I'mNotSorry.net

I am a 35-year-old mother of two delightful boys, 5 and 10. When my youngest was two, I became pregnant unexpectedly, unintentionally. I was using a diaphragm/spermicide as I was breastfeeding. We were desperately poor at the time, though we were both working, and I was battling severe depression (for which there was no money with which to seek professional help–the poor are not allowed mental illness). Obviously, there was no question about having an abortion. My responsibility was towards my young sons, my husband and myself. The only regret was towards the sanctimonious cowards that made it necessary to enter the clinic surreptitiously and half-wondering whether we would be picked off by some coward’s high-caliber rifle for having made a logical, sound decision to go ahead with a legal medical procedure.
Eight years later, I still have no regrets–only an ever-strengthened belief that what I did was the right thing to do at the time. I am still extremely happily married. We are financially stable. My two children are healthy and happy. They have a mother that has dealt with her depression and is a very happy woman these days. All these things would have never have happened, I am convinced, had I not made the decision for an abortion eight years ago.

Frankie and I have been friends for years. Through a series of events that would be comical if viewed on a movie screen, we were never able to take our relationship any further than this – until the past year. There is only one major problem with this; my best friend in the world is a husband, and he isn’t mine. Once it was realized however, just how miserable he liked to think himself, he began to look to me as a shelter from the storm if you will and loving him deeply (unrequitedly I might add) for all these years, I was more than willing to provide the haven he sought.
We started sleeping together and for several glorious months our affair was unfettered with any problems more demanding than trying to find a place to meet and be alone together. One bitterly cold night my libido got the best of me, and we found ourselves in this cheap, run down, ice cold hotel room staring at a broken condom. We had chanced unprotected sex before, and being an avid follower of my ovulation cycle, I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t at the peak of fertilization. Denial was futile as I discovered at my work Christmas party when I tried to drink a cranberry juice with vodka.

The night the evil pink plus sign appeared on the pee stick was one that every woman envisions, dreads, or looks forward to at least once in her life. Unlike the response I expected (fainting), I was actually very composed and calm. I knew instantly that this could not have come at a worse time, that I wasn’t prepared, and that he certainly wasn’t prepared either for another baby. He has five children biologically; one was placed for adoption at birth, two with his ex, and two with his current wife. I immediately sat down on the laptop and researched clinics in the surrounding areas.

I called the next day to find out pricing, hours of operation, etc., and still had not shed one tear, felt upset, or fearful. As the weeks went on while I was saving up the cash needed for the procedure (of all the insurance companies they contract with, lucky me, mine isn’t included), the only storm cloud in my otherwise calm mental state was that I felt like something was wrong with me because I was fully prepared to end this “human life” without an ounce of remorse. At the same time though, my body was turning against me and I was physically miserable. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping, when I did either of the two activities, neither were successful. I became weepy and irritable confusing and hurting many of my friends in the process because I’m such an easy going and calm person. I felt as if this awful parasite was taking over my body like in a movie and I was helpless to stop it until I had the money saved.

Finally, I get the money together and I triumphantly drive the hour away to attend my appointment. I took my younger sister (as a reality check) and one of my good friends (who had been to the same clinic herself) and felt happier than I had in almost two months as I put my payment in the hands of the receptionist and got my receipt that said paid in full. In the state in which I had the abortion, laws mandate that there is a 24 hour waiting period between consultation and procedure, but I believed that I would be getting same day service, as several other people I knew had, including my friend.

I don’t know if I angered the doctor because I was the only woman not weeping or guilt ridden and was cracking jokes with the staff and all smiles when I met her, or perhaps it was because I interrupted her lunch, but either way, she shook my hand and told me she would see me at my next earliest convenience which was NEXT WEEK. I was furious. Then as if to add insult to injury, a large snowstorm hit the area the day before I was scheduled to return causing me to have to reschedule for the following week again.

I determined that I would get back to this town come hell or high water even if I had to hire a dog sled team to get there as another eight inches of snow dropped on my town the night before my third appointment. Miraculously though, it missed the town I was headed towards and I was able to safely drive my car to get there. I finally get prepped for the procedure and my doctor comes in the room and is very amiable and chatty laughing with me the entire time. Perhaps she had already eaten lunch this day, perhaps the nitrous oxide they gave me to relax just made me like her more, but the giddy feelings of relief I had topped any old gas; even though I have made casual inquiries about getting it on the open market.

The pain was moderate, no more uncomfortable than I had already been miserable the past two and a half months anyway. The bleeding was minimal, I simply spotted for about two weeks. The emotional baggage immediately after was very surprising though. I became withdrawn and angry with Frankie for making me go through this without him, not helping me pay for it, not being there for me more emotionally. I started to resent (only momentarily thank God as I love them dearly) his other children for being given his blessing for life, while mine was denied it. These feelings of hostility thankfully only lasted a few days, and once my physical health began to return, my mental state evened back out as well.

I didn’t keep the proffered sonogram picture, I don’t imagine that I’ll be sitting around every February 4th with a lit candle wrapped in a blanket weeping over the loss of my son, even though I did secretly name him. I haven’t a single regret and wouldn’t change anything about my decision except perhaps being put in the position to have to make it in the first place – or not running over the protestor that was hurling obscenities at my head as I left the clinic with my car. Frankie and I are still friends, we still want each other madly, but it was a very sobering experience that neither of us wish to repeat.

His wife is the type of woman that would have conditioned her children to hate and blame me and my child for wrecking a marriage that was already capsized and heading for the rocks anyway. My mother is disabled and slowly but inevitably dying from a terminal illness. Nothing about this child would have been wondrous or happy as I couldn’t comfortably ignore my child in the most important years of his life to care for my mother, nor allowed the hate and condemnation from his soon to be second ex wife to spill into my child’s life as Frankie cared for him while I did nurse my mother. I was raised in a single parent household and always promised myself that any children I may have (as I have never wanted any) would not be forced to suffer the same fate.

I went yesterday for my three week check up and was informed that I am completely healed, back to normal, and am now a perfect candidate for the IUC I have been trying to get for several years but been denied as I have never been pregnant prior to this. So while some people would view this as a bad situation (I know, I’ve lost several friends over my “cavalier” attitude towards it all), I believe it has been a blessing in disguise for all of us. He is taking the necessary steps to leave a volatile and emotionally unstable relationship, I am more at peace with the future of nursing my mother through to the end, and I get long lasting birth control that I don’t have to remember to take, change, administer, or bring with me for the next five years.

I fully expect that in a few months this will all just be a hazy memory in an otherwise full and rich lifetime of good and bad ones. Do I think I’m the norm? No, but nor do I think that I’m a bad person either. It is therefore with a loud and proud voice that I have admitted to any that think to question, that I have had an abortion, I have no regrets, and most importantly of all – I’m not sorry.

My name is Alex. I am 16 years old. I fell in love with a boy. And don’t tell me that I am too young to experience love. I believe that everyone has their own, personal definition of love. Anyway, for me being nearly 16 at the time, it was a pretty sincere feeling. So, last February I spent the night at his house. As much as I’d love to tell you that our contraceptive backfired, the truth remains that he just pulled out. “Pulling out” is much like playing a game of Russian Roulette. More times than not, you will walk away fine. However, there always remains that seemingly latent chance that you will pull the trigger and meet the bullet. That is just what happened to me.
I have always been a cynical and paranoid person. That’s why I panicked to any early signs of pregnancy. I was urinating frequently. I was feeling very fatigued. And eventually, I began spotting. I couldn’t be pregnant. Teenage pregnancy is just one of those distant realities that one ever happen to me, right? I couldn’t get rid of that tugging feeling in my stomach. So, to calm my nerves, my mother keeps a pregnancy test under the bathroom sink, just in case. So I took it. I can remember so clearly being overwhelmed by that feeling of my heart jumping into my mouth when the test read positive. I always thought that if anyone had to get me pregnant at a young age, Sam would be the boy to do it. I mean, his mom had him when she was 14. It couldn’t be a bigger slap in the face to discover how wrong I was.

He pretty much abandoned me. If that wasn’t heinous enough, he had the nerve to tell people that I was faking a pregnancy, because I was a “psycho”, and I was “so obsessed with him” It’s obvious he knew it was all real. Sometimes he’d try to help me (as big as an asshole he was about it) by suggesting ways to get abortion money. Of coarse, each time he’d cut himself off and say “Yeah, you’re full of shit, you stupid cunt.” I guess he’s too immature to realize what he was doing. He was pulling the ostrich technique- hiding your head from the problem and hoping that it will succumb on its own. I’m still waiting for “what goes around comes around” to ring true. With all of that, I became depressed. I was on Lexapro for being bipolar (for which, I found out recently I was misdiagnosed; I just have anxiety problems) It came to a point where I swallowed several pills at once. And, I’m not stupid, I happen to know that you can’t commit suicide with an antidepressant. I honestly do not know what my intentions were. But the next day, which also happened to be my 16th birthday, I became really sick. I thought I had a miscarriage. I did not, but I made the severe mistake of telling Sam that I thought I did, which was just the icing to his cake of “YOU’RE FULL OF SHIT’S”

The following Thursday, my friend, Aaron took me to a clinic. There were a few protesters outside (really, don’t these people have JOBS?). I then talked with a counselor briefly, then had some blood drawn, to see how pregnant I was (a little over a month). I also had an ultra sound taken, which I chose not to look at. Someone once asked me, “If you saw the ultrasound, would you feel differently about your decision?” I said, “Yes. It would make me feel even better to see how small it was.” But I was crying really hard. One of the nurses even asked if I could try calm down a little because I was starting to scare the other girls. I was given a few painkillers, then the shots to thin out the lining of my uterus. Then they cleaned me up and decided I was going to be all right to go home. Aaron was being so amazing. The procedure cost nearly $400, and he paid for it all upfront. As hard as I try to pay him back (against his will) I feel like I will be in debt to him forever, emotionally.

When I got home, I took my comforter and snuggled up on the couch to watch a marathon of slapstick comedies. (it’s weird, almost every girl I talked with did the same thing) I also cried until I was beginning to feel dehydrated. I had never really had any cramps that bothered me for my period. But holy hell, I was crouched onto the ground in pain. This was also the first time I soaked a pad within a few hours.

Since then, I have undergone much harassment. Getting pregnant in high school is truly a double-edged sword. Even if I did chose to continue with my pregnancy, people would still find awful things to say about me behind my back. But I still walk to my locker to see a sign that says “Baby Killer” Someone once took my notebooks and told me how I was damned to hell in thick, black sharpie. I get countless hate letters sent to me through email. One time some lame slag sent me a third trimester ultrasound with a post-it note saying “This is what you murdered you filthy whore.”

Asinine, yes. But no matter what these people find to say to me, I still won. Because I firmly believe that I did what was in my best interest. The only reason why I would want to keep the baby would be to wave into Sam’s face and say “HAH!” which isn’t reason enough. I did take responsibilities for my actions; I didn’t mother a child while I wasn’t financially nor emotionally stable enough to raise him/her. And, I did choose life. I chose my own. I also prevented an unhappy, poverty destined, fatherless one. Yes, I will admit, there have been times where I wondered “what could have been” if I kept the baby. But it is better to say you regret an abortion than to say you regret a kid. And I don’t regret my abortion, I’m so grateful to have had this choice. I am beyond willing to fight Congress to keep their laws off of my body. Don’t dare to tell me to live with my mistake. This “mistake” would have ruined my life. Even when I grow to be 76, and my baby would have been 60, it still would have been just that- my baby. I would still in some way, care for it. I promise that when the time comes, I will be ready to have children, and I will be the best mother that I can possibly be. Now is definitely not that time.

I knew I was pregnant before I even ‘officially’ missed the period.
I’d met a boy in the first couple weeks of my sophomore year college who was reasonably cute, and absolutely infatuated with me. We slept together. Probably four nights in a row, maybe five before I was too worn out to keep up. I don’t know what happened to our whole condom-usage thing. Hormones took over when the rubbers ran out, I suppose.

For about a week prior to the point that a pregnancy test would give an accurate reading, I confided in a single friend who I knew would at the very least go with me to buy a home testing kit, and allowed her to convince me I was being paranoid. “Plenty of girls go through this,” she told me. “I’ve had pregnancy scares. You’ll be okay.” But by the end of the week, I still had no cramps, no menstruation. So we drove to Walgreens and picked up a test. Or, rather, we drove to Walgreens, and I had a breakdown in the parking lot. My friend eased me out of it and walked me in through the front door, and I promptly proceeded to stage another breakdown in the contraception aisle. So she picked out a box, walked me to the checkout, and paid for the set of two tests. She sat in my dorm suite while I peed on a stick. She set an alarm on her cell phone for the three minutes it would take to ripen, for lack of a better word. She sat with me when I called the hotline number—the second pink line was almost too faint to see, and though we knew different, we hoped it meant ‘negative’. It didn’t. I did cry, then. Out of sheer injustice, the unfairness, the weight of it.

She asked me what I would do, when the hysteria had subsided a little. I laughed, because there was nothing else for it, and I pulled a Juno reference—“Nip it in the bud, I guess.” She looked at me with a sort of strangely sympathetic, incredulous expression. “I could never do that.” She didn’t say it to hurt me, didn’t even say it judgmentally, now that I think about it. But it crushed me, then. “It’s a life, you know?”

Despite how good she’d been to me, I couldn’t much talk to her after that point. I had decided, too, not to tell my mom. I went, instead, to my best friend, whom I had worried might take it badly, but she came through for me. Let me talk and vent and bawl in her apartment until I was exhausted from it. I began to spend a lot of time with her and her three roommates, whom I also told, and they treated me like family. Cooked healthy food for me, made sure I was okay, in the basic sense. They talked to me about my options, just openly discussed pros and cons with me. What remaining pregnant would mean. What their friends had experienced in abortion clinics – we lived in a part of the state notorious for pro-life protests at clinics, doctors with underlying religious intentions. It was hard, there, for a girl who didn’t want a baby.

Despite their TLC, inevitable stress started kicking in. School work slipped behind, became a distant second to the newest and most potent problem in my life. I started sleeping through most of the day, and my immune system began to collapse in on itself. I got depressed. Wound up losing my job in the university’s housing system, which had previously provided me with free room and board. In the end, it was too much. It had been, I believe, three weeks since I discovered I was pregnant. And I decided it was time to move home.

My parents were furious. I hadn’t told them about my eggo being preggo. I dreaded telling them, in fact, and it worked knots into my stomach, made me sick and even more depressed while the ‘rents railed on me for wasting their tuition money by coming home in the middle of the semester. I started seeking options, looking for clinics, calling places about cost. It was in this research process that I found a women’s health center I liked. And it was in this researching process that I realized two things: 1) I had no money, and 2) there are time constraints on the traditional clinic procedure. I checked a timeline chart, and estimated myself between eight and ten weeks, and the clinic I was looking at only performed abortions up to twelve.

Sunday night. It was the realization of time constraints, I think, that made me tell my mother. And I was almost sick, right before I did, simply out of sheer dread. But she listened to me. Hugged me. Told me it was all right. I’m not even sure what I was expecting her to say to me, but the only thing she berated me for was letting it go as long as I did without telling her. “No one should have to bear that kind of fear alone,” she said. She made me promise to ask for help when I needed it. And we scheduled an appointment for a surgical abortion the following Friday.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the choice I was making, that week. About my reasoning. And, when it all comes down, I found myself back at the same answers, time and time again. I was nineteen. There were so many things in my life that I still hadn’t had the chance to chase after, so many opportunities that would be lost. I was not ready for children. I was not prepared to give a baby the kind of care that a parent should. I was not ready to be a mother. I told all of this to one of the clinic counselors, prior to the procedure. I told her that I didn’t know if I would regret having an abortion, but I knew that if I didn’t, I was certain that I would regret that.

The clinic I chose was clean and warm, well-lit. And, better yet, it was not a squat, shady little building on the outskirts of town. The clinic was facilitated in a house the center had purchased in the seventies. It put me at ease, and made me feel safe. The staff was professional, calm, and very caring. They sent me home tired, but much as though the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders. I slept for most of the car ride home. I slept for most of the next two days.

It’s been a month since I had my abortion. And I’m not sorry. My extended family, having been informed of my ‘mistake’ by my dad, is having a difficult time accepting my choice, but my mom and the friends I have chosen to tell are understanding and supportive of me.

I am, all in all, relieved.

My name is Aime and I’m writing this because I haven’t seen a story like mine in any of these stories, and I assume with this many women in the world I can’t be the only one who’s done this. I’m 34 years and I had an abortion last May. I’m married to a wonderful man, we own a house, both have decent jobs and do indeed want children, and soon. As a matter of fact this year we hope to conceive sometime during the winter. With my husband’s last raise we were bumped from “upper working class” to “lower middle class” in socioeconomic status. So why on earth would I have an abortion? Right? Because the contraception we had been using for the last 5 years failed. We take having children VERY seriously, and I hadn’t been taking care of myself to have a healthy pregnancy. That was my view anyway, I wasn’t on street drugs, or an alcoholic or anything like that, but I wasn’t healthy, or ready. It doesn’t seem like much but we wouldn’t be financially ready to pay for day care and work part time for another two years. I’ve heard it said and implied many times that if you wait until you can afford children then you will never have them. I’ve never found any solution to: Can’t afford daycare but can’t get financial assistance with it because we make too much money. We don’t make enough money to pay our other bills along with daycare which costs more than half our income.
So I was pregnant and didn’t want to be. I had been suspicious of it for several weeks; I kept hoping my period was late because of something else. I don’t know what that “something else” could possibly be that would cause so many pregnancy symptoms and not be a pregnancy but I wanted to think that we had been so responsible with family planning that this wasn’t fair so it couldn’t happen. I bought a pregnancy test from the dollar store and it came back positive. Right away actually, I always thought that you had to read the results after several minutes, not immediately. So I went to the drugstore and got a brand name test hoping that the dollar store brand was wrong, but it wasn’t, EPT said I was pregnant too; and the result came back just as quickly. The positive line developed immediately. I had been having cramps on and off so I was certain there was something wrong with the pregnancy so I called the nurse hot line and was sent to the emergency room to have further testing done. I was hoping it was ectopic but it wasn’t. I had an ultrasound and saw the heart beat, I was 8 weeks along. I felt awful! I thought to myself “I’m sorry; you can’t be here right now. You’ll have to come back later.” I felt guilty for being pregnant and not being ready. After several hours at the ER we were finally leaving and I said to Jerry “You still don’t mind if I have an abortion?” This wonderful, loving, amazing man said to me, “It’s your choice, I will support you what ever you do.” So we went home and I did all the research and contacting that I could for a Sunday night and waited to hear back from one of the clinics. I went to work the next day and LIED. I got time off work by making up a story that would explain some of the symptoms and made up a few to make it more reasonable.

I chose Planned Parenthood because we couldn’t afford to pay full cost, funny, if we couldn’t afford end the pregnancy how would we afford the baby? When we got to the clinic there were a couple of protesters and we got escorted in by a volunteer. Once inside we had to show IDs and be buzzed in from the reception area. Everyone there was so incredibly nice! Everything leading up to the procedure seemed to take forever! I had to talk with one of the nurses to go over all the options, including adoption. Part of the whole procedure was to go over how I had come to this decision, and how it might affect me. When it was actually time for the abortion and I went into the room the nurse asked if it was okay if the doctor brought in the new doctor she was mentoring, and I said sure. There were a lot of women in that small room with me, they talked with me about birth control options. I said that for the last decade we had been managing to not have any failures, at least until the diaphragm didn’t work this time. Everyone was so supportive; there was a volunteer there to hold my hand. Only local anesthetic was used on my cervix to block the pain from dilation. I had a dilation and curate with suction, it didn’t hurt anymore than many of the menstrual cramps I’ve had. When it was all done I went into the recovery room to sit on a recliner with a heating pad on my abdomen and drink some apple juice. I called Jerry to come and get me and I was given a brown paper bag filled with condoms, the Plan B pill, and my antibiotics. I felt absolute relief! I didn’t feel like everything was totally back to normal but it was on its way. On our drive home I asked Jerry if he would go and get me some graham crackers because that was all I could seem to eat. He dropped me off at home and spent an hour looking for them at the store. When he got home he did nothing but dote on me all day long. By mid afternoon I started bleeding some, and had some cramps I bled for a few days, but nothing very heavy. It was a while before my period returned, after that. It takes a while for the cycle to return to normal after the hormones leave your system. In early July when my period returned that’s when I felt like everything was normal again.

So there you have it, I had an abortion and I AM NOT SORRY. I do not regret it. My husband and I are still together, still in love, and if anything the whole experience made us stronger as a couple. We gained new respect for one another and a new outlook on who we want to be as parents.

My back story: I’m a thirty-something professional woman with a younger live-in boyfriend who is still in school for his B.A. We have been together for over three years now, and had lately gotten careless about protection. I was actually charting my menstrual cycles using the calendar and vaginal mucous observations, and we had unprotected sex during those times in my cycle when I was sure that ovulation had come and gone. This worked well for over a year. But then I got careless about the charting. And then one night last month, after we had had sex, I noticed in the bathroom that I had the clear, stretchy vaginal mucous – ovulatory mucous! I remember thinking, “Uh oh.” But the possibility of pregnancy didn’t seem real enough to scare me, so I just let it slip to the back of my mind.
Then my period was late. I went out and bought two pregnancy tests. I took one that night. Nothing – negative. I tried another one a few days later, in the evening. Also negative. I had read the warning about how the pregnancy hormone was more concentrated in first morning urine, so I bought yet a third test and used it on my first urine of the day. Also negative. Well, I thought, three negative tests mean that I can’t possibly be pregnant. So two weeks went by, and still no period. Then I tried another test. Positive! And two more. They came up positive too. I guess I didn’t have enough pregnancy hormone (HCG) to show up in the first tests.

So I told my SO, and we talked about what to do. He thought he might want to have children someday, but felt very strongly about waiting until he had graduated and found a job, and until we were legally married (and marriage also has to wait until he graduates). I strongly considered giving up the child up for adoption, but after reading some online stories from mothers who gave up children and later wished they hadn’t, I changed my mind. One woman who had already given up a child for adoption swore that if she ever had another unplanned pregnancy, she would either abort or keep the child, but she could not survive putting up another child for adoption. For some women, having an abortion is definitely a much less traumatic experience than giving up a baby they gave birth to. Since I didn’t want to force a pregnancy on my SO, and I didn’t know if I could emotionally handle giving up a child in adoption, we decided on an abortion.

In researching chemical abortion, I found out that my insurance carrier would pay for a surgical abortion, but not a chemical abortion. The latter was very expensive – over $450 compared to the $70 I’d have to pay for a surgical abortion. But I chose the chemical abortion because I had concerns about the pain involved in a surgical abortion and I was concerned about the possible long-term effects of invasive surgery. I have read that having surgical abortions can make you more prone to having premature births later on. Granted, that’s after having *several* of them, but I still didn’t want to take any chances. And the idea of having my cervix dilated and instruments stuck into my uterus just seemed incredibly disturbing.

Fortunately, there is a clinic that uses Mifeprex nearby to our home. SO and I went there together on a Thursday morning. I was worried about protesters, but there weren’t any. We went in, I filled out paperwork, and I paid with my credit card. They made me take another urine pregnancy test, then took some blood for the Rh test. The doctor then came in to give me a sonogram. The amniotic sac showed clearly on the ultrasound – a little black oval in the middle of my uterus, about the size of a pine nut. The doctor told me that the embryo was only a few millimeters long, so it wasn’t large enough to show up on the ultrasound yet. The tiny size of the pregnancy confirmed that I was only three to four weeks pregnant, so the doctor was confident that my chances of aborting successfully with Mifeprex/Misoprostol were very high — around 99%.

My state’s law mandates a 24-hr waiting period, but the clinic kind of winked at it. They give you the abortion meds to leave with that day, but give you a dosage schedule as though you weren’t going to start taking them until the next day. The doctor gave me a packet with one Mifeprex, and another packet with two Misoprostol, then explained the protocol to me. She told me to take the Mifeprex (RU-486) the next morning, then wait three days, then take the two Misoprostol to expel the pregnancy. It was important that I only take Tylenol for pain, since aspirin or Ibuprofen could worsen bleeding. If I experienced extraordinary pain or bleeding, I was to call the clinic’s emergency line. She said something interesting too: I asked her about going to the emergency room if I were bleeding too much or in too much pain, and she said, “No, they won’t know how to take care of you there.”

As SO and I left the building, I took the Mifeprex. The doctor warned me that it made most women nauseated. I guess I’m lucky then, since it didn’t do anything to me. I went to work and felt fine for the rest of the day. Some people spot or bleed after taking it, but I didn’t. During the three day waiting period, I wondered sometimes if I felt *too* good. Did it really work? Then three days later, on Saturday afternoon, I took the Misoprostol. And that’s when things started to get bloody. The description that follows is somewhat graphic and gory, but I think it’s pretty typical of what to expect with a chemical abortion, so that’s why I’m including it.

I was unprepared for how fast the Misoprostol would work. Ten minutes after I took it, I started to bleed. And then the cramps started. They were worse than usual menstrual cramps, and more widespread somehow. It felt like my whole lower body, including my bowel, was cramping up. I also became *very* anxious at this point, which probably made the pain seem worse than it really was. I started taking Tylenol for pain, and it worked for a while. But then the cramping pain came back worse than ever, and Tylenol after Tylenol didn’t make it go away. Of course, this just made me more anxious than ever. I remember lying on my stomach just moaning in pain and crying, just wishing I could somehow just go unconscious until it was all over. My poor SO, who was terribly frightened and worried at this point, called the clinic’s emergency line again and again and finally got hold of the OB-GYN on call. SO talked him into calling in a prescription for Tylenol 3 with Codeine to the nearest pharmacy. My SO peeled out in his car like a race driver to pick it up for me. Unfortunately, the pharmacy had just closed when my SO got there! So I had to call the doctor again, page him, wait for him to call back, and ask him to call in yet another prescription for Tylenol 3 to a 24-hour pharmacy. All I could do was lie in bed, grit my teeth against the pain, and wait for my SO to bring me the medicine.

While I was waiting for SO to return, I passed a blood clot that was approximately the size of a walnut. I am pretty sure that this clot contained almost all of the pregnancy tissue. Perhaps I was hurting so much because it took a lot of intense cramping for my uterus to expel it. I passed one more clot, about the size of a large marble, shortly afterwards. I was a little disturbed by this, but I also knew it was a sign that the abortion meds were working. SO *finally* arrived home with the Tylenol 3, and it made all the difference in the world! Finally, my cramping pain went away, and I was able to relax and sleep.

The first day was definitely the worst. From then on, there were no more terribly painful cramps. And no more substantial clots or pieces of tissue, thankfully. Just blood. It continued pretty much as a normal period. The bleeding was heavy for the first three days or so after Saturday, but gradually subsided over the next seven or eight days. Today, ten days after I first took the Mifeprex, I am *finally* no longer bleeding. This morning I took another pregnancy test. Negative. What a relief! It was an ordeal, and SO and I both sometimes wonder about the baby that could have been. But overall, I feel that we made the right decision, and I have no deep regrets or guilt. And I’m happy to say that my SO was supportive and helpful through the whole thing, and was a good nurse to me when I was going through the worst of it. I think that the experience actually brought us closer together.

If there’s anything I’d like to pass on to others who might be considering a chemical abortion, it’s this — make sure your doctor gives you adequate pain relief! Some clinic doctors automatically prescribe Percoset for a woman having a chemical abortion, and I really, really, *really* wish my Dr. had done that too. A strong pain reliever would have made the first few hours soooo much easier to get through. Also, take some pain reliever about a half an hour before you take the Misoprostol, so that you already have it in your system before the cramping and bleeding start. A chemical abortion is pretty much an induced miscarriage, so you can expect the messiness of a typical miscarriage. You must be prepared to deal with all of the expelled tissue as well as several days of heavy bleeding. Occasionally, some women even see the tiny expelled embryo (I did not). A surgical abortion would definitely be easier and “cleaner” in this respect. But even after having gone through some pain, I am still glad I chose this method over a surgical abortion, because the idea of invasive surgery scared me a lot more than taking the pills did.

I’d been pregnant once before and had a beautiful little girl. But that was a different time, under different circumstances, with a different man, and this one didn’t feel the same. I didn’t have that immediate connection to the pregnancy and even though I knew immediately that I was, I ignored the situation for far too long. I didn’t take a pregnancy test until my period was nearly two months late. He kept asking me to and I kept saying, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to think about it.
I was so relieved. The test was negative.

But my boobs were sore, I still hadn’t had my period, I was getting a distinct little bump between my hip bones, I slept every spare minute of the day. I took another one, and I’d say the results were…maybe. A very faint little blue line that I only noticed the second time looking at it.

I still wish I’d never told the father because I know this would’ve been a lot easier on me if I hadn’t. But of course, I had too, I couldn’t not. He really wants children and he’d heard me say a thousand times that I didn’t want any more. He loves children, he loves my daughter, he gets along with everyone that he meets, he has his own company that gets stable business, and he says he loves me. He would’ve been a good dad, but that’s not enough. I’m just not ready for another one.

He’s Catholic and he can’t see things from my perspective, there’s one way, and it’s the right way, and any other way leads straight to hell. He’s too nice to actually say the hell bit to me, but I know that’s where he thinks I’m heading. He really wanted this baby, he would tell me stories and paint these beautiful pictures of our life together, and he almost changed my mind a few times. But the pictures always turned muddy when I remembered how little we actually knew about each other, how he never told me he loved me until he found out I was pregnant and how I definitely did not love him, not yet anyway. How miserable it was being a young, single mother with an infant, how my daughter was a very good baby, but even then, it was so much work, how I still have one year of college left, and on and on and on. There were so many reasons to do the procedure, and the only reason I would have had a baby was to make him happy, and in turn, have made myself miserable.

The actual procedure was horrible, I had an appointment for nine and ended up just sitting around in the waiting room until 11, reading magazines, and wondering why none of the women there, who I’d also seen at the consent class, would meet my eye, or anyone else. They all seemed really interested in the birth control posters that lined the walls. By the time the nurse called my name, I thought, thank god, let’s get this over with already. Then walking through the doors, and being led to an examine table, seeing the ultrasound monitor sitting there, a machine with a straw and a glass canister…I felt so rushed, everything just happened, strip, lay down, pinching, prodding, oxygen, bright lights, nurses examining screens, shots, metal clanking, sucking, cramping, patting, telling me to relax my knees, a countdown, one more minutes, ten more seconds, and then it was done. I was dizzy and lightheaded and nauseous and shocked. I almost laughed when they gave me the birth control. Sex? Seriously? That is the furthest thought from my mind, I’m never even kissing a boy again.

I felt like, all that stress, all the long talks with the father, all the long talks with my mother, all the discussing and arguing and tears and anger, and that’s it? It’s done?

There was a moment when I was lying on my couch, trying to numb the cramps with a stupid movie when I had this sudden feeling of emptiness. It was just me. For the first time in ten weeks, I was all alone. I started sobbing and I hunched over on myself trying to feel whole. Ten minutes later, I was fine. Now I’ve had sometime and I’ve cried some more, but I’ve also laughed a little. It may be the hormones. I think that a little remorse and sadness has to be expected. The first thing I saw after the procedure was a text from the father, “I wish I never knew you.” I felt hurt, but more that I was responsible for making him feel so horrible. I talked to him in a person a few hours later, and he’d been drinking, but he seemed to be handling it better. He’s leaving, going to visit some friends and clear his head, maybe he won’t come back. He said that he thought he wouldn’t be able to look at me the same way after, but he still felt the same way. He just needs to think about things without me around. I think he will come back. I think he’ll forgive me and realize that later, if things work out with us, we can try again. Either way, I know I’ll be okay, I know I made the right decision. I love my daughter, and I’ve never regretted having her. I won’t regret this either.

I was 20 years old and a sophomore in college when I accidentally became pregnant as the result of a condom failure. My boyfriend at the time had a serious case of major depression, but I was young and idealistic then, and thought I could convince him to take his meds. (Warning to all those reading this: You can’t help a depressive who resists treatment. It won’t happen. Don’t even try.) I was working full-time and going to school full-time, earning about $7 an hour, determined to better my life – and all I felt when I saw that positive pregnancy test was anger, fear, and a sense of creeping horror. I felt as though I had a life-threatening parasite growing inside me. I did NOT want to be pregnant, I did NOT want to have a child, I did NOT want to care for a child. My boyfriend was offering to marry me and raise the child with me, but everything in me was rebelling – I didn’t want to marry him, and I didn’t want to have his baby. My mother and one of my sisters both have bipolar disorder, and I have seen the perfect hell that can inflict upon a person’s life, and I knew that it was entirely possible that the child I had conceived would either inherit my family’s legacy of mental illness, or my boyfriend’s mental illness.
I thought about carrying the pregnancy to term and giving the child up for adoption for about an hour, but then realized, with the (extremely Catholic) parents I have and the (controlling) boyfriend I had, there was no way I would be able to do so without the three of them ganging up on me and pretty much forcing me down the aisle with a man who seemed less and less lovable every second. If I let my parents know I was pregnant, they would give me no peace until I married the father and kept the child. If I told them I wanted to give it up for adoption, the boyfriend seemed as though he would have resisted letting go of it, and my parents would probably want to adopt it themselves, and then I would NEVER be rid of the responsibility for it. If I didn’t take control of this situation I would end up married to a man I didn’t love and raising a child I didn’t want, a child who might be mentally ill, and as such would be utterly dependent upon me for the rest of my life.

So, I scheduled the abortion. A friend loaned me and my boyfriend the money, about $400. My boyfriend and I were supposed to both pay back $200. I had paid mine back within 2 months, but ended up paying my boyfriend’s half back as well, after he claimed for a year that he just couldn’t afford it.

I can’t say the clinic staff were great, because they weren’t – bored and businesslike about described their attitude, but oh well, I didn’t go there to make friends. I never felt the procedure itself, as it happened under general anaesthesia. Afterward, there was quite a bit of discomfort, like the worst period you’ve ever had, for about three days afterward, but underlying it all was a sense of glorious freedom. My body was my own again. I was not shackled to this shiftless, desperately needy man for life. I could continue working and continue going to school and my relationships with my parents could remain unchanged. Needless to say, my boyfriend wasn’t very reassuring post-surgery – he was actually more upset about the abortion than I was, and I ended up having to comfort HIM afterward. No kidding – I had just had an abortion, and there I was having to listen to my boyfriend whine because “our child” was gone.

I stayed with him for about eighteen months after that (because I’m a big sentimental sap who felt bad about just breaking it off after the abortion – I had to spend some time letting him down easy and letting him make me feel guilty.) In the time following the abortion, I began to think about my attitudes toward children, and realized – I had never really felt any urge to be a mother. I had just assumed that I would eventually have children, because I figured that EVERYONE had kids. (Right?) It weighed on my mind constantly that bipolar disorder is a hereditary condition, and I realized that if I ever did give birth to a child, I was going to spend that child’s life wondering if he or she would turn out to be mentally ill. The possibility that I might end up caring for a mentally ill child for the rest of my life filled me with dread and horror. It was during this time that I started thinking that what I *really* wanted, down deep in my heart, was to be sterilized, and eliminate any possibility that I could ever become pregnant.

Then, I graduated from college at 22, and got accepted to grad school. I was terribly excited and planning to start school in the fall, and my boyfriend was now pressuring me to marry him and have his baby. He took the attitude that he’d “been patient” and that he’d “waited long enough”, and now I was done with college, and I owed him something for terminating “our first baby.” As he pressed this case, I realized I didn’t love him any more, and wanted out of this relationship. I told him that I didn’t want children, ever – and he simply couldn’t, wouldn’t, believe me.

Well, it was a long, messy break-up – he just COULDN’T accept that it was over, and was very cruel and vindictive. Finally, though, he was gone, and my life was really my own again.

There is a very happy ending to my story – I’m now 30, successfully defended my thesis and earned a Ph.D. last year, and am planning my wedding to an absolutely wonderful, loving, supportive, understanding man I met in my department at graduate school. I also had myself sterilized just after my 29th birthday, and my now-fiancé supported me throughout the entire process of interviewing doctors, scheduling the procedure, and getting it done. He was by my side when I woke up in the recovery room, and lovingly nursed me afterward. He doesn’t want kids either, and this is part of the reason why we know we’re so compatible. Unlike my previous boyfriend, who made me feel nothing but guilt for not being mother material, my fiancé makes me feel beloved, cherished, and completely understood. I contemplated the idea of marrying my first boyfriend with dread – but I can’t wait to marry my fiancé.

I genuinely feel that my decision to have that abortion was one of the absolute BEST decisions I’d ever made in my life. Had I carried that pregnancy to term, that child wouldn’t have had a chance. The genetic lottery would have been stacked against him or her from the first – mental illness would probably have been inevitable. That child would have been stuck with unhappily married parents, a mother who didn’t want him or her, and who resented the loss of the academic career she really wanted, and an unstable father who couldn’t manage to care for himself, let alone help care for a child. Instead of being half of a blissfully happy couple who adore each other, I would have been one of three very unhappy people in a miserable, loveless family.

I don’t regret my decision at all, not for one instant. If I had it all to do over, I’d probably just have never accepted the first date with the man who got me pregnant in the first place.

Jan. 22: I’m only a couple of days late, but I’m getting worried. I know getting worried would just make it even later. I figure if I got a negative pregnancy test, I’ll stop worrying and my period will come. Everything will be fine. When I first look down at the test, I only see one pink line. I’m ecstatic! Not pregnant! As I go to throw the test in the waste bin, I realize there is a second line. It is very, very pale, but it is there. Still ecstatic, I figure such a faint line doesn’t really count. I take the bus to school confident I would get my period in a few hours.
Jan. 24: Still no period. Maybe deep down I’m still nervous about that pale line? It still could just be nerves, right? I take a second test. The second line is not so pale this time.

I am immediately disappointed in myself. I never thought I’d end up here. A struggling grad student in debt, with a lover in another state, and neither of us wanting to be parents. Having a baby was not an option. I never considered it.

I tell the father and we are still in complete agreement. I’m glad this is a topic we discussed early in the relationship. No surprises. I wouldn’t want any right now.

Jan. 26: I call Planned Parenthood. Because of state law, I would have to talk to a doctor at least 24 hours in advance about the risks of the procedure. Fortunately, this could be done over the phone. The clinic is an hour by bus, and I have no car. I schedule dates for the phone call and the procedure. I am also told, as required by law, that there are pamphlets available to me describing the growth of a fetus and “other options” such as adoption. I say I am not interested.

Jan. 29: A friendly doctor calls to tell me the risks involved with getting an abortion. The risks are ridiculously low, and mostly minor. Neither I nor the doctor understand the point in this law. I do not need 24 hours to think about my decision. I made it when I saw two pink lines on the pregnancy test. Nothing has changed.

Feb. 4: It’s -9 degrees Fahrenheit. I correctly predict that’s too cold for most protesters. There’s an escort outside the clinic to get me and my roommate past a woman who tells me, “don’t walk down this path, Jesus is the way.” I laughed. The escort talks to us about the weather to try to drown out the Jesus woman. We get inside rather quickly.

A woman behind a pane of glass makes photocopies of my and my roommate’s driver’s licenses. We are then allowed into the waiting room, which is safe behind a locked door. We have to be buzzed in. There I filled out some forms and watched “Big” on a TV on the wall. I was struck by the diverse crowd in the waiting room. This really must be the most common surgical procedure in the country. A wealthy-looking couple, dressed as if they were going to an opera instead of an abortion clinic, worry together in one corner. Two sorority sisters look nervous together in another. A woman in a floor-length skirt and headscarf, perhaps a Muslim or Orthodox Jew, speaks in some other language with her husband. A high school student is comforted by her mother.

First, I am called back for an ultrasound. 5 weeks, she saiya. I am so grateful to be able to get this done quickly. Back to the waiting room. My roommate had brought his laptop and is doing work. I am so reminded how lucky I am he was able to take off a day from work to bring me. I’d be a wreck if I were doing this alone, and my lover was too far away to come himself. I’m called back again, this time to talk about my decision and the procedure itself, and to check my Rh factor and hemoglobin. Positive and 15.2. I’m good to go. The woman I’m talking with asks me about my plans for future birth control. I have an appointment with my regular doctor on Feb. 18 to go on the Pill. She says they like to send patients home with something right away so they can get started. She asks if I’m interested in that, and I say yes. She then tells me about options other than the Pill I may be interested in. I get a pamphlet to look over while in the waiting room. Because of a blood condition I have, they decide not to give me ibuprofen. She checks my blood pressure and temperature. She comments my blood pressure is normal but “a little on the high side.” Back to the waiting room.

I put my co-pay and a small donation on my credit card. It’s a lot less than I thought I’d have to pay. I’m relieved, since I have student fees and rent coming up. More waiting. I get very hungry. I wish I had eaten breakfast before coming. I look over the pamphlet and discover NuvaRing. It sounds great and so much more convenient than the Pill. My regular doctor had not mentioned it. I had no idea there was something so easy available. I’m excited to get started with that right away.

Three hours after first arriving, it’s finally time. I’m led to a bathroom and told to empty my bladder and put a pad in my underwear. I’m then led to another room where I strip from the waist down and lie on a table. I realize that I’m not even nervous. I feel a little awkward lying on a table with no pants, but nothing too bad. The doctor comes in, introduces himself, and shakes my hand. A woman stands next to me and starts some small talk. It gets my mind off what’s going on. I barely feel a thing at first. The woman next to me warns I’ll soon hear the vaccuum turn on and feel some cramping. It was still a bit surprising to feel cramps so suddenly. It is uncomfortable, but not painful. More small talk. She’s a cat person but her apartment won’t allow them. I sympathize.

Finally, I hear the machine shut off, and the woman next to me says it is hopefully over. The doctor confirms. All the important parts have been removed. I’m done.

The doctor reminds me of the importance of scheduling a follow-up exam before leaving the room. As soon as I sit up, the cramps get a lot better. I get dressed and go into the recovery room. I’m still hungry, and a little cold, but am feeling pretty good. The cramps aren’t that bad, and I’m relieved to have the procedure done.

I tell the woman I have decided on the NuvaRing. We discuss that and go over my aftercare. 7 days of antibiotics. No sex, tampons, or lifting over twenty pounds for two weeks. Nothing I can’t handle. I’m reminded once more to make an appointment for a follow-up exam in three to four weeks. I get a small brown bag with papers describing everything I was told about, a bottle of antibiotics, and my first NuvaRing. Another woman checks my blood pressure and temperature again. My blood pressure has come back down.

I’m hungry, and I want a nap, but I’m feeling good about my decision, and relieved that it’s over. My roommate takes me for lunch and drops me off at home before heading into work. I’m hardly bleeding at all.

I talk to my mom on the phone a few hours later. I lie and say that nothing’s new in my life. I know she wouldn’t approve, but I also know she’s not ready to be a grandmother yet.

Feb. 7: After a few days of just light spotting, it’s starting to feel like a period flow. I haven’t used pads in over ten years. It feels strange.

I make the appointment for my follow-up exam. It will be on February 25, exactly three weeks after the procedure. They’ll make sure there were no complications, and I’ll get the chance to buy more NuvaRings.

Walking home from the store, I hear a baby wailing through an apartment window on my street. I chuckle to myself and think how happy I am that won’t be my window later this year.

To simply say “I’m not sorry” or “I don’t regret it” is not strong enough. Having an abortion was the best decision I ever made. I’m glad I did it, and I’m 100% confident that I made the right choice for myself, my lover, and our situation. It’s not right for everyone, but it was right for me, and I’ll do everything in my power to make sure every woman has the opportunity to decide if it is right for her without legislation making that decision for her.

Any pregnancy will change your life, whether you have the baby or not. It should be up to us how we let it change us.

I am 24 years old and I had an abortion. This all happened the summer before my senior year of college. I made the mistake of having sex with an ex-boyfriend. I had a bad feeling right after it happened; the condom broke and I distinctly remember him saying “You’ll be fine”. I was furious. I immediately went to Planned Parenthood and got Plan B, hoping this little mistake would not lead to a big mistake. But something felt different. As the next few weeks passed, my body felt different, my breasts were extremely tender and I experiencing daily nausea. I kept telling myself I was making this up in my head and that it was all mental. Then I missed my period. Again, I tried to relate this to stress and nerves; however after I was a week late I knew what I had to do. I’ve taken pregnancy tests before because worry so much, even when I’ve had no reason to. I just had this feeling that time would be different. Sure enough, it didn’t even take a minute for the pregnancy test to come back positive. I want to say that I was shocked, but I wasn’t. After weeks of feeling “off”, deep down inside I think I knew. Right away I knew what I had to do.
I was so upset and knew I had to confide in someone. I immediately got in my car and went for a drive and called 2 of my best friends. The next day I called the clinic in my town and made my first appointment. I was so nervous to go and face the reality of it all. But honestly, the doctors and nurses at this facility made me so comfortable. There was a security guard at the door who was so friendly and tried to make all the nervous women feel comfortable. For my first appointment, my two friends came and sat with me in the clinic. At this appointment I made the second appointment for the actual abortion. I began to feel relieved and sure enough when the second appointment came I was not only nervous but also ready. The abortion procedure was quick, and I can tell you I have never felt so relieved in my entire life. The staff was so incredibly kind and understanding throughout the whole thing, making the whole situation that much easier. I walked out of that clinic feeling different, mentally and physically.

I do not have any regret about what I did, and could not be happier with my decision. I wouldn’t be where I am today, and I know that I would not have been able to provide a child with any stable life. Also, my ex-boyfriend was not someone that I would have ever wanted to raise a child with. He has many drug and alcohol problems that have escalated intensely within the past 6 months, resulting in overdose and drug rehabilitation. I know that I made the right decision and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to have an abortion. Like many others, this site helped me and I feel obligated to submit my story to share with others in my situation. Abortion does not make you a bad person, and no one should ever make you feel that way. It is a personal decision that should be given to any woman facing an unwanted/unexpected pregnancy. I can only hope that my story can help someone get through their situation and see that abortions are not nearly as scary and awful as our society has made them out to be. I had my abortion two years ago, and I’m not sorry.