I Have Had an Abortion, and I’m Proud

In honor of our latest almost-confirmed Supreme Court Justice, here’s a little story about the right he’s straining his pants to take away. It was from real life, of course.

***
“Insides”, November 1998

“I’ve figured out what it is about you that I don’t like. It’s that you are too passive. Plus, you’re unfeminine.”

I knew all along, really, but I didn’t let myself believe it. It was too big, too much for me to handle on top of everything else. But it wasn’t a surprise. My pants felt tighter, and I was breaking out worse than I ever had in my adolescence. I felt bigger; but that wasn’t all. I felt I was more.
My period was two months late.

“I like girls that really know how to show themselves off. You know, high heels, stockings, miniskirts up to there. Makes me want to fuck them.”

We were in Subway and he was embarrassing me.

Burping wasn’t rude, according to his rules of behavior. He did it often, loudly, in public, becoming angry when I was offended–as though I were stifling his freedom of expression. He did it several times that meal, interrupting the loud smacking noise he made when he chewed. When I complained, I received free advice on why I was so unappealing. Thanks. I’d been wondering.

I went off the Pill a week before I met Nick. I couldn’t afford the exam I needed to renew my prescription, so I decided to be “natural” for a while. My body obeyed.

“Nick, you’ve been waiting for a ride to Domino’s for two hours. Why don’t we just have it delivered?”
“You have to pay the extra. Plus the tip.”

We waited a month before we slept together. He didn’t like intimacy; he pretended he had an STD to keep girls away. When it failed on me, he resorted to cruelty.

“I don’t want to. James says he’ll get me tacos on the way home.”
“Well, you said you wanted pizza and that’s what we’re having.”
“I wanted that two hours ago, not anymore.”
Too late. He’s on the phone to Domino’s.

We made love four times. I cried after each. He bathed.

He refused to wear a condom. “You won’t feel like anything to me.”
I was ovulating.

I’d never considered myself a coward, but oh, the things we do to keep from admitting we aren’t loved. To keep from facing the utter humiliation of being naked and rejected. He told me honestly that he’d rather not do it with me at all, ever, than wear a condom. Do you see why I went along? Who wants to feel inconsequential?

“I’m not eating that pizza. I’m not paying for it. Surely there’s someone here who will share it with you, though.”
“Fuck off. I’ll cancel it.”

What is responsibility, anyway? Is it carrying your own weight? Nobody can do that all the time. Is it staying true to yourself no matter what?

“You make me sick. You’re so fickle. You never know what you want, and you send people through hell trying to work out your little indecisions.”

All I wanted was some tacos.

James bought me some. They made me ill.

I was scared and sad. I thought the strange things happening to me might just be the effect of going off the Pill after two years of continual use. But in a way, I knew. We always do.

I wept in the shower a few days before my mother came to visit. I just broke down. I was pretty sure what my body was saying, and I didn’t want to hear it, and I hurt, because of what I was going to do if it were true. I sat down in the warm spray and let the water envelop me.

He yelled at me in front of all our friends. They pretended not to notice. He was 6’4”. I walked out of there.

Saturday, my mom bought a test for me at the drugstore and waited in the living room while I pissed into a coffee cup and stuck the fiber tip in. Then I laid down on my bedroom floor. I thought the three minutes I had to wait would take a long time and be filled with dread, but they passed rather quickly. I tacked on a fourth minute just to make sure.

I was sitting in the laundry room of his apartment complex, collecting myself, and he felt like he had to wash some clothes right then. I started to yell at him when he walked in. I told him that he was “fickle” and “passive”, not me, and that he was mentally still an infant and I was tired of his tantrums. The look of amusement and contempt on his face made me want to rip his eyes out.

I have a habit of not telling people the things that really would hurt them, like they sucked in bed, like their lives are hopeless messes. I have a habit of protecting them from the things that would cut them, even as they go for my throat. It is hard sometimes, but I’m glad I don’t often hurt people.
I wouldn’t want anybody to feel about me the way I felt about Nick.

I knew that instead of one red line there would be two, and the uncertainty would be over, and the planning would begin, but as I laid there, I wondered if God wouldn’t let me off the hook just one more time. I tried to convince myself that I’d learned my lesson just from the fear, but I knew that was bullshit. I knew I’d done it this time. It was what I needed to be able to respect my own feelings, my own wants, instead of a man’s, for a change.

Nick gave me a hug with the smell of detergent all around me. He was drunk. I went stiff as a pole when he touched me–something I should’ve done in the first place.

Should’ve, could’ve, didn’t.

James took me to get tacos. We went to my house and made love, or at least a good imitation. I only saw James once after that. I never saw Nick again.

There were two red lines.

I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. I remember my black velvet shirt, my small face. I was poised as if to turn and run, but that would be cheating. I could see the reflection of the test on the counter. I didn’t immediately look back to it. I stared deep into my own solemn, wondering brown eyes, taking a picture for memory: Where I Am Now. Where we are, now that I have multiplied.

I looked down. Still two red lines, red as the blood that decided not to come, more actual than the last two months of intuition. I knew.
I started to cry.

Nick hit his cat whenever it ran outside. The louder the cat yelled, the harder he hit it. It’s amazing what we can ignore.

I couldn’t have a baby yet, I was a child myself still, really. I recognized this, but I also liked being pregnant in a way. I made a life. I write poetry, I draw pictures, I create babies. I didn’t want to keep it, but I didn’t want to hustle it out of the world, either. It deserved at least some living.

“I want it gone by Tuesday.”

I didn’t. It wasn’t a problem to be fixed, it was my child. It would have that dignity, anyway. Whether that would bring it comfort when I was on the table, I couldn’t say.

“I just want it over with fast.”

I named the little baby Audria.

I told my boyfriend. He asked me for a day to think about it, then he would call me and we would talk. Do you think he called?

I had the money for the abortion. I didn’t need any help. My mom insisted on being with me after the procedure. I was grateful, deep down. I didn’t want to be alone.

Let’s see, how did we spare the men?

“I’m not going to tell your father. Let him persist in his little fantasy about you.”
“Which is what? That I’m a decent person?”
“That you’re smart, that you’re on the ball.”

When I was nineteen, I moved away to a city I’d wanted to live in for a while. I got a job, I saved money, I rented a beautiful apartment. I got a psychopathic boyfriend, and we made a baby.

I’d never considered myself a coward, but I was afraid to tell Nick. I kept remembering the cat.

I’ve been a bad little kitty. Disappointed everyone. Will I be spanked? Or worse?
I was scared of Nick and his humiliation, scared of his violence, scared my father would have a heart attack and die, and it would be my fault, if I told him. Or that he would hate me for a long, long time.

What is freedom? Should I be allowed to kill my baby? What is responsibility? Do I have a responsibility to tell Audria’s father and grandfather of her life, of her imminent death? Or is responsibility the obligation you have to spare someone unnecessary pain? Why aren’t we ever told these things?

It was ultimately just a conflict between honesty and compassion. Tell and hurt, or be silent and carry one’s own burdens. It becomes a coin toss, a character judgment, whether they can take it or not.

Even with my confusion, I liked the experience of my pregnancy. I thought it was strange and neat to be myself-plus-baby, to have something added, something Other, that was nonetheless me. A little person was living inside my body. It was fun to put my hand on the new curve in my belly and talk to it about life. A little friend. Everything I did, it did with me, from shaving my legs, to eating chocolate, to shivering in the cold at the bus stop. It had a little bit of life, anyway.

It was all right until Monday after work, when I called the abortion clinics in town. There were no women doctors to take my baby; it would have to be done by a man. I felt uncomfortable with that, but decided it wouldn’t matter. I asked the most inexpensive clinic when an appointment could be made. The receptionist told me she could have me in Tuesday afternoon. Tomorrow.

I started to really grieve then. I missed my little baby already. I prayed that she would forgive me for having her killed. I think she did.

My mother accompanied me to the clinic. I had my finger pricked to test my blood; then I stood in the hallway and cried. I was sorry, so sorry–not that I had slept with Nick, but that I wasn’t married to a sweet man and secure enough to keep the child. I was sorry that the time wasn’t right. I was sorry it had to die, but I knew…you know. I needed to live too. I’ve never been the martyr type.

They told me the baby was two inches long. I was shocked. I thought it would be tiny. Somehow the fact that it was so big made it worse. More of a person. I felt awful, but also like maybe the baby was okay with dying. Maybe our lives are never even a second longer than they should be. I need to believe that.

“Will you let my mom sit with me in the recovery room?”
“Of course, honey.”

I wish it had been a woman. Maybe it would have been different. At least I would have felt understood.

The doctor had a stopwatch for a heart and the manner of a pit crew in the Daytona 500. I was pulled forward on the table and made to lay back. The doctor and nurse moved so fast, I felt threatened. He shoved his gloved finger into me, hurting me terribly. I cried out and begged him to please stop. He didn’t. The nurse laughed at me. A cold metal instrument was then pushed in me, and I felt a scrape. My arm was tied off and injected with drugs. Within ten seconds, my vision blurred and I felt totally lightheaded. The cold metal thing was put back inside me, and the doctor told me to be very still.

Was my mom crying, out there in the waiting room? Was she reading Time magazine and pretending not to know what was happening? What was Nick doing at that very moment? Was my father still at work?

The needle pierced me inside. I screamed. You weren’t supposed to feel it, but it hurt so bad. Did anyone hear me scream? It’s amazing what we can ignore.

I knew it was almost over. Urgency. I managed to fight the haze and sit up a bit. I said goodbye to Audria. I held my belly, drugged as I was, and I told her aloud that I loved her. She heard, I knew. The doctor probably thought I was crazy. He didn’t matter. Only these last few seconds to be with her. And then I let her go.

The boys I’ve been with, what were they to me but a spin of faces, a spiral of brief lust flowing into the ache in me. The little tube is put inside me, it isn’t painful. I sense the beginning of her end. I instinctively lay motionless as the vacuum is switched on. I am paralyzed. Goodbye, little baby. Come back someday.

I feel them move the tube around a bit. There is minor discomfort. I remain still.

Then it is over.

The nurse pressed a pad into my panties and jammed them up onto my legs. I yelled at her, “I can dress myself!” She left the room.

I’m down on the floor by my pile of clothes because I’ve fallen, and it is kind of funny. I can’t walk. But I’m cold, freezing inside. I dress, but forget my shoes in my hand as I stagger to the resting room. It is a room with two recliners. The nurse offers a chair near the door. I choose the other one, just to be obnoxious, I think.

The recliners point to the television set, which is tuned to CNN. Normally this wouldn’t be very restful, but I’m too drugged to even notice. It’s fun to try to understand. They’re so silly, so serious. I just killed my baby. A kind nurse brings me Coke and crackers. I eat them and talk to a friendly girl named Casey. I am reasonably coherent. She gives me a hug when she leaves. Another girl comes in. She lays on a cot in the back of the room. She looks drugged and very, very sad.

I asked for my mom, but they wouldn’t let her in. I got up and stumbled to the receptionist’s desk and asked them to page her. Mom came to the window immediately. I waved to her, feeling trapped and a million miles away.

It was dark when I walked out of the clinic, hanging on to her.
I was so amazingly out of it, my body just kind of flopped everywhere on the way home. I wasn’t in any pain, though. Not anymore.

I slept all evening. When I woke at about eleven, reasonably sober,
I knew that the pregnancy was gone. They’d done it right. I felt one-dimensional again; I felt only me. I felt empty, alone, though not in a bad way. Kind of relieved. My body was no longer a carrier for a baby. It was, as it had always been, just myself.

Who am I? Maybe I’ll find out now.

My boyfriend called and I asked him to come over. We broke up. I didn’t like him anymore; he was a flake, but I was amazed at the callousness of his dissatisfaction with me. He wanted more sex than I would provide. So that was it. He gave me a kiss and left.

Maybe he didn’t want any of the blood to get on him, the blood that was finally making its appearance. Bright red injury-blood. Vaguely alarming on the white tissue. An emergency color, so unlike the reverent red of the monthly flow.

All the same to this boy. It was alien, too real–life shoved in his face. He left quickly, to go party with his friends, and forget that he ever slept with a girl who killed her kid.

I promised my soul, no more boys who don’t love you. No more boys who don’t see past the breasts and face, who don’t see the blood and the pain and the ecstasy. Boys who never meet your eyes. I promised my body, no more things rammed in you that make you cry. No more holes. I’m not there to be filled anymore.

I promised my heart, long ago, to a certain type of person, and I guess I just lost sight of that.

Oh, how I lost.

A thoughtless bastard gave me a child, and a thoughtless bastard took it away. I was thoughtless, too, of myself. What a wake-up call. Was this what it took to make me see how bad I’ve been hurting?

If it was, let this please be the end.

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