Some things were done a little differently in the south. For example, whenever a girl was knocked up in the small, Georgia town where I was raised, she got married. It was as simple as that. And as crazy as it sounds, I knew two girls who were fifteen– the age of my daughter –when they took on the grown-up roles of wife and mother. They were too young to even drive themselves to their obstetrician appointments, or anywhere else, for that matter. As most parents saw it, though, if they were old enough to have sex, they were old enough to accept the repercussions of their actions. Of course, the shotgun unions weren’t destined for the long haul, and they usually crash landed in divorce court before the five year mark. But not before they’d had at least one more baby and had been saddled with no hope of ever pursuing the life they once dreamed of.
I was seventeen years old when my birth control failed, and like anyone that age should have been when they found out they were pregnant, I was scared. That dark ring in the center of the home pregnancy test spelled out my future and it wasn’t one full of rainbows and sunshine. I would become another statistic; a young divorcee who had been battered and bruised. I would eventually be that single mother who had no skill or education, struggling everyday to put food on the table, that is, if our fights didn’t escalate to a fatal level before I found the courage to walk away. THAT was the life I saw and not the one I wanted.
My boyfriend, who was twenty when I got pregnant, had it all figured out. He said we were going to get married and have a family anyway, so we would just start our life together sooner than expected. He swore he would take care of me–he promised everything would be okay. I wanted desperately to believe him, but deep down I knew it was another vow he would break. When I resisted his plan, telling him we were too young to be parents, his happiness of jump-starting our future swiftly turned to anger. Once again, everything was my fault.
After days of non-stop fighting and emotional explosions, he took away my right to choose by hurling me backward against the open tailgate of a pickup truck. I bounced off of it, landing face down on the driveway, but as I lay there my thoughts weren’t about what could happen to the baby I carried–I wondered how I was going to explain my fall and whatever marks it left behind to the friends and gawkers around us. Lying had become a knee-jerk reaction.
I didn’t miscarry from the impact, but the damage done was irreversible, and when the ultrasound showed that the placenta had begun to tear away from the uterine wall, my doctor labeled the complication ‘high risk’ for both me and the fetus. Sure, I could have had my cervix sewn shut and gone to bed for the duration of my pregnancy, but I was just a kid myself. There was no way I was emotionally able to handle that. At that point, terminating the pregnancy was the best option for me, but even then it was far from easy.
Don’t misunderstand– there was never a moment where I didn’t want to have the baby, but I was only seventeen years old. And for every reason my boyfriend and my heart threw at me to keep it, my head countered with logical, reality busting rebuttals why I shouldn’t have.
Few people knew about my pregnancy and even fewer knew about the abortion that followed the very public tailgate tumble. Those who were sober enough to retain what they’d witnessed that night gossiped briefly around town about a miscarriage, but no one knew enough to back-up the tales. All of the reasons I had an abortion were in my best interest, but even then I was terribly ashamed of terminating my pregnancy. Because of that, I let their assumption stand. In a way, I began to believe it myself because it was easier to swallow than the truth.
I was still in denial five years later when my pregnant stepsister and I were escorted through a sea of angry protesters who threw things at us while screaming “baby killers” as we entered the clinic for her abortion. My mind didn’t race back to the time I sat with my boyfriend in the waiting room of a similar one years earlier, because it was a painful memory I had suppressed. In fact, it wasn’t until I wrote the first draft of BROKEN four years ago that the shame I’d lived with for so many years finally lifted and I was able to say I’d had an abortion out loud.
The thing is, though, I wasn’t a person who used abortion as a means of birth control– it was accidental. I was someone who had gotten pregnant by a man who was physically and emotionally abusive, the pregnancy was high risk, and I was a teenager.
I know now that the miscarriage I had in between my daughter and son wasn’t God’s way of punishing me for the abortion I’d had so many years ago. And it wasn’t the reason I’d had such difficulty conceiving my son. Those would have been cruel punishments and I don’t believe God operates in that way. I don’t wonder what my life would have been like if I’d made a different choice because I already know the answer to that– a sad and painful one. I don’t live with fear of being judged for my choice anymore either. If people do judge, they’re not who I want in my life anyway. I now stand behind the choice I made long ago, hold my head high, and speak openly about it. I’m no longer ashamed–I have no reason to be.
If I had to relive that time in my life, would I do things differently? Some, but my life experiences are what has shaped the person who I am today and that, my friends, I wouldn’t change for the world. I’ve even asked myself if I would choose abortion again and the answer is absolutely. Why? Because it’s my life, my body, and my right to choose.
Big, big, biiiig hugs to you <3 *boob smooshes*
I can't even imagine going through anything as tough as what you had to. But you're absolutely right. Everything that happened shaped and formed you into the amazing woman you are today, and I know I love that woman.
Thank you so much, Britt! And your boob smooshes mean the world to me.
I am glad that you choose to share these painful memories. Abortion was a hot topic when I was a teenager three decades ago. Sadly it is still a hot topic. Perhaps it will always be that way. Young ladies need to hear stories like yours to see a more complete picture and make informed life decisions.
Like you, I fear abortion will always be a hot topic. Especially when politicians try again and again to take our rights over our bodies away from us.
People are quick to jump for the easy way out of an ugly snarl, which an unplanned pregnancy can sometimes be. What they don’t understand, though, is that abortion- for most anyway -is far from easy.