Before I had my own undesired pregnancy, I generally thought abortion was not the right thing.
I was brought up in Australia, in a state that was (and still is) pretty conservative. I’d also previously done some research into abortion while at high school, but this was in the early days of the internet being available in Australia (we were on a 56.6k dial up modem, and that was the fastest available), and the only websites I’d found clearly had a “pro-life” bent. This had skewed my beliefs to thinking that abortion was a pretty significant procedure.
This gradually changed as I grew older and was able to find more about what was actually involved. Which was a good thing for me, as when I was 19, I found myself pregnant. I had just started at a new job, my first ever full time position, and while I was in a committed relationship, my boyfriend was only 21, we were living at his parents house, and I was actually working for his dad. Initially, I didn’t even suspect I was pregnant, as I’d always had very irregular periods, anything between 10 days and 8 weeks was “normal” for me (endometriosis can make your cycle incredibly irregular), and when I started feeling nauseated all the time, it was actually my boyfriend’s dad who suggested I take a pregnancy test. He was a doctor, and while I doubted that I was pregnant, I thought it best to check.
I don’t remember if I talked about the possibility of my being pregnant with my boyfriend beforehand, but I told him pretty quickly after I got the positive result. I had already decided that I was going to have an abortion, and decided on that immediately after getting my result. When I told him, I remember specifically telling him, “OK, so I’m having an abortion, but what do you feel?” Even if he’d wanted the baby, I felt too young to even BE pregnant, let alone have a baby. He clearly was trying to be very supportive saying repeatedly that it was my choice. I remember clarifying for him “Yes, and I will be having an abortion, but this is the part where you get to have some feelings about it.” After hedging a bit, he eventually said that it was probably a good idea, as he thought it would probably be a big strain on the relationship (we’d been together for only a year-ish). I agreed, and said that I’d make an appointment with my doctor to get a referral to go to an abortion clinic. I’m not sure this is what the normal procedure is or was, but from what I could find out, it’s what looked to be the way to go.
I saw my family GP, who I’d been seeing since I was a baby, and told him that I was pregnant and wanted an abortion, so needed a referral letter. He didn’t want to refer me for one and kept trying to convince me to keep the pregnancy, even if I was to give the baby up for adoption. I remember him trying to convince me that pregnant women loved the baby when they were pregnant and that I should keep it, even if I were to then give it up after giving birth. I was SO ANGRY that this was his response. I was 19, I had barely started my life, and this man who was supposed to care about my me and my health was trying to convince me that I should essentially put my life on hold to give birth to something that was barely a clump of cells (I was about 8 weeks pregnant at this time, and from memory, there was pressure to have the procedure before it was 12 weeks). I felt that this showed that he didn’t care about ME. I decided that I would never see him for anything medical again, and now over 20 years later, I still have not seen him for anything to do with my health again.
Now, I don’t remember if he actually did write me a referral, but I was so put off by him in our appointment that I got a referral from another doctor (or asked for one from my boyfriend’s dad), but I remember making my appointment for my procedure. It was booked for a Saturday, in a few weeks, and I remember being really worried about the time delay. I didn’t want to be pregnant, and I didn’t want to know what would happen if I missed what I thought was the 12 week cut off.
My boyfriend drove us to the clinic, and he was more worried about me than I was for the procedure. I had been worried about what might happen if I weren’t to get the procedure, but was not at all worried about actually having the procedure. He was planning to wait for me so that he could then drive me home. From memory, I think he was told that it would be about 2-3 hours for me to get ready to go home. We drove to the clinic, which was a nondescript building that I wouldn’t have even known was a clinic, parked and walked towards the clinic. There was a small group of people milling around near the building, and I remember thinking that they were probably other people there to either have their own procedures, or waiting on people having theirs. One woman approached me and put out her hand. In her hand was a tiny figure, the shape of a foetus, probably about 14-16 weeks old. She was trying to tell me that this was what my baby looked like at around 8 weeks and I remember going ABSOLUTELY BLIND with rage. I was furious that she was trying to get in my way, that she was LYING about what development stage my foetus was at, and even more furious that she was trying to make women feel guilty about getting a procedure that they felt was in their best interests. I wanted to beat her into a pulp, to beat her beyond unconsciousness for what she was doing to people, because while I felt comfortable with my own decision, I didn’t want her to be making other people feel worse about something that they may have struggled with. Somehow, my boyfriend knew what I was feeling as he very gently pulled me away when I started yelling at her and moving towards her. Part of me still regrets that I didn’t ignore him and beat her up. Even now, I still feel that white hot anger when I think about her.
When we got there, I left my boyfriend in the waiting area and went in. I got changed into a hospital gown, I had a clean pair of underwear and an overnight pad, the closest I could find to a maternity pad. I was to have “twilight” anaesthetic, where I would technically be awake, but I don’t remember it at all. From what I remember, I fell asleep/unconscious on the gurney, then woke up sitting in a room with a lot of other young women. I remember the nurses were checking on everyone, and I asked how I’d gotten there. They said I’d walked, and I couldn’t understand how that had happened. I didn’t understand how they’d moved me from lying down, to sitting up in a chair. I remember that they gave me something to eat, and I vomited that up almost immediately. I saw another young woman coming in, she walked to her chair and I remember seeing her vomit. I got out of my chair to help her, just holding the bucket and making sure she was ok, then being hustled back to my chair by the nurses after she’d finished vomiting.
I remember all of the other women in the recovery room seemed very out of it, and I felt like I was very alert in comparison. It may simply have been that I was talking more to the nurses than the other women were. When I left the recovery room to meet my boyfriend in the waiting area, he actually had a present for me. Apparently, he’d been really worried, and at a loss for time, so he went to the city and paid off a lay-by [installments] I’d had for a really cool action figure waiting for me at my local comic shop. He paid for it outright as my “get well soon” present, and since I wasn’t really into flowers and am notoriously difficult to find gifts for (I like odd things) he just bought it for me as he knew that I’d been looking forward to getting it. Fortunately, there were no people waiting outside the clinic when we left, as despite my mood being elated by having had the procedure already and having received a kick-ass present, I think I absolutely would have beaten the pro-lifers there to a bloody pulp.
My procedure was a D&C, a dilation and curettage, where they go in vaginally, open up the cervix and scrape the uterine lining out, which for my recovery, meant that I essentially had a heavy period for about a week, as this was essentially the same for if I had a period, it was not very stressful for me, and I remember that I was told there was to be no sex for 10-14 days. Those were the only post-surgical things I can remember from it. Overall, my termination was stress-free, and pretty painless, and the only negative things I can associate with it are the people who were against it that made my getting it more difficult.
Today, 20 years on, I think I made the absolute correct choice for me at that time of my life, and I have never once regretted it. My boyfriend of that time and I split up about 2 years after the abortion, completely unrelated, and I think if we’d had a child, then we would not have been able to provide the level of care that I feel is required.
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