassionate and empathetic in a way I didn’t expect. I sat in the meeting, discussing Kid2’s needs, and doing my best to temporarily ignore my grief to make sure I was present enough to advocate for him. The school staff I had known through the years did their best to hold space, and watch for my needs. I powered through as much as I could, and somehow held it together. The boys would be with their Dad for the rest of the week, and I asked him to keep them so I had space to heal during my custody weekend from the operation.
The Procedure
In the predawn hours on the Friday of my abortion, I walked into the waiting room with my boyfriend. He held my hand as I cried. When I was called in, he wasn’t allowed to come with me. I was suddenly on my own and I couldn’t stop crying.
I could feel my nurse’s disgust for me. Her movements around me were mechanical and her contempt was palpable. I was upset, but she knew I was there for an abortion. She saw my situation as optional. In a world of general surgery, she saw amputations and heart valve replacements. She told me that if I didn’t want an abortion I should just have the baby.
She had no fucking idea.
It wasn’t medically necessary for her to know the situation around my procedure. There are laws about what she had a right to know to support my care. HIPAA laws are strictly enforced with heavy penalties. She had no right to know why I was there for an abortion, but I couldn’t take her psychological daggers on top of my grief.
I told her I had been carrying my babies even after they had died. I had known they were lost, and in my body for days at this point. It wasn’t any easier to sit with her as she shared my grief, than it was with her contempt. Telling her more than she had a right to know made her pity me. Nothing could make me feel better.
The post op nurse kept me too sedated to cry. Before the general anesthetic fully wore off, she gave me both Dilaudid and Percocet in post op. My pain medication upon discharge was a prescription for 800 mg of ibuprofen. I was quiet and high for at least 24 hours. My belly was already flat within hours of the procedure.
Mental Anguish
In my teens, growing up in a Christian household meant my Mom gave me books on premarital sex and abortions. My children were deceased, but I couldn’t stop imagining all of the gory details I had learned an abortion entails. I couldn’t stop imagining my children being ripped from my body.
I grew up seeing graphic pictures of aborted babies in an attempt to stop women from ending pregnancies.
This didn’t help me one bit. The decision was taken from me, but I still carried the weight from the opinions of others, on the abortion I needed to have for medical reasons. I had the graphic image of what their little bodies would look like, vividly in my mind.
An Abortion is a Procedure
An abortion is a medical procedure. The idea of life and choice are separate from the actions taken during a surgery where I was put under a general anesthetic, and medical professionals performed what they were trained to do, to support my health. The ob/gyn that performed my surgery was visibly pregnant with her own child, and I can only imagine how difficult this must have been for her. She was a professional and would have never let me know, even if I were to ask.
I’ve had other procedures. My gallbladder was removed just weeks before this. My tonsillectomy was a month apart of my wisdom teeth extraction, both under a general anesthetic in 1996. I had a c-section in 2012.
The difference is that on top of the physical recovery I needed from the procedure, I had extreme guilt and fear over the removal of my children that were already gone. If the stigma around my abortion and miscarriage wasn’t as terrible as it was, maybe my loss wouldn’t have been so profound. I doubt it. I still lost my children.
I Had an Abortion
It’s hard to talk about abortions and miscarriage. They aren’t the same thing. Pregnancy loss is painful and hard to talk about, but a lot of women need to have an abortion on top of a miscarriage.
It’s hard to be in a relationship, unsure if you will survive that version of love. It’s hard to navigate, with or without children, or through pregnancy. The choice so many people see as an easy decision, really isn’t.
I had an abortion. It was a pause, and life continued.
We named our children, Sunny and Rain.
In the days after my procedure, I would call the various hospital departments to try to locate and have my children released, for cremation.
In the days after my abortion, I would plant a couple of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow bushes in their memory, after packing away my maternity clothes. The cashier at the Armstrong Garden Center in Pasadena was so moved by my grief, she handed me two crystal angels to remember them by.
A week and a half after my abortion, I started my first full time job with benefits, in Santa Monica. (I’m still there.) I would wake up each morning, holding my belly and biting my lip though tears. I got the boys ready for school and left for work. I’d get home, make dinner and jump through what ever hoops my boyfriend had for me. In his grief, I became the focus of his anger and abuse.
On October 12, 2017 I prepared to release their ashes. I bought myself a bouquet of flowers and drove to Will Rogers Beach, just north of Santa Monica. I released their ashes with a couple of lisianthus blossoms and watched the sunset. I think of them daily, even though I had a procedure to abort them.
I wrote posts categorized as My Miscarriage throughout this blog. It’s only been at the end of 2019 that I was able to hold my maternity clothes, and offer them to a friend going through her first pregnancy.
I would have loved to raise my children, but the cost of that relationship was death. With the abuse, if I hadn’t lost my twins, I might have lost my life. I’m certain of that.
Politics and Agency
Abortion is a procedure outside of a pro-life or pro-choice debate. There is no other word for my experience. As I was looking for an image for this post, it was hard to find one that doesn’t violently attach a choice to the procedure. I’m using my own pictures, instead. This is all I have to remember them by. Legislation is unclear on medical practices because most politicians don’t actually practice medicine. Belief rallies are speaking in riddles that won’t address the topic. You don’t know what someone is facing until they’ve shared it with you. A procedure has little to do with the decision around bringing life into the world.
This isn’t about feminism.
Consider how cruel it would have been to force me to carry my deceased children for how ever long it took for my body to reject them, only to suffer the birth, and postpartum recovery without a child to look forward to. Where is the closure in that? The medical risk of bacteria from death was what prompted me to accept my procedure. The real risk to my health and my older sons being without their mom is what made me submit to it.
Don’t add your hang ups about a medical procedure onto someone else’s already difficult journey.