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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.
