I’ve been pro-choice ever since I knew what the term meant (approximately since the age of twelve, or sixteen years ago). But needing to make the choice – like a lot of women, I never thought it would happen to me. But it did; I got pregnant a little over a year ago, on March 29, 2003. I had stopped taking the pill two and a half weeks prior to the night I got pregnant because I had gotten into an argument with my fuck buddy and decided that I would not see him anymore. I wondered aloud to the friend I was with when I called him whether I should make him “pull out.” Then, in the moment, I didn’t. I don’t know why. I know that I thought the chances of my getting pregnant at all were remote because of my history of irregular periods and sporadic ovulation. I believed the literature distributed with the pill that tells you that it often takes a few months after going off the pill to become pregnant. Take it from me; it does not always take a few months.
Three weeks later, I was driving down my street and wondered if I was pregnant; my breasts were sore, but I wasn’t sure if that was a symptom or not. Two days later, I watched a movie called “The Good Girl” starring Jennifer Aniston. In one scene, she tells a co-worker that her breasts are sore, and the co-worker replies that she might be pregnant. She was. I said “oh shit” aloud. The next day I made my roommate go to the drug store and buy me a pregnancy test. She came back with a three-pack. I took all three. They all came out positive.
I thought very seriously about continuing with the pregnancy. After all, I was 27, not 17. I had graduated from law school almost two years prior. But, I was also single, in an incredible amount of debt, and working in a job that would end in the middle of my pregnancy. I had committed to another job, a one- or two-year position in a city halfway across the country. I was making very little money, barely enough to keep myself afloat. My fuck buddy already had one accidental child, a two-year-old girl. He strongly preferred that I have an abortion and told me that if I wanted to have the baby he wanted to sign away his parental rights. Since his family was a bunch of Republican redneck crackers, I would not have had it any other way, I assured him. I did not want his wishes to influence my decision. Still, the weight of the evidence was clear: I was not ready to have a baby. It was not the right time in my life in myriad ways for this to happen. Being a good parent to the children I plan to have was always an extremely important thing to me. I knew that at that time, I could not be the kind of parent that I want to be. I got on the internet and looked up Planned Parenthood.
I had to travel to another state to have a medical abortion (which is what they call the use of RU486), which I strongly preferred to the invasiveness of a surgical abortion. My fuck buddy paid for the abortion and drove me four hours each way twice, as the state I had to travel to had a 24-hour waiting period law. During the first visit they gave me a sonogram to make sure that I was within the correct time frame for a medical abortion (7 weeks) and told me about the procedure. On the second visit they gave me one pill that blocks the production of progesterone, which is essential to continuing a pregnancy, and a packet of four other pills, which I was to insert into my vagina in three days to induce expulsion of the tissue. The passage of the tissue was not bad at all; I had intense cramps for 15 or 20 minutes, and that was it. I had been so sick during the weeks that I was pregnant that I was unable to work and practically bedridden. It was an incredible relief not to be sick anymore.
A year later, I can say with certainty that I made the right decision. I have suffered no sorrow, no guilt, no pain … only relief that I was able to correct a mistake that would have altered my life forever. Last weekend I joined over a million women, men, and children to march in Washington so that the daughters I hope to have will have the same right that I did to decide when and whether to become mothers. Granted, I never should have gotten pregnant at all; I made a stupid mistake, one I will never make again. Thanks to the women’s movement, that potential child, its father, and I did not have to pay for that mistake for the rest of our lives. Was the embryo inside me life in some form? Yes, of course. Was it the equivalent of an adult life such that its rights should have exceeded mine? No. Do I believe that I committed murder? No. Do I regret it? Am I sorry? No.
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