The story I am about to tell is one of the most painful experiences I have ever gone through. Many of the details have been long-repressed, and as a result, it is even hard to tell this story because of how much I have forgotten. But still, after months of pondering it, sharing this story is something I’ve decided that I need to do. If not for me, and if not for anyone else, then for my two angel babies in heaven.
This upcoming November will mark five years since my abortion. I think I will spend the rest of my life mourning the loss, wondering what would have been. I hesitate to say I regret my choice, because I would never want to change what my life looks like today – happily married, a big blended family, twin baby girls. But that doesn’t mean my heart doesn’t ache for the baby that never was.
Women who get abortions are treated with a particular callousness, and I am well aware many of my readers would think it’s deserved. After all, we’re murderers, aren’t we? Clearly we don’t care about human life, the miracle of pregnancy, the gift of a child. We must be selfish, we must not have tried hard enough, we must not deserve to mourn. We should be shamed, belittled, and left in our own grief.
Maybe all of that is true. But maybe if you sit with someone in their grief, you might learn something new, too.
This is not me trying to justify abortion – mine or anyone else’s. I gave up on that awhile ago, and I’m not even sure where I stand anymore. It feels wrong to take a political stance on something that has caused me years of grief and pain, so that is not my intention with writing this.
Instead, I simply want to tell my story. To carve out a corner of space and time, if anything to simply honor my baby. I hope it brings me healing. I hope it helps someone feel less alone. I hope it brings me one step closer to peace.
The story begins in the spring of 2021. Despite a rough pregnancy and an even rougher postpartum, I wanted a second child. My then-husband was a little more skeptical. He was thinking from a practical standpoint. He was concerned about my mental health, the state of our marriage, our finances. I was thinking purely with my heart. I had a yearning so strong for another baby, it hurt. It felt like the clock wass ticking with every month my daughter aged. I had always wanted to have kids somewhat close together, and with each passing month, it was like I was watching the age gap grow and grow. The question of exactly when to grow our family was never answered, neither denied nor pursued.
Sometime the week of my daughter’s first birthday – I remember because there were gold and green balloons all over the house for her “Wild One” themed party – I found out I was pregnant.
I thought I was hallucinating, so I took another test just to be sure.
Two pink lines.
It must have been the weekend, because I remember calling my OB’s office unsure if they would even answer. A nurse called me back. She said office policy is to schedule a 7-week confirmation ultrasound only once a Dollar Tree pregnancy test is positive. She explained that those were the most accurate, that sometimes the more expensive tests were too sensitive.
I didn’t make it to the store until the next day. I rushed home with the nearly-empty grocery bag, and I eagerly ripped the box open once I was safely back in the master bathroom. Five minutes later, there it was:
One pink line.
It was negative. I wasn’t pregnant.
Confused, I found the tests from the day prior. They still showed positive. I took another of the tests I already had at home, and they were positive, but fainter than the day before.
I called my OB’s office again, this time confused and nervous. It was that day that I learned what a chemical pregnancy was. I have spent every day since telling myself that I was only five weeks along anyways, that it barely counts as a miscarriage, that it shouldn’t hurt. But it hurt. Bad.
I cried for weeks.
My then-husband did his best to both console me and hide his relief. He tried to explain that we weren’t ready anyways, that we didn’t have the money, that the timing was bad. I babbled through tears that there is never a good time, never enough money, and that we would have made it work. “If we keep waiting for the perfect time,” I sobbed, “we will be waiting forever.”
We both dropped the topic and didn’t bring it up anymore. Until three months later, when I found out I was pregnant again.
This is a good time to mention that I was on birth control the whole time. We are still not sure how it failed twice in the span of a few months, and I never used the birth control pill again. But I digress.
Two pink lines. Pregnant. Again.
I felt every emotion possible. Anxiety. Hope. Dread. Excitement. Fear.
I immediately began calculating due dates, rearranging budgets, and imagining our future as a family of four. I started whittling down my list of baby names to just my favorites, and I called my OB office again, Dollar Tree pregnancy test in hand.
Something happened before the seven-week confirmation ultrasound, though. It would be easy to say that my then-husband didn’t want the baby, that he made me get the abortion. Especially since we are now divorced, my ex-husband would be an easy scapegoat. Truthfully, for a while, I think that is how I justified it to myself. I convinced myself that because it was what my ex-husband wanted me to do, that I felt like I had no choice. That he pressured me into it. I was only twenty-one, after all, with no job, no college degree, no money. I was trapped.
But that would not be the truth. It never was. Not the whole truth anyways.
At some point, I quietly surrendered. I wrapped up my excitement and tucked it away, as if into a tiny little coffin. I believed what everyone else was telling me: that the timing was bad anyways, that there was no way I could afford another kid, that it was too soon.
My mom was the only one who voiced her opinion to the contrary, but I was already too resigned to be swayed. I felt helpless, and in a way, angry. I wanted to ask my mom, and all of the protestors outside Planned Parenthood, and all of the keyboard warriors on Facebook, for ten thousand dollars. Twenty thousand, maybe. Thirty. Surely there had to be some price tag that would change my situation. Surely if all of those people were so convicted that I was a murderer, they would help, right?
Adoption was considered briefly, but that idea was shut down, too. My ex-husband pointed out that then, our daughter would have a complete biological sibling who wouldn’t be a part of her life. I accepted the logic.
By the time I showed up to that seven-week appointment, the decision had already been made. My OB – my sweet, kind, wonderful OB – gently guided me through the process. She had already walked me through the trenches of my postpartum depression that I had only just learned to coexist with. She gave me a list of mental health providers, and recommended a clinic near me where she knew and trusted the physicians. She asked me to come back for a follow-up a month after the pregnancy ended, and I promised that I would call.
I spent the next five weeks in limbo. Exhaustion and nausea slowly took over, and I parented horizontally from the couch as much as I could, a box of plain Cheerios never too far away. I never did actually throw up, and given how sick I had been with my first daughter, and how sick I was with twin girls, I assume it must be because it was a boy. It’s impossible to know, of course, but pretending it was a boy somehow makes the grief easier to bear.
I was twelve weeks along by the time I went to my appointment. The building had security measures, I had to be buzzed in. There were protestors all down the street and in the parking lot, with signs and megaphones. I wanted to scream at them. You think I want this?!?! You think I don’t already feel like a murderer?! How are you helping other than to make women who are probably at their lowest feel like shit?
Once inside the clinic, it was as if the outside world melted away. Everyone spoke in hushed, gentle voices. I was taken to the physician’s office first, where I met with the doctor and a nurse to go over my options. The nurse and I kept glancing at each other sideways, and it wasn’t until halfway through the appointment that we figured out how we knew each other: we had gone to middle school together. Courtney1 and I had barely known each other then, but seeing a familiar face was somehow still a source of comfort. It still somehow made me feel a little less alone.
The doctor had to do one last ultrasound, just to confirm, before sending me home with the pill. She asked if I wanted to see, and despite knowing it would crush me, I said yes. I think a part of me knew that I was about to make a choice I didn’t truly want to make, and in that moment I was simply a mother who wanted one last glimpse of her baby.
I don’t know how to write about it. I just know that it makes me cry. From an outside perspective, I’m sure it’s easy to point out that my loss was also my fault. That’s the big distinction between this loss — my abortion — and my previous loss. But it was still a loss, and it still hurt. It hurt then, and it hurts now, and it hurt every day in between, and it might hurt the rest of my life. I hope it does, mainly because I deserve it, but also because the hurt is a constant reminder that I cared, that I’m not heartless.
The doctor flipped the screen around, and there he was. Tiny, but strong. Perfect. I should have cried then, but I didn’t. I didn’t allow myself to cry until eighteen months later.
I went home to an empty house. My ex-husband had dropped our daughter off at his mom’s on his way to work. I had prepared the house the best I could. I had bought one of those microwavable compresses for cramps, I lit the Bath & Body Works candle in my room, I piled my bed with all of my favorite blankets, I binged all of the Twilight movies. Around eight o’clock at night, I picked up my daughter from my mother-in-laws.
I threw the compress away afterwards. I never curled up with those particular blankets again, and I haven’t bought that scent from Bath & Body Works or watched Twilight since.
My ex-husband and I never spoke of it again.
Exactly one year later, I left, and we divorced.
Six months later, I had begun dating my now-husband. A few weeks after our first date, we had gone for a walk at sunset. I felt a deep sense of sadness, but I couldn’t figure out why. Then it hit me:
It was June. My baby boy should have just turned one year old.
For the first time since my abortion, I confided in someone else about how I felt. The grief, the guilt, the pain. My husband patiently listened as I blubbered through my story, tears streaming down my face. He didn’t judge. Instead, he just held me while I cried. When I was done, he told me that he had a baby whose birthday should have been in June, too.
His situation was different. A missed miscarriage like the one him and his ex-wife experienced is vastly different from my abortion. But they both had one thing in common. As a man, he wasn’t expected to openly talk about his grief from the miscarriage. And as a mom who chose abortion, there was no safe space for me to talk about my grief from my loss, either.
We wrapped one another in each other’s arms, and wept.
This is the part of the story where the happy ending goes. This is where I write about how I went on to get married, get pregnant again, and even had twins. This is where I should explain how everything worked out the way it was supposed to, how I have forgiven the past version of myself who was doing the best she could, how everything is okay now.
But if I wrote any of that, I would be lying.
Yes, I love my life now. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my husband is my person, that we were meant to find each other and spend the rest of our lives together. I recognize that we are immensely blessed with not one, but two more babies. All of that is true.
But I have not forgiven the twenty-one-year-old version of me, who made a decision the would send ripples of grief into the eternities. I am not sure everything is okay.
I am not sure that when I get to heaven, my baby will be waiting with open arms, ready to embrace and accept my apologies.
I am not sure I will make it to heaven at all.
Maybe I will simply make it to the gate, where a man taller than me will be waiting, arms folded, face cross. I will see myself in his face, but he will refuse to let me in.
Maybe my son will hate me forever.
Maybe I will hate myself forever.
Maybe forgiveness is farther up the road, just beyond my reach, ten, fifteen, or twenty years away.
If it is, I will find it, my shoulders sore and sagging from the weight of the consequences of my choice. I will carry that weight the rest of my life.
My grief is the price I pay for my choice.
If you made it to the end and read the whole thing, thank you.
If you’ve decided to permanently part ways with my writing, I’m sorry, I understand, and thank you for reading.
If you’ve decided to stay, thank you, too.
Regardless, thank you. When I sat down to write this piece, I wasn’t sure where it would take me, what the ending would be, or if it would make me feel better or worse. Writing this story did end up being healing, and although I have spent years wrestling with the events detailed above, and spent countless hours crying and praying, I hope I continue to find healing in years to come.
