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This week’s episode is very special to me. I want to thank all of the brave souls who responded to my call for abortion stories. To read their powerful words, scroll down to the bottom of this page. In fact, start there before you dive into this chat with Carol Sanger about her new book, “About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in 21st Century America”.
Abortion can be a ridiculously charged topic in the United States, which is unique among countries with legal abortion. Carol’s book is a fascinating and dare I say fun look into the legislation, the imagery, how technology has impacted the conversation, and more than anything focuses on what happens when people in marginalized positions are forced to choose secrecy over privacy.
We tie abortion to sex work, kink, polyamory, HIV/AIDS, and of course, to the larger oppressive systems at play in our society like patriarchy and gender role bullshit.
Despite the heaviness of abortion, this talk with Carol is delightful – there’s intimate moments and several genuine laughs as we dive into all of the terrific research Carol has done and why it’s more important than ever that we share our stories.
If abortion is a hot topic for you, I invite you to listen and to be patient. The stories, more than anything, are critical for us all to hear and absorb.
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
In this episode, Carol and I talk about:
- The power in Carol’s new book, which includes a comprehensive chapter on what men actually do when they are responsible for choosing the fate of an embryo or fetus based on actual circumstances.
- Carol’s findings for the reasons men give for choosing to destroy an embryo or to terminate a pregnancy and how they’re nearly identical to the reasons women give for ending a pregnancy, and why men are not attacked or vilified for their decisions when their reasons are the exact same.
- A new law that is sweeping many states that will disregard your living will and advanced directive about sustaining life if you’re in a coma or brain dead if you’re pregnant. In other words, the state is saying they can keep you alive even if you have expressly said you do not want that.
- The difference between motherhood and fatherhood. Society expects mothers to be altruistic, even for their embryos and beyond. There is an expectation that women are destined, and desire to be, mothers above all else. This is why abortion is so shocking and upsetting to so many. It’s seen as the ultimate betrayal.
- Choosing abortion as an act of protecting a potential child and why we don’t give that very thoughtful reason enough credit.
- We trust women to raise our children, to care for them, but we don’t trust women to choose when to bring them into the world.
- Listener stories of abortion and the power of these women’s words.
- The importance of bringing nuance and real stories into conversations around topics like sex work and abortion – it’s not black and white as it’s often painted by the opposing sides.
- Withholding mourning from people who are marginalized as a way to punish them, by refusing them a chance to have a range of emotions – be it someone who had an abortion, gay couples, or sex workers.
- Women have been taught that caring for self is selfish – we see echoes of that around abortion as well as sexual pleasure. Carol and I roll around in that.
- Privacy versus secrecy and why the secrecy around abortion is similar to the secrecy around being in the closet for being kinky, trans, polyamorous because of this culture of anti-sex and anti-autonomy.
- Abortion doesn’t define who you are. We talk about what it would look like to learn people we love had abortions and how we can influence politics at a global level simply by making more space for disclosure and abortion stories, in all their nuance.
- There’s similar shame and stigma around having HIV/AIDS because both HIV/AIDS and abortion are seen as the result of a personal choice, and that choice (sex) makes you a villain.
- Carol’s one line in Chapter 1 that acknowledges that not all people who get abortions are women, but why she chose to keep the genders very binary in her book.
Resources mentioned in this episode
Carol mentioned a paper called, “I Would Like to Give My Baby, Like, Everything In the World,” which talks about women aborting to protect their children. While this is an academic paper that is not publicly accessible, Slate wrote about the paper here.
Lindy West and Amelia Bonow started #ShoutYourAbortion and ShoutYourAbortion.com to share abortion stories.
The Rewire book review by Katie Klabusich that Carol mentions in the episode. Check it out here.
About Carol Sanger
Carol Sanger is the Barbara Aronstein Black Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. She teaches courses on contracts, family law, and others focusing on reproduction, the legal profession, and law and gender. Her recent book About Abortion (Harvard University Press) is centered on the regulation of abortion.
You can follow Carol on Twitter @carolsangernyc
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: You’re listening to (You’re listening) (You’re listening) You’re listening to Sex Gets Real (Sex Get Real) (Sex Gets Real) Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra (with Dawn Serra). Thanks, bye!
Hey, everyone. So here we are with this week’s episode. I’m super excited to share that once again, the episode is sponsored by Talkspace, the online therapy company. For as little as $32 a week, you can work with an experienced licensed therapist handpicked just for you. In fact, when I used them last summer, I specifically said that I needed somebody who was kink aware and trauma-informed, and they matched me with someone who was super open to exactly what I needed. On Talkspace, you can send text, audio, and video messages to your therapist and talk about your life. Work through what’s keeping you up at night, or just work on feeling a bit happier. To sign up or to learn more, there’s a super special URL, just for Sex Gets Real listeners. So it’s super important that you go to talkspace.com/sgr for Sex Gets Real and to show your support for the podcast. Plus to get $30 off your first month, you can use coupon code SGR for Sex Gets Real. So again, that’s coupon code SGR to get $30 off your first month at talkspace.com/sgr.
Dawn Serra: This week’s episode is one that I’m very excited about. Abortion hasn’t been a huge topic on the show. It’s interesting because it’s been something that has been a really big part of my life. I personally have not had an abortion. I have supported friends through abortions, through decisions around whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. I worked as an escort at a clinic protecting patients from very aggressive protesters on the sidewalk that we’re trying to prevent them from going inside, often for things like birth control or for pregnancy support. I ran a book club for seven years in Washington, DC that was all about reproductive justice. So I’m surprised it hasn’t played a bigger role in Sex Gets Real to now. But if I had to pick an episode and a person to help me bring this to you in a really interesting, sensitive, nuanced way, I couldn’t ask for anyone better than Carol Sanger.
I got a copy of her new book About Abortion by Harvard University Press. It’s one of the most interesting books about the legislative landscape, and technology and how that’s impacted how we talk about it. One of the most fascinating parts of the book is actually, she looked at actual case studies and circumstances where men had the opportunity to decide what would happen to frozen embryos or to a pregnancy when their wife or partner were in serious medical trauma. And examined the reasons that men gave for deciding to have embryos destroyed. That’s actually where we start with this episode and it’s really fascinating. She looked at imagery all throughout history, and it’s a fantastic book. So even if you are unsure of your feelings about abortion, if you have a very complicated understanding of it and complicated feelings, I just want to invite you to join us for this hour.
Dawn Serra: Throughout the episode, there are a number of stories that were offered to me from people who had had abortions and these stories ranged from grateful and life changing, in that it offered them a chance to really live out their dreams to guilt ridden and very complicated. All of the stories that were provided to me are on sexgetsreal.com/ep162 for this episode, I highly recommend that you go and read all of these stories by the people themselves who experienced abortion. Then I invite you to sit through this hour and to allow yourself to ask new questions, to absorb the experiences of others, and to see how you feel at the end of it. Carol is delightful and funny, and so approachable despite being so freakin smart and talented at what she does. So let me tell you a little bit about Carol and then we will dive into this episode that I am so, so excited to bring you.
Carol Sanger is the Barbara Aaron Steen black professor of law at Columbia Law School. She teaches courses on contracts, family law, and others focusing on reproduction, the legal profession, and law in gender. Her recent book About Abortion is centered on the regulation of abortion. I know it sounds like this hour is going to be very heavy, but I promise you it’s not. It’s fascinating and personal, and intimate and interesting. I think it’s really going to give all of us new ways to think about and consider this conversation that, at least, in the United States is a very hot topic. I know a lot of other countries where abortion is legal actually don’t have this very pro-life rhetoric issue. But here in the United States, it’s a very complicated thing. So I invite you to dive in. Don’t forget, you can also support the show by going to patreon.com/sgrpodcast, even $1 a month, super helps me out so much. Of course, that expanded Dylan episode is coming in a couple of weeks.
Dawn Serra: One other thing I want to mention, and I do talk about this with Carol at the very end of the episode. Throughout the episode, we use very binary language around gender. We refer to people who get abortions as women and a lot of other characters in our conversation, and in Carol’s book as men. There’s a very deliberate reason for that, that we actually talk about. I read a little line that’s in the book about why she decided to use binary language. But do note that at the very end of the hour, we talked about trans inclusion. And both of us are very aware that not everyone who gets an abortion identifies as a woman or is a woman. So stay tuned for that, too. Here we go.
Welcome to Sex Gets Real, Carol. I am over the moon to be having this conversation with you today.
Carol Sanger: I’m thrilled to be here and I’m now very glad I know about Sex Gets Real. All my friends – everyone said, “What?” I said, “Yes, it’s fabulous.” I’m a converted.
Dawn Serra: Oh, excellent. I love that. I want to tell you first of all, and of course, make sure the listeners hear this, too, that your book About Abortion is absolutely incredible.
Carol Sanger: Thank you. When you’re working on something, you’d like to think you’re on the right track. But there are bits of it, which are a bit – some are edgier than others. And I just kept going. I’m in a reading and writing group where we read each other’s work. And at one point, on a chapter on the images of fetuses in art, one of the group members said, “I don’t really see what you’re doing, but keep going.” That was very good. I kept going, and it worked out I think, so I really appreciate that. I’m very pleased that you liked it so much and that you found so much in it.
Dawn Serra: I did. I have a habit of underlining things in books and putting little notes in the margin or my feeling in the moment as I’m reading that I want to return to. I know the mark of a good book when I never put my pen down. The entirety of your book from start to finish is filled with underlines, and exclamation points, and “Fuck this”, and “Oh my god”, and “I love this.” So, yeah, it’s great. I think what’s interesting is for listeners who don’t know, I ran the Washington pro-choice book club for seven years. During that time, Dr. Willie Parker was part of our book club and I had a chance to read hundreds of books on everything that had to do with with reproductive experiences and women’s bodies, and motherhood and stuff, but lots of books about abortion.
One of the things that really stands out to me about your book is you’re not only really looking at the legislative landscape, and keeping it really interesting, also really digging into the power of imagery, the ways that having access to images about what’s happening in bodies is changing the conversation. One of, I think, the most fascinating chapters in any abortion book that I’ve ever read, where you use real life examples of when men have an opportunity to choose what happens to an embryo or to a pregnant spouse, who maybe is in a coma, or is brain dead; and really extrapolate the reasons that men decide to have embryos destroyed and compare that to reasons that women used to choose abortion. There’s so much in this book that looks farther out than just this very hot, heated topic of abortion specifically.
Carol Sanger: I’m glad that Father Chapter got to you because I’ve been wondering for 25 years, where are the men in this discussion, other than the ones who are sitting around the table with Vice President Pence? I mean, where are the real men who are either accompanying women to an abortion clinic or not accompanying them, or ditching out when they find out she’s pregnant, or agreeing with the decision of a partner. Where are they? So I thought, what would men do if– First I said, What would men do if they were pregnant? I thought, that doesn’t really get us anywhere. Because I think if men were pregnant, they’d be women. We’d occupy the male role, the male slot, and so it would just be reversed oppression. Possibly. So I thought that won’t work just us pretending what would men do.
So I thought, what do men actually do when they have the opportunity to control what happens to an embryo or fetus, and then since I teach Family Law, I remember all these frozen embryo cases. I thought in many of them, the man is the one who doesn’t want it implanted in his ex or in anybody else; and so I scoured the newspaper articles on these cases, because the cases tell you the law, but I wasn’t so much interested in the law as what’s going on. Why did they want this outcome? So there was plenty on it because lots of men were happy to be interviewed, which bookmark women are not. So they were saying all kinds of things to reporters, like, “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with that woman” or “I have enough kids already.” Or, this is one of my favorites, “I’m a young man, now that I’m single again, the last thing I want is to be tied down to a kid.” And that is something you don’t hear women say ever. Even though taking some enjoyment out of their own life is a good thing, women know what kind of reasons not to give. So it was very interesting to me.
Carol Sanger: One man also said, “I’m engaged in a serious work project right now. It would be very bad to have another kid.” So when I line those reasons up with the reasons that women give: plans, finances are bad, really don’t want a relationship with the other person. They were quite the same, except for one thing – two things actually. No man said, “I realize I’m very selfish for doing this.” And that got me. I thought it was amazing that the kind of reasons men gave were self regarding reasons, what we call self regarding, they’re doing it for their own best interest. Women, you just leave out the regarding and call them selfish. So that struck me hard. The other difference was, what I mentioned before, men saying, “I don’t want another kid because I need to kick up my heels.” So I learned a lot from that.
I also, just to go to the coma business, stumbled onto something I didn’t know at all, which is a new thing that’s getting enacted in a lot of states is, if a woman has signed a directive, if she goes into a coma, or is brain dead – let’s take the coma first, no heroic measures; a number of states, and they’re doing it increasingly, have passed a law saying that directive has no application if the woman is pregnant.
Dawn Serra: Wow.
Carol Sanger: So it’s to say… No late pregnancy, no fully developed pregnancy but anytime in a pregnancy if you are in a terrible accident and are living on life support, and you said you don’t want to have your body sustained this way. It’s too bad. It’s really amazing. You wouldn’t know that, you wouldn’t know that exists. It goes against our ideas about people’s control of their bodies in this very fundamental way.
Dawn Serra: Yes. Really quickly, I think the way that you gave men a voice in this book around why they make decisions was really important because I think that it more than anything, highlights just how much these abortion debates and the legislation is about women. That men can stand up and give these interviews, and not be afraid of losing jobs or of being shot for saying, “I want these embryos destroyed because I just don’t want more children” or “I’m really busy right now” or “I don’t want to have this relationship.” And to see that women really have enough evidence in their lives to know, “This is important for me to keep a secret.”
Carol Sanger: That’s exactly it. I mean, I think it’s very hard in the U.S. to have an abortion or to think about having one and want to talk about it with someone. Women are very careful who to talk about it with because it’s perceived to be so stigmatizing. For men, I mean, it’s the difference between motherhood and fatherhood, which is not entirely – those are not equal statuses. Because mothers are expected to be altruistic even for their embryos, even for below an embryo – blastocyst.
I found a quote. I hope I have it. Because I was looking through the book, and it was from Harriet Beecher Stowe – No, I’m sorry, it was Julia Ward Howe. It says, “It is a blessed thing to be a mother. But there are bounds to all things and no woman is under any obligation to sacrifice the whole of her existence to the mere act of bringing children into the world.” So I thought, that’s pretty good for Mother’s Day.
Dawn Serra: Yes, it is. I love that quote. That was, of course, one of the ones that I like started.
Carol Sanger: Do you want me to send you a new book?
Dawn Serra: No, I love my beautiful copy. Thank you.
Carol Sanger: Okay.
Dawn Serra: If you don’t mind, I would actually, since you’re talking about how women really understand that it’s not safe to talk about these things. So many of the abortion stories that I got, in my call for stories, really touch on the importance of the secrecy. So if it’s okay, I’d love to read one of the things that got shared.
Carol Sanger: Oh, I would welcome it.
Dawn Serra: Okay, so this comes from anonymous who had her abortion at 27 – “I knew I couldn’t financially support a child. The father was someone I had only recently started dating a few months earlier. He told me if we had kids and I ever left him, he’d take my children from me and make sure they suffered until I came crawling back. I was unwilling to put my child in that position. I will protect my children at all costs, even if that means not giving birth to them. I have never doubted my decision, it was the right thing to do. At the time, I had recently moved to a state where it’s very difficult and very expensive to get an abortion. I didn’t tell any family or friends beforehand, and only ended up telling my sister and her husband afterwards because I needed their help lifting things that I couldn’t carry. My dad and step mom still don’t know. In the last year I’ve become more open about it and shared with a few friends, and also told my mom. I do not regret the decision. I was protecting myself and the child from a dangerous man.”
Carol Sanger: That is so powerful. I thank the anonymous for writing in and sharing that, because the idea of protecting your children even if it means not giving them birth, that’s an amazing phrase. In her case, she knew that. I mean, she had this threat – a real threat from the man involved, tThat was meant to keep her with him all the time. It was like, “I’m going to use your children to keep you from ever leaving me.” So we see what that is. It’s wonderful that you talked about it in terms of protection. The studies of women who – we’ll talk about why they aborted.
There’s a lovely article and it’s called, “I would like to give my baby everything in the world.” She just says, “I know what kind of mom I want to be and I would like to give her everything in the world.” She knew she couldn’t, though she had an abortion, but it’s it’s another way of putting, we have ideas about how we want to care for our children. One is protection. Certainly, that’s very basic, and another is to provide for them and not just have them and bring them into a situation that the woman knows is going to be harsh. Or too difficult or not the way she wants to raise her children and we don’t give that much credit. In fact– sorry.
Dawn Serra: No, no. You go.
Carol Sanger: One of the phrases that I really picked up from Texas when they were having their ongoing fight with the legislature, they had a bumper sticker called Trust Texas Women. I thought, “Trust Texas women, yes.” Then I started thinking, we trust women with everything. We trust them with raising our children. We assign that task to them. We trust them with everything, except deciding that this might not be the right time, circumstances might not be right, this might be too difficult for the child and for me. So it’s interesting, it’s conditional trust.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, that was one of the things that really struck me as I was reading your book was, it’s so clear that the assumptions by lawmakers is that women are either ignorant or uncaring, or I think in some cases, just stupid. So the law must forcefully educate and protect them from themselves by having mandatory ultrasounds, which is basically the state forcing access to your body and the antithesis of informed consent. But that’s how we get these forced waiting periods of, “If we can show them these pictures,” “If we can ask them these really invasive questions,” “If we make them wait 72 hours, then they’ll think about it and maybe realize what they’re doing.” Because the assumption is that women don’t understand what abortion is, that women don’t understand that there’s an embryo or a fetus.
It’s this really bizarre thing that if they choose to have children, we trust that they understand the lifelong impact that that may have. The other risks that come with being pregnant for nine months and then raising children. It’s this really bizarre disconnect.
Carol Sanger: Well, you have it exactly right. It’s interesting that you said we’re trying to protect women from themselves. Since what we were talking about with regard to the letter you received, that woman was talking about protecting her children and herself. What legislators are doing, you put it exactly right. They’re trying to protect women from themselves. The argument goes like this, and this was an argument endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court: If women knew how terrible abortion is, and in the case that the Supreme Court said this, it was a late term abortion. If they knew how absolutely horrible the process of an abortion is, they will regret it, there is no reason to doubt they will regret it for the rest of their lives.
I’m looking back at your list, you said, are they stupid? Are they ignorant? It’s incredibly paternalistic, and also, it’s wrong. I mean, women do know what it means to have an abortion. I’ve often asked my class, what do you think a woman should be told or has to know before she can consent to an abortion? They brought it down to this: you have to know you’re pregnant. You have to know what pregnancy means. So this will apply to young girls, for example. Do you understand what this means? It seems absurd that a woman wouldn’t. But there was a case in New Jersey that went all the way to the New Jersey Supreme Court just a few years ago, where the woman went into, two children, by the way, and she had an abortion. She had to go back to an emergency room later,and the nurse said to her – she said, “Why am I bleeding so much?” The nurse said, “Your doctor left part of the baby in you.” So she sued the doctor for failing to tell her that by having an abortion, she had killed her own son.
Dawn Serra: Oh, wow.
Carol Sanger: Yeah, yeah. So the court didn’t permit it. The court said, “No, there’s no consensus that prenatal life constitutes your relative as a living child would.” But that’s the view that’s creeping around right now – that life begins at conception – protected, life begins at conception,. So we would all agree that some kind of life, there is something growing there, and that it’s human. So to say that prenatal life is human life, that’s true, but it’s not a person in the sense that we use the word person in law, which means you’re protected in every way.
I’m laughing to myself because there’s a case where- so what would it mean if an embryo or fetus were a person, a great case, I hope you saw it in the book, where a woman is driving in the high occupancy vehicle lane. She gets stopped by the police. He says, “I’m sorry, ma’am. Here’s your ticket. You’re only one person in the car” She says, “No, I’m pregnant. There are two of us here.”
Dawn Serra: We are carpooling.
Carol Sanger: That’s right. We’re prenatal carpooling. So she had to pay the ticket.
Dawn Serra: Yes, as she should. But yet in abortion, it would be a completely different story.
Carol Sanger: Yeah, when you said, so how are we going to get women to come around and see the light? The way we do it is say, “Okay, you have to have an ultrasound nbf. Do you want to look at the picture of your unborn child?” In those words. In several states, the doctor has to read out a script to you about prenatal life and development, and then point out to you on the monitor, “This is the head,” they have to point at the head extremities and any organs that are visible, “ So this is to show you, Do you get it now? Do you see that there’s this thing there that we’re going to call a life.” What’s weird is you could show women pictures. I mean, if you felt it was really important to educate them about what a fetus is or looks like at that stage, which is essentially in most cases – it might have a little bit of shape but most abortions take place around 10 weeks which is fairly shapeless. But the pictures won’t do. They want you to look into your own body so you have the idea – to force some connection with you and this thing on the monitor, which is already 10 trillion times big numbers – not the right number, but much bigger than what is actually inside.
In case you didn’t get that message, in case you didn’t get it from the ultrasound, then Texas, for example, says, a”We want you to know, before you consent that we require you to bury or cremate the fetal remains.”
Dawn Serra: Yes.
Carol Sanger: So we’re going to continue to personify this entity as human like you or me. By doing a ritual of mourning, by making you go through the kind of procedures you’d go through with a dead person. So they sort of get you at the beginning in the end. It’s a sly game, and nobody understands what’s happening. Nobody thinks, “Oh, thank God, I can finally understand what I’m doing.” The book is called About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in 21st Century America. A number of people said, “Why did you put abortion, the word, and terminating pregnancy? Aren’t they the same thing?” My answer is, no. For just the reason we’re talking about.
Abortion has all the connotations of “killing”, “selfish” – all the things we’ve been saying. Terminating a pregnancy – it’s the difference between a pregnancy and a fetus. Technology has made it possible to know you’re pregnant so early and to look inside so early so we’ve shifted. We started childhood in the womb, which is partly the result of ultrasound because you can see something. So technology has been a very good service to anti-abortion advocates because they think they have proof.
Dawn Serra: Yes. Yeah. So I have two stories that are very different from each other, but, I think, fit in really nicely here around being very clear about why this decision is being made, but having very different feelings about it. I would love to read the two back to back, and I think it’ll be a really wonderful way for us to transition into talking about loss and regret.
Carol Sanger: Yes, good.
Dawn Serra: The first one comes from Miranda, who had an abortion at 24 – “Some of the factors I considered were my ability to financially and emotionally care for a child alone. I had been seeing the guy for a few months casually, but was living at home to deal with my own anxiety disorder and my mom’s borderline during a divorce between her and the man who raised me. It was a time in my life when I knew that having a baby would prevent me from healing and getting out of a dark mental place, and a dependent financial one. Because of my abortion, I am now happy and healthy, living on my own in another state. I have a great job, great committed relationship, and even better mental health. I can provide a safe living situation for my much younger brother and pursue comedy improv, and my dreams. I went alone, and only a few people know what I went through, including my current partner. I still feel though, like I can’t share my story because my reason that ‘I just wasn’t ready’ isn’t good enough.”
Dawn Serra: If you’re like this person who wrote in, or if you’ve experienced a miscarriage, abuse, trauma, or you’re just feeling super stuck in your life, today’s sponsor Talkspace, which is an online therapy company makes it really easy to connect with an experienced licensed therapist handpicked just for you. It’s as little as $32 a week. You can text, do audio, do video, whatever you want, even a live video chat. It’s an amazing way to start sharing your stories, processing through some of the things that maybe you’ve felt ashamed of or stuck around. And that’s not a problem at all because your therapist with Talkspace is ready to help. To sign up or learn more, go to my special little URL talkspace.com/sgr for Sex Gets Real. As a special offer just for the listeners, you can use coupon code SGR and that gets you $30 off your first month. That also shows support for the podcast. So as you’re listening to this episode, if you have things coming up if you’re feeling triggered, or if you realized your story needs to be heard, reach out to Talkspace. Back to the episode.
Carol Sanger: That’s really powerful. Should we hear the other one first?
Dawn Serra: Yes. So anonymous, had an abortion at nineteen – “Choosing to abort was one of the hardest decisions I ever made. In all honesty, I regret it a lot. I named the child I was carrying and felt a lot of emotional attachment. To me, that’s why it was so hard. I have no moral objections to abortion. But having that child was something I really wanted. It became a child rather than a fetus, the moment that I realized this was something I’ve wanted and not feared, but it also wasn’t an option. As a sex worker, and at the time, an addict carrying my child to term would have killed me. It would have ensured such a loss of income as to leave me homeless, and caused me to abandon dependencies I relied on, which likely would have left me suicidal. I still mourn today, four years later, but I also made the only choice I could. I hate the abortion narrative as it exists. I feel like my choices are to be fodder for pro-lifers would have allowed me to carry this pregnancy at the cost of most likely both of our lives, or to abandon all negative feelings to stand with pro-choicers. But the reality is that life is more complicated than that. My life is more complicated than that. I can relate to the pro-lifers narratives, but I also do not agree with them. Ultimately, I did what I had to do, but not being allowed to express any kind of regret, not being allowed to mourn, that has hurt a lot.”
Carol Sanger: The two read so interestingly together because both women were confident about their decision, even though the second letter, it’s very interesting because she’s talking about a wanted pregnancy. The line between wanted and unwanted is very thin, unwanted pregnancies can become unwanted when you size things up. This person seemed to know all her situation very well from the start. But there are other women who call someone and say, “Guess what, I’m pregnant.” And the man says, “Have a happy life.” Or you’re happy you’re pregnant and you lose your job, or your younger brother, as in one of these cases needs your care or you have existing children. So even though you are desirous of having this baby, you match it up with the rest of your life and you see that it’s going to have tremendous costs and costs to the child itself.
When, in the second letter, the woman said having the child would have brought her to homelessness, would have brought her and her child to homelessness. It also reminds me, there’s an article called Right But the Wrong Thing to Do, which is, and that’s not exactly what this reader has. She really thinks it was – she doesn’t think it was the wrong thing to do. But what she’s regretting is not that she did it, she would do that same thing over again. She’s forgetting the circumstances that made it necessary for her to make that choice. My view is that’s why we have to have legal abortion, so that when a woman is in that place, the law is not working against her too.
Dawn Serra: Yes, exactly. I also think it’s so important, to me, what I hear in both of those stories, is this clarity around making the decision, which I think is it runs as a counter story to the assumptions by legislators, that people don’t know. But at the same time, I think what’s so interesting is, I’ve had a number of sex workers on the show, and one of the things that we’ve talked about at length is that because there’s people who are so anti-sex work, and really embedded in the human trafficking debates, that pro-sex work activists don’t really have the luxury to invite nuance. So it’s empowered, it’s something we chose. And that’s not the whole story and the nuance, and the power ultimately gets lost. We see that pro-choicers versus pro-lifers in these conversations of pro-choicers feel like they can’t risk saying, “I regret this.” Because pro-lifers will take that and run with it to the detriment of women and people accessing abortions.
Carol Sanger: That’s right. You see that in the way, in the legal world, people never, never use the word baby. It’s always a fetus. And that’s not how many women feel about it, they may well feel very connected. But the minute you say, “baby”, it’s like a concession to the right. “Oh, so you admitted to murder. You admit you’re killing a baby.” So that’s why there’s been this – the rhetoric of it all has put a real stranglehold on being to get to the nuance. You’re exactly right.
The other thing that the second letter brings up is you’re not allowed to mourn, you’re not allowed. That’s part of the punishment, I think. It’s part of the punishment of how a culture treats abortion. Maybe it’s more subtle than we think, but we’re sure not going to give you the opportunity to talk about it and to say that you miss this person. Many women commemorate the date of the abortion or usually the projected birth date of a child that isn’t born. There’s this concept in sociology called disenfranchised grief. It’s like mourning for something that the society says, “You’re not entitled to mourn for.” So some people feel this way about like, “Oh, my dog died, I’ll never be the same.” “No, don’t be ridiculous. You can’t love your dog like that.” And many people apply that also to, in 20 years ago, to gay and lesbian couples. Now, it would apply to chance as well, “Well, my partner died.” They’d say, “That’s not even a relationship. You can’t mourn that person.” So this disenfranchising people from feeling the range of feelings they actually feel, one, because it’s politically dangerous, and the other is that it’s part of the punishment not to let you feel this way. Did you see the picture of the Japanese statues?
Dawn Serra: Yes, and I loved them.
Carol Sanger: Yeah, it’s a ritual that is some religious sex in Japan, where after a miscarriage or an abortion, which is interesting because they put them together, you can buy a little stone statue of particular God who is the God of protecting children in the afterlife. Then you dress it up in baby clothes. There are rows and rows of these in the gardens where these are, that’s all that’s there. So you bring it little toys, you can bring it food. What you’re doing is you’re saying – you’re acknowledging that the… What shall I say – that the fetus, I’ll use the word, under that belief system, had a soul and the soul will get reborn and you’re wishing it well. You want it to have a good afterlife, possibly be reincarnated. I think lots of American women are jealous of that, that there’s this thing you can do to say, “I’m thinking of you, I’m sorry this happened.” It’s not an apology that you wouldn’t do it again.
Abortion is completely legal in Japan and these rituals are not political. They’re not used by pro-life people. They’re just a way of accommodating the range of human emotion. The same thing for women who have children who get prenatal diagnosis like your child has conditions that are incompatible with life, which means it probably won’t last the pregnancy or it will die, within hours of birth. Those are wanted pregnancies and they’re declined for another reason, t part of it is maternal health and part of it is well being of the child. There’s never thought to be a good motive for having an abortion, and we know that there are
Dawn Serra: Yes. I think, too, just recognizing, 1.) the hierarchy that exists within so many of these very complicated decisions that we make like when we compare miscarriages with abortion, both are the ending of a pregnancy but because one is a choice, then we can punish and vilify it. But then even within abortion to terminate because of a result of rape to terminate because of imminent fetal death or imminent maternal death. Those are handled somewhat differently depending on the circles you’re talking to, but kind of in a general sense, those are handled differently than, “I had an abortion because I didn’t want to be pregnant.”
Carol Sanger: Yep. So those are the the first category – those are the good abortions. So when you’re working in this area, you have to be really careful that you don’t always use so called “good abortions” for your examples. Because, happily, most women aren’t raped. You know? I mean, that’s a good thing. But we were very reluctant to take, “I don’t want to be pregnant.” Except if you look at the narratives and stories that women who had abortions before 1973, when it became legal in the U.S., they were just full of relief. I mean, it’s a very different approach then what we have now, where we have so much attention to the fetus and such a strong pro-life movement and which is now sitting in Washington.
Dawn Serra: Yes, yes. Yeah. Going back to those statues in Japan, particular religious sex, one of the things that struck me when I read that part of the book; I actually put it down and my husband and I had an hour long conversation about this exact thing. For me, I found that beautiful because it was permission to create a ritual around your experience and your feelings. I think that’s so missing for women in the United States who have to keep the secret, who have to hide it, who have to push it down because they feel like their reason wasn’t valid enough or because their grief in whatever magnitude it is, is not something that they feel like they should be carrying.
I love the opportunity for people who have ended a pregnancy to be able to say, “Here are all my thoughts about it, here’s my feelings, and here’s a representation of that so I can revisit if I need to,” or “I can just have this moment and then release it.” I just feel like that’s so much more liberating and healthy for folks who go through this process and some people may not need the ritual, but I think having the option to have that ritual and to have it be seen is pretty powerful.
Carol Sanger: I agree with you. I keep saying in talking about this book, I’m not saying – abortion is not compulsory, talking about abortion is not compulsory, having a ritual, you don’t have to do it. But it should be there because we offer it for every other aspect of life. We recognize that people have strong emotional needs. This concerns the decision not to have a child. I was thinking about the second letter you read where the woman had – she said she was in a dark mental place. So that’s also really important that women can recognize their own current problems of mental health. They might not be able to be the kind of mother they want. That person who wrote that letter, she said she was caring for a younger brother as well. So it isn’t that women are sitting around on a float in a pool eating bonbons. I mean, I know very few such women, and they’re they’re taking care of people, that’s what women do or they’re taking care of themselves. And that’s what women should do. That’s the harder part, often, to do something. That’s the harder part to explain, because we’re not supposed to be selfish.
Dawn Serra: For me, that ties so closely to the work that I do here on the podcast in that I’ve received thousands of questions from people over the years of doing this podcast. One of the things that comes up over and over and over again, is specifically with women who are writing in feeling like they can’t take up the space to say they don’t like something, not being able to say what pleasure looks like for them; because they’ve just been doing what they thought they were supposed to, feeling ashamed that they can’t orgasm, or feeling ashamed that they need to use a vibrator for instance. There’s this chronic, and of course we know it’s because of patriarchy and misogyny, but there’s this chronic space that I find for women who are in pain of feeling to actually say, “These are the things that I need…” would be selfish rather than would be caring themselves, which is important. I see that exact thing echoing hear in these conversations around ending a pregnancy, that it’s selfish
Carol Sanger: Selfish and shameful. So to talk about pleasure or self – taking care of oneself and learning how to do that is, your right, it’s selfish. But I would add in that: anything to do with the body, women are taught pretty early not to talk about and keep it secret. I was thinking about this the other day, I was reading some stuff on the development of girls’ breasts. And that’s when women or girls begin to stoop over to hide them, to stoop. If you move from breast to your period– I mean, maybe it’s different now, maybe young women are bolder about this. Then you go from periods to sex, then you go on the range – possibly miscarriages, possibly childbirth, and then you come to menopause. Boy, you really don’t want to talk about that. I mean, that might be a good program for you. But it’s this whole chronology of a woman’s reproductive life and at each step, you keep it to yourself. So it’s no surprise that on the details of orgasm, keep it to yourself or on the details of why this wasn’t the right time to have a child.
The secrecy that overlays the whole, the whole discussion, and it’s one of the reasons why the right controls the narrative. They can say, “You made that decision on a whim.” So far, nothing you’ve read out so far sounds whimsical to me. It all sounds like deep thinking and a bit of suffering as well. The letter that said, “I don’t want my reasons to become fodder for the pro-life movement. That really hits it because it requires you to be a bit brave to stand up and say, “I had an abortion because,” and because is so – they’re varied. But very few women have abortions for convenience. That’s the allegation. You had an abortion ‘cause it just wasn’t convenient for you. Nothing you’re reading sounds that way.
Dawn Serra: Not at all. I think what’s clear in all of the stories and, of course, the stories that don’t make it into this part of the episode will be on our website. All of them make it very clear. There are a few stories that got shared where the people said, “I was really grateful I had this choice because it was just not right for me.” So people who are very grateful, clear in their gratitude, and don’t have this sense of loss or regret as part of their story. But I think leaving space for all of the range of experiences from, “I do regret having to make this choice and it was a huge sense of loss, and I will mourn this for the rest of my life,” all the way across the spectrum to, “This was great. This is exactly what I needed in order to keep my life being my life on my terms. I’m glad I had this option and to do it safely.” There’s so many millions of smaller versions in between those two.
I think the core of your book is about secrecy, and to have these stories shared is such an important part of changing the political landscape. I think specifically for listeners who feel like “I haven’t had an abortion,” or “I don’t know anyone who’s had an abortion, why is this relevant to me?” When we’re talking about privacy versus secrecy, this impacts so many different parts of our private lives in that so many people who are kinky have to be secret, because they would be fired, and they would be ostracized. They would be cut out of communities and families. The same for polyamorous and non-monogamous folks. Losing access to money or losing financial and family support. Even for lots of folks who are queer, gay, lesbian, trans, certainly – the secrecy is about not really having the choice to disclose in a safe way. And we see those exact same themes happening here around abortion. I loved that what your book talks about is, if we start talking about our experiences, like we did with gay marriage, like we did with cancer, which used to be super hush-hush, then we start influencing greater circles of people, which becomes public, and then that ultimately influences the political at that higher level.
Carol Sanger: That’s right. It keeps the single narrative from prevailing. So I thought I have this – I’m a law professor, I don’t lead an activist campaign. But I’m warming up to the idea. I think that this idea of talking – so in my little action program, I have three groups that I think should start stepping up in saying they had an abortion. My friends criticize me and say, “You’re a coward with your little three groups,” but here they are.
The first is grandmothers. So I think grandmothers are really good to speak out on this because, first of all, in a cruel way, grandmothers are thought to be non-sexual anymore. So you, at least, get rid of the sex issue, which politically is good. So you have someone who’s – it’s pretty hard to call a grandmother whimsical, so that’s one group.
Carol Sanger: The second group are Ministers’ wives. Don’t you think? I think that there’s a group with moral authority – or ministers themselves now that we have women in the pulpit sometimes. Not to brag about it, but simply to have that in there, to be able to speak about it, to be able to lead a discussion group, to be able to say it was a hard decision or wasn’t a hard decision.
The third group is men. I think it would be really good if men took a little responsibility here about causing a pregnancy. There are some pro-life websites where men can go to discuss how harmed they were by the abortion. That’s not really what I have in mind. Because there are a lot of forgiveness websites now. By the way, the Pope has also said, and this is a very good thing I think, that priests should forgive and absolve women who come and say they’ve had an abortion. Some people say that’s not that good because they have to say their regret. They’re sorry for it. You have to ask for forgiveness, which suggests you’ve done something wrong. But I think for women who have certain beliefs, it’s certainly better than the way the Catholic Church has behaved in the past. So I’m for this guy. I sort of lost my train there.
Dawn Serra: I think on, specifically, men stepping up and taking responsibility – we definitely need men to step up and take responsibility in so many arenas around sexual assault and consent. Specific to abortion, one of the statistics in your book is that one third of American women will have abortion by the time they’re 45. So, statistically speaking, we all know someone.
Carol Sanger: That’s the thing. I went to an all women’s college and it was in the 70s. So a while ago, but I remember I was at a reunion sitting with three other women. I said, “It’s so funny, we went to an all women’s college I never knew a single lesbian or person who had an abortion.” The three other women looked at me. You can picture their faces. It was, “Poor Carol.” And they didn’t need this anymore. I said, “Oh, God, of course. Yes.” So it’s that. The thing that I would push is that if you found out that a cousin had an abortion, of any age, what would you do? Would you stop being friends with your cousin? I have to believe the answer is no, we don’t. It doesn’t define who you are. You don’t become a murderer because you had an abortion. You don’t become a vile person. You are still the person you were, and you took action that you thought was right at a particular point in your life. It’s not an overarching identity having had an abortion. It’s not like the Scarlet Letter. She was an adulteress. I guess it’s an A word also. It doesn’t work the same way or it shouldn’t but there’s the fear that it will. And the fear is not unfounded.
People get punished for having abortions. mean they lose. You’ve given some good examples. So we have to have a little bravery in all this stepping up that I’m talking about. Former students said to me, “Who are you to tell women they have to take on more responsibility?” I should put it nicer than that. But she said, “You’re sounding a little bit like Sheryl Sandberg. You want women to lean in after they’ve made this decision and hidden it from their families, and now you want them to take the risk of speaking up.” I said, “I don’t want every woman to do it. I think women have to appreciate their circumstances, know when they can and when they can’t.” But the second letter that you read that woman seemed to do it incrementally for she told some close friends, then she told her mother.
Carol Sanger: Another letter said that the writer told her present partner. So you can just practice. I think that’s it. You can practice telling someone and see if the ceiling collapses on you. I think that it won’t. I’m not calling for recklessness. Although Wendy West and Amelia Bonow, Shout Your Abortion. They say, “Just get out there and yell it.” I admire that and that might not be for everyone.
Dawn Serra: I would love to read a one more story as we move towards the end of the interview. If you’re up for that.
Carol Sanger: I’d love it.
Dawn Serra: Okay, so Colleen had an abortion at 23 – “I got pregnant on the best weekend of my entire life. It was on a camping trip with a bunch of friends and I had reconnected with an old boyfriend from high school after not seeing him for a few years. There was not any talk of renewing our relationship. We both understood it was just a moment in time. Afterward, when I found out I was pregnant, I cried and cried. I knew I was going to terminate because I was a few weeks away from starting University. It was still very difficult even though I knew what I needed to do. I never told my old boyfriend because I felt like telling him would be cruel when I was already firm in my decision. We were not part of each other’s lives, and we lived in different cities. Afterward, I had a difficult time dealing with what happened. I started to get angry that I was having to deal with the consequences by myself when I sure as hell didn’t get pregnant by myself. I had the urge to tell him because part of me was resentful that he had the luxury of being oblivious.”
“A friend of mine talked me out of telling him and I’m glad I didn’t. The anger eventually passed. I made peace with it. I got married years later to someone I met in college. I’m so thankful that I gave myself the freedom to go. It was the absolute right decision that I have never regretted. I ended up having a child much later who was amazing in every way. I catch myself sometimes doing the math in my head. Like when I was 41 and realized that that first child would have been graduating. During these moments, I thank the universe for the life and family that I have, and I send intense love to that first child who I choose to believe went on to be born to a mother who was ready, and all in like I was when I eventually had my daughter.”
Carol Sanger: That’s a very beautiful letter. I mean, that is really striking and it shows so many things. I mean, one is the range of emotions she experienced. But the anger of not being able to do it. And, of course, she was shouldering the whole burden. I mean, the man did have the luxury of oblivion. Could you read the part at the very end where she says about the child that wasn’t born?
Dawn Serra: Yes. “I ended up having a child much later who is amazing in every way. I catch myself sometimes doing the math in my head, like when I was 41 and realized that that first child would have been graduating. During these moments. I think the universe for the life and family I have, and send intense love to that first child who I choose to believe went on to be born to a mother was ready and all in like I was when I eventually had my daughter.”
Carol Sanger: I want to say I’m really proud to witness that sentence. I’m glad that it’s in your program because it shows a way of respecting the child that wasn’t born and regarding it that way as one of her children, as one of her children. A sort of special child that she knows she has. Her letter made me think is, how the non-birth of one child can make another child possible. We don’t really think about it that way, but I think that’s probably often the case. You’re older, you’re smarter, you’re with the right person. We don’t think about abortion as the opening of possibility. Maybe subliminally, we do, but that was really great.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I love you – one of the things you talked about in the book is that another area where there’s a lot of shame and secrecy is around HIV and AIDS. Both HIV, AIDS, and abortion are seen as the result of choices that you’ve made. So we can personally vilify you for having these sexually shameful secrets and actions, but what I don’t hear in a lot of these letters is shame. I mean, I hear loss, grief, confusion, anger, and definitely there is some shame in some ways. But it’s less about shame around the abortion and maybe shame more around having to hide it, do it alone, feeling like people won’t understand, and I think that’s important, especially with this last letter – the decision was right for her, and she weighed these things. But it has yielded a life that is rich with a healthy daughter that she loves and is all in with, in her own words. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in that sphere to me.
Carol Sanger: No, I think that’s exactly it and it’s a wonderful phrase, “All in”. The opposite, having to be all in or having to have a child that you’re not all in with because your life isn’t all in yet. It’s really a very cruel thing. We used to use the phrase “involuntary motherhood”, which is what it would be for poor women, if Roe is overturned. I think we’re in such a perilous moment right now with regard to this. It’s kind of mind boggling every time I meet an old friend, she says, “Are we talking about the things we talked about 40 years ago?” How can that be? I said, “We can’t let it be.” Because we can’t go back to those days of dangerous, illegal self-abortions. And disrespect that it means. It’s not just that you’re wrecking someone’s life. It doesn’t mean that everyone who has a child has a terrible life.
I mean, some women, for spiritual reasons or whatever reason, might prefer to have an abortion and doesn’t, and maybe their life isn’t ruined. Maybe it all turns out well. But that’s not a roll of the dice we want to hand women. We think that you should have control over the prior part of that: should I have this child or not? I’m banking that, I’m banking that there’s going to be some movement to take away contraception, sort of a return to the cultural life – meaning life in the pro-life sense. It’s very scary that’s why I think I’m so glad you’re having this program now so that people can think about talking as actual political action. Just telling someone is actually turning yourself into someone who’s, in this small way, improving the conversation, changing it a little bit. Everyone who has an abortion isn’t a terrible person that the right suggests it is. We’re all in on this.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, we’re all doing our best.
Carol Sanger: That’s it. I want everyone to do their best. I wrote the book – that was really hard and took a lot of years. So I’m so glad that it has, at all, the effect I hoped for which was to reflect a little bit if you feel ashamed and you feel you have to keep everything secret. You should know that there’s a whole apparatus of law trying to make you feel that way. Making you feel sneaky, making you wait 48 hours because you’re too dumb to know what an abortion is after you consent, making you bury the remains, and all of that. That’s purposeful stuff. It’s meant to keep things secret. And that’s what we have to kind of bust open.
Dawn Serra: So there’s one last little teeny single sentence in your book that I just want to kind of throw out really quickly before we wrap up. So many of my listeners are queer or non-binary or trans or who know people who are. We have, throughout this hour, used very binary hetero centric language of men and women. And there is a sentence in chapter one where you acknowledge that not everyone who has an abortion is a woman, but for the sake of navigating these very complex conversations, you ascribed male gender to certain characters in the book like judges, and you ascribed female pronouns in women, to folks who receive abortions.
I loved that you named that. I mean, the truth is, the vast majority of abortions are chosen by women or people who identify as women but not all. The fact that you just had that one little sentence in parentheses in chapter one, warmed my inclusive little heart to mean that.
Carol Sanger: My pleasure. That’s great. Are you going to read it?
Dawn Serra: Oh, yes, let me do that. It says in parentheses. Well, let me read the sentence before it just to give it a little context. So it says, “If he finds she is not sufficiently mature, he rejects the petition and the immature minor marches on to motherhood.” So you were talking about judges finding girls mature in granting petitions or to abortion, and then in parentheses, “I use the masculine pronoun for judges and others throughout to avoid pronoun confusion, since most pregnant persons are female.”
Carol Sanger: Yes, that was– Thank you.
Dawn Serra: That is something I think that you put right at the beginning of the book. I think it’s so important to name in that, we live in a patriarchal culture – rape culture and misogyny left and right. So, the truth is, women, whether they’re cis women are trans women, are much more likely to be the victims of violence and discrimination, and all sorts of things. But I think naming that in that one sentence was so important of, not everyone who has an abortion is a woman, but we really need to focus this around the current systems.
Carol Sanger: Yes, well, thank you. I’m glad you noticed that. I’m really pleased. But you’re right, I do keep it pretty binary, in part because the people who I want to read this also are binary thinkers. So I wanted to not make it too hard. But I did want to acknowledge that life is more interesting these days.
Dawn Serra: Yes. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Carol. I’m wondering, do you have a website or social media that you’d like to share with people or should we just tell people where they can get the book?
Carol Sanger: Oh, well, I guess I’m on Twitter and it’s @carolsangernyc.
Dawn Serra: Great.
Carol Sanger: That would be lovely. You can get the book online and I’ve been making a big fuss with the publisher asking, “Please put it out in paperback.” I’ve seen it slightly discounted online. So that’s a good thing. Or a group can buy one passing around.
Dawn Serra: Oh, yeah, do that with book clubs and stuff.
Carol Sanger: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: So for everybody who’s listening, the title is About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in 21st Century America. I will have links to Carol’s Twitter and a link to check out the book through Harvard University Press, so that everyone can check it out. Also, please ask your libraries to carry this book. Carol and I were talking about this before we started recording, about how valuable and important it would be for young people to be able to pick up this book and reference it at the library without having to bring it home and hide it. Access is important and you have to ask for books like this at most libraries, so please ask them to get it.
Carol Sanger: That’s great. Is your time to say one more thing?
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Carol Sanger: So there’s a wonderful, young woman who wrote a review of the book on Rewire. Her name is Katie Claybush and she starts it up by saying, “This is the best book on abortion. I didn’t know I had to read.”
Dawn Serra: I completely agree with that.
Carol Sanger: I thought that was really nice. There’s always more stuff to learn.
Dawn Serra: Yes. I will also link to that Rewire article. So if you head to sexgetsreal.com/ep162 for this episode, you can find all of Carol’s information, access to the book, and also that Rewire article if you want a recap of the book before you decide to jump in.
Carol Sanger: That’s a good idea. I just want to say, it is so easy to talk to you and I’m so happy that you invited me on the program.
Dawn Serra: Oh, thank you so much. I will admit, I was so nervous before we hopped on. I’ve interviewed hundreds of people but I was so blown away by your book that I was like, “Oh, I want to impress Carol!”
Carol Sanger: You have! And you know what, I have the exact same – I was sitting here with the same feelings. I’m like, “Oh my god, she’s so great.” We should just reward each other. It was great.
Dawn Serra: Thank you so much, Carol. Of course, thank you to everyone who listened. If you have listened and you have an abortion story that you would like to share, I would love to hold space and receive that. Of course, if you have thoughts or questions about this episode, or anything that you’d like me to cover down the road, go to dawnserra.com and use the contact form – there is an anonymous option, so feel free to share those stories and those questions because I would love to share them on future episodes. So until next time, I’m Dawn Serra with Carol Sanger on Sex Gets Real. Bye.
Abortion stories
The following stories were shared with me for this episode. These are the stories of women who have had abortions. (Please note: minor edits may have been made by me for grammar or clarity.)
I asked respondents to share the factors that they weighed and considered once they learned they were pregnant, followed by an open space to share their story.
Anonymous:
I’m sorry, I wish I was comfortable sharing more, but what helped me was finding a “I’m not sorry” abortion forums around the web.
Colleen, abortion at 23:
I knew I would have an abortion before it was even confirmed I was pregnant. I wasn’t ready. I was 23 and was starting college as a mature student. I hemmed and hawed for years about going to college and once I made the decision, I was committed. I had the abortion a few weeks before school started.
I got pregnant on the best weekend of my entire life. It was on a camping trip with a bunch of friends and I had reconnected with an old boyfriend from high school after not seeing him for a few years. There wasn’t any talk of renewing our relationship. We both understood it was just a moment in time.
Afterward when I found out I was pregnant, I cried and cried. I knew I was going to terminate because I was a few weeks away from starting university. It was still very difficult even though I knew what I needed to do.
I never told my old boyfriend because I felt like telling him would be cruel when I was already firm in my decision. We weren’t part of each other’s lives and lived in different cities. Afterward I had a difficult time dealing with what happened. I started to get angry that I was having to deal with the consequences by myself when I sure as hell didn’t get pregnant by myself. I had the urge to tell him because part of me was resentful that he had the luxury of being oblivious.
A friend of mine talked me out of telling him and I’m glad I didn’t. The anger eventually passed. I made peace with it. I got married years later to someone I met in college and am so thankful that I gave myself the freedom to go. It was the absolute right decision that I have never regretted.
I ended up having a child much later who is amazing in every way. I catch myself sometimes doing the math in my head though, like when I was 41 and realized that that first child would have been graduating. During these moments I thank the universe for the life and family I have and send intense love to that first child who I choose to believe went on to be born to a mother who was ready and ‘all in’ like I was when I eventually had my daughter.
Miranda, abortion at age 24:
My ability to financially and emotionally care for a child alone. I had been seeing the guy for a few months casually but was living at home to deal with my own anxiety disorder and my mom’s borderline during a divorce between her and the man who raised me. It was a time in my life when I knew that having a baby would prevent me from healing and getting out if a dark mental place and a dependent financial one.
Because of my abortion I am now happy and healthy, living on my own in another state. Good job, great committed relationship, and better mental health. I can provide a safe living situation for my much younger brother and pursue comedy, improv, and my dreams. I went alone and only a few people know what I went through, including my current partner. I still feel though, like I can’t share my story because my reason, that I just wasn’t ready, isn’t good enough.
Anonymous, abortion at age 19:
My work, finances and drug and alcohol dependencies.
Choosing to abort was one of the hardest decisions I ever made. In all honesty, I regret it a lot. I named the child I was carrying, and felt a lot of emotional attachment. To me, that’s why it was so hard – I have no moral objections to abortion, but having that child was something I really wanted. It became a ‘child’ rather than a fetus the moment I realized that this was something I wanted, not feared.
But it also wasn’t an option. As a sex worker, and, at the time, an addict, carrying that child to term would have killed me. It would have ensured such a loss of income as to leave me homeless, and caused me to abandon dependencies I relied on- which likely would have left me suicidal.
I still mourn today – 4 years later. But I also made the only choice I could. I hate the abortion narrative as it exists. I feel like my choices are to be fodder for pro-lifers, who would have allowed me to carry this pregnancy at the cost of, most likely, both our lives, or to abandon all negative feelings to stand with pro-choices. But the reality is that life is more complicated than that. My life is more complicated than that. I can relate to the pro-lifer’s narratives, but I also don’t agree with them. Ultimately, I did what I had to, but not being allowed to express any kind of regret, not being allowed to mourn? That’s hurt a lot.
Polly, abortion at age 18:
It was 3 days before I was leaving for college in Ohio and I had been sexually assaulted by my ex boyfriend who had sex with me while I was drunk passed out. For me, abortion was the only option. I wasn’t in an emotional or financial situation where I could bring a kid into the world. I wish abortion wasn’t so taboo because I didn’t tell anyone and had to go by myself. When I set off for college 3 days later it was with a pad in my underwear and very little emotional support from friends. My family had no idea what I was going through.
My first semester at college I was incredibly depressed because of all the guilt I felt from having an abortion. There were weeks where I wouldn’t do anything outside of going to class — instead, I would stay in my room crying because I felt so ashamed of what I had done. That was when the symptoms started and I first saw blood in my stool. Three years later at the age of 21 I was diagnosed with colon cancer.
In my heart of hearts, I believe that it was the depression after the abortion that led to getting cancer. Of course, I have no medical evidence support my causality hypothesis — but I have read a lot of material on how depression and cancer are correlated (mostly via a weakened immune system). Looking back on it, I wouldn’t change a thing — except maybe how much I punished myself. At 30, I can’t ever have children because of the radiation treatment from cancer and sometimes that breaks my heart. But more than my own selfish situation, my heart breaks for the women that will come after me, who will also punish themselves to the point of depression and illness. I wish we didn’t make women feel so alone when going through an abortion.
Ruby, abortions at age 17 and 21:
The first time, there was no choice. My mom took me to the clinic. I worked with guy. He was married and white. He did not speak to me after we had sex. The second time, I did it for a relationship. He told me he would leave.
My life before the abortion is context of many of my stories. I was sexually abused by my brother from age 6 to 16. I had my first sexual experience at age 16 while passed out in the back seat of a car at the local hangout, Sonic. I knew I had sex because my pants were down around my ankles.
I vomited all over my clothes. The next morning, I said “Damn that’s fun. Let’s do it again.” I had two relationships after that Sonic incident. My high school prom date would not go out with me unless I had sex. I got stood up for the prom. The popular kid invited me over and said, “We are having sex.” He did not talk to me again. I say all of this because in hindsight I never knew about enthusiasm or consent. My body was tool for the enemy. I had multiple abusive relationships. I have had many scares.
After the first abortion, I had a horrible smell coming from my vulva and vagina area. In all the emotional haste, I did not know I had to take antibiotics. We went to the OB/GYN and she shamed me something awful. That’s when I learned what I did was wrong. Resentment against my mother started then.
I continued to get into relationships with men who did not want to meet me in public or cheated on me because I was too ugly or too something. I would give them money, buy them clothes, and do anything so they wouldn’t leave.
It felt like that scene from Ridgemont High where she sees the boy that impregnated her. He was an asshole. So was my ex. Another reinforcer of shame.
I had many dreams about being a mother. I named the fetuses (at that time, they were babies). I got into recovery at age 26. During my fourth step, we performed a ceremony to help me forgive myself. I look back and I am grateful I did not have kids to take them through my active addiction. I felt judged by that doctor and myself.
At age 36, I had to have a hysterectomy. It was complicated. A one day procedure turned into 8 days. I had internal bleeding and my lung collapsed. They thought I had a pulmonary clot. It was bad. The doctor, my mom, and my sisters cried by my bedside. Everyone knew the ache I had for having a child. My therapist, at the time, told me I am grieving the babies I did not have.
I am married now and I cannot give him a child. The guilt for those abortions still hides in the back of my mind. I had my chance and I did not take it, all because of a man. August 8, 2009 is a life changing day. I use a present tense word because it is still with me. The abortions are the Scarlett letter of the hysterectomy. I work with women who have my story. They just don’t want to be alone. They need someone to walk them through a pain that’s at the essence of womanhood. I don’t explain away my liberation through celebration of holding hands of 100s of women and say “you are not alone.”
Katrina, abortion at age 26:
I knew that if my birth control failed this would be my choice. I was a single mom (having escaped an abusive relationship), I was going back to school and getting back on my feet, and I was in a relationship that was healthy but quite new.
I misplaced my pills the night of my birthday party. I was sure I’d just left them at home and could catch up in the morning. I celebrated with my boyfriend that night, comfortable, as usual, with the thought that I’d take my pills the following day. The next day came, I couldn’t find them, or the day after that, or after that and the pharmacy wouldn’t give me a replacement. I figured it was unlikely that I’d conceive that one night, so I didn’t get Plan B and when my refills came in I started taking them.
Then I missed my period and I knew right away that I was likely pregnant. My partner and I had discussed our feelings about unplanned pregnancies and plans if birth control failed when we first starting dating. I knew I didn’t want to have to face the decision to have an abortion, but I also knew that if I found myself pregnant despite our best attempts at prevention. I knew I’d miscalculated how things went, but I wasn’t about to let one night’s decision change the lives of my self, my three-year old child, my boyfriend and my family (they were helping me get back on my feet while I went to school). I was working for so much and making progress, I was not going to give it all up.
I took a test to be sure, it was positive (approx 8 weeks pregnant), and I immediately called Planned Parenthood and scheduled my procedure. The next person I called was my boyfriend letting him know what was going on (he agreed beforehand that if this ever happened he would help me pay for the procedure and be with me every step of the way). He was surprised but not upset, asking about my feelings first.
The day of my abortion procedure he drove me to the clinic. There were protesters outside and he was mortified that I’d have to walk past them. I’ve always been rather defiant and rebellious (I was raised by an activist) so I told him it was ok, I appreciated him being with me, and walked past the mob with my head held high knowing I was making the healthiest choice not just for me but for my child and my family.
The clinic workers were all polite and supportive. My procedure was a vacuum extraction with a “twilight” sedative so I don’t remember a whole lot of it. I do remember asking to see the remnants of my pregnancy and I said “goodbye” with the thought that if that little soul came around again through another vessel I’d love to be their friend or aunty (and truly, a close friend got pregnant not long after and that baby is now my godchild).
Afterward, I sat in the recovery room with two other young women as we waited for the medicine to wear off. One of them asked me, “Do you regret it?” I looked her in the eyes and I said, “No. People say they’re ‘pro-life’, well I chose my life and the life of my kid that I have now and the lives of my family members and loved ones. I chose to not bring a child in that would have grown up feeling like a burden. One life for many. And its not the end for them, because I believe we have many lives and that spirit will have another chance to come back, hopefully to a place that is welcoming and parents that are ready and able to care for them. I believe everyone should be born into this world loved and wanted. I don’t want another child right now, so I ‘returned to sender’.”
She was quiet for a moment and then let out what seemed a sigh of relief, closed her eyes and a soft smile came to her face. I believe I helped her. I’d like to think I did, that I was able to share my own confidence in my choice with her. It’s 7 years later now and my life is amazing. I have a new baby that I conceived consciously with my loving and supportive long-term partner. My first child is growing into a smart, mature pre-teen and I’m following my dream career. None of what I have now would have been possible if I had made a different decision. I look back at that time and I’m relieved I made the choice that I did because I love my life, the life that I chose.
Lillian, abortion at age 19:
What my family and friends would think. Not wanting to tell the father. Not feeling ready to have a child. Being scared that it would ruin my eating disorder recovery.
I got pregnant after sleeping with my boyfriend at the time. We used a condom and we were safe about it. I had just gotten out of my sixth inpatient treatment for Anorexia Nervosa and I had truly found recovery.
The hardest decision to make was between risking my life, the baby’s life and my recovery by keeping it…or having an abortion and saving my recovery. My mom was also very adamant about me getting an abortion; I was young at the time and had no way of taking care of someone else. I also live across the country from my parents so they wouldn’t have been able to help me easily. I was never OK with my decision totally, but I knew it was the right thing to do.
Two years later, I know I did the right thing, but it was really hard for a year or so after. Sometimes I still feel guilty and miss my unborn child… but I am handling it a lot better than I was. I felt really alone and got pretty suicidal at times. It’s hard to explain to people who have never been through something like that, I didn’t know how to talk about my feelings and I felt like I was being ridiculous.
I think the main thing I wish people knew about abortions and my story is that, you can be safe, use protection and still end up pregnant. It was never that I didn’t want that child, but I knew that the life I could provide for that baby would not be a good one. I felt like it would be more selfish to keep her and have to give her up for adoption. I want people to know that it’s not an easy decision, and that it’s something I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I learned a lot about myself since I had my abortion, but I do wish it’s something that I never had to experience.
Sarah, abortion at age 32:
That despite everyone telling me my hormones would kick in at thirty & I’d desperately want a child, I still just did not feel that was my plan for my life. My husband & I checked in & yup, still did not think parenthood was right for us.
I almost never think about it except on a political/policy level. I have zero guilt or regrets, just anger at all the ways it was structurally set up to make me feel bad, to make it stressful, and as if outside the bounds of normal OBGYN care. My very good health insurance has to cover abortion (NYS) but did not cover ANESTHESIA! Imagine another surgery where they would not cover necessary pain management (I was told it was not safe to perform without anesthesia because the patient would move). This major insurer only worked with 1 provider in all of NYC, the wait was hours, partners were not allowed after check in, & we were made to stay in hospital robes in waiting rooms for hours and hours.
The fact that our normal doctors with whom we have years’ long relations are replaced because of politics by an anonymous unknown at this sensitive moment is a totally illogical outgrowth of our criminalization of full family planning in this country. It made my blood boil.
And I was emotionally secure and clear minded – but I could feel the way these cues were meant to make scared, vulnerable, or conflicted women feel bad about difficult necessary decisions they were making for themselves for their own reasons. No one makes men feel like this for getting a vasectomy; they don’t have to go through a medical shame mill to get viagra prescriptions. Fuck that.
Anonymous, abortions at age 16 and 29:
My future plans, my current relationships, my age, my family, if I even wanted kids…
Making the decisions to terminate were not taken lightl,y but I made the best decision I could for myself & my future. My life has been what I wanted, full of challenges and successes. I reflect on the decisions I made to terminate from time to time and I know it was the right decision both times. I can’t imagine what life would be like if I had decided to carry either or both pregnancies to term.
Anonymous, abortion at age 27:
I knew I couldn’t financially support a child. The father was someone I had only recently started dating (a few months) and he had recently told me if we had kids and I ever left him, he’d take my children from me and make sure they suffered until I came crawling back. I was unwilling to put my child in that position. I will protect my children at all costs, even if that means not giving birth to them.
I have never doubted my decision. It was the right thing to do. At the time, I had recently moved to a state where it’s very difficult and very expensive to get an abortion. I didn’t tell any family or friends beforehand and only ended up telling my sister and her husband afterwards because I needed their help lifting things that I couldn’t carry. My dad and stepmom still don’t know. In the last year I’ve become more open about it and shared with a few friends and also told my mom earlier this year. I don’t regret the decision. I was protecting myself and the child from a dangerous man.
Holly, abortion at age 17:
My age, my health, my future.
I was gang raped when I was 13. I got pregnant. I was beaten, almost to death, five months later by the abusive “boyfriend” that had facilitated my rape. I lost the twin girls I was carrying and ended up with severe uterine trauma as a result.
I turned to heroin and sex to try and forget…or die… whichever was fine.
At 17 I got clean and had my first real teenage relationship. I was on the pill but still managed to get pregnant. As soon as I knew there was a baby inside me I was ecstatic. As soon as the person I was dating knew… he dumped me. For him it was a shackle. For me it was a second chance to protect and nurture… something I had failed to do for my girls.
I lived in southern Georgia at the time. My father was a marine. I drove 2 hours to be seen at a military clinic where no one knew me. Blood was drawn and an ultrasound was ordered.
“Your womb is a hostile environment,” the doctor told me. It was covered in scar tissue and did not have much lining. My painful and light periods now explained.
After a month in the hospital, when I was 13, I had been told I would most likely never be able to have children. But being a child myself I had thought that impossible. At 17, I realized that that one night had altered the course of my physical, as well as mental, future in real, lasting, immensely painful ways.
The current doctor said the baby had implanted too low… almost directly on top of my cervix. As it grew it would put pressure on my cervix, which would cause it to dilate, and I would miscarry. Likelihood? 95%. He could sew my cervix shut and put me on bed rest for the next 6 and a half months, but there was still no guarantee I would carry to term. I was a freshman in college at the time. I was a minor and completely dependent on two lovable but absent parents. I had just started my new drug free life. The doctor recommended termination. He said he’d give me a few minutes to think about it but something would need to be done today, regardless.
I got ten minutes to make my life or death decision. I chose to abort. I cried the entire time I was conscious. I cried every day for weeks after. I had to attend NA almost daily for months to not relapse. Since then I have been pregnant three more times… all accidents…all miscarriages… no living children.
I don’t know if you’re looking for self congratulations or self admonishment, here. I don’t have room for either. I have anger, at my abuser, at myself, at the world. But I made a choice that day… an extremely difficult one… that I was fortunate to be able to have. I grieve for all my children. I still wonder at and examine all my choices, but my life has moved forward. My current partner and I are trying to get pregnant. I am blissfully happy with him and am in the best position of my life (mentally, financially, etc.) to have a baby. I know it could end badly again… but I’m giving it one more shot. If it works this time, I like to think that there will be a little piece of all the others in this new life. If it doesn’t, then its just a little more grief. I’m used to grief. I can handle it.