Those two blue lines at 3am left me with one word—“fuck”. After lying awake for half the night, I had finally grabbed my Clear Blue and headed to the bathroom.
Those lines were the last thing I wanted to see, but they finally confirmed the fears I had been blocking out of my mind. What now?
Discovering you’re pregnant is, for some women, one of the happiest moments of their lives. For me it wasn’t. It was panic, followed by loud cursing. I knew that the only two options I could consider were an abortion or to follow the pregnancy through. The problem was I naively believed that this decision would be a gut instinct. Once the pregnancy was confirmed, I thought that the right answer would appear—I peed on a stick and it turned into a fortune cookie. I wanted a miracle. Mary got an angel telling her what to do, where the hell was mine?
The next morning after a sleepless night I called my boyfriend who was living in Auckland.
“I am pregnant.”
Silence.
“Fuck, I guess we are having a baby… Holy crap”.
This wasn’t the answer I was expecting. Now I was faced with the prospect of pushing his baby out of my vagina.
I felt so trapped; my mind was cut right down the middle. I knew that I would love it once it arrived, but should my first reactions have really been dread, panic and disappointment?
In an attempt to make this all disappear I made an appointment with Family Planning for another test. Maybe I had a faulty test? Though nothing could alter the fact my boobs had already gone up a cup size. The test result was positive. I burst into tears—how could this happen to me? The nurse told me I needed to make a choice. You can’t just wait this one out. I called my doctor. I was having an abortion.
It was the hardest decision I have ever made, but if I didn’t do it, I would become a mother. Not only was I filled with fear, but also with shame and guilt. I come from a huge Catholic family where pregnancy means birth and a baby. But I didn’t want a baby; did that make me a horrible person? I lived like a shadow around the house, locking myself away to cry into my pillow and hold my stomach. I couldn’t walk out the door without morning sickness gagging my throat.
My best friend stood by me and took me to my first appointment. We entered through the security door into the abortion services. I waited to see the doctor and counsellor. The waiting room contained a fuzzy television, a radio and silent teenage daughters with their mothers. People came and went. We all stared at the television.
I told the counsellor every fear, thought or question I had. I finally felt that what I was doing wasn’t ‘wrong’. She showed me the size of the foetus; it was a baked bean, a cluster of tissue. It didn’t even have a sex. I cried a lot, but more than anything it was from relief. I was no longer trapped. This pressure from society constantly calling a foetus a baby had made me hate myself, but now it was lifting.
I had started to believe I was a killer. But then I realised the people who don’t believe that women should have a choice don’t know anything about having a termination. All my life I had heard the abortion debate through history, media and religion. Yet before I entered this situation, I had no idea of the complexity of the emotions it can produce in a woman. I never thought it would happen to me. But it did, and everything changed. I have always believed in the right for women to choose. The thought of being forced to carry a baby that I didn’t want made me feel sick.
But I was in for another nasty surprise. While I was at peace with my decision and knew it wasn’t a bad thing, I was yet to learn who had the final say. Turns out the state had rights to my uterus.
I went against my father’s beliefs in order to have this abortion. And that was hard because I care about him and I knew he would be hurt. I didn’t let my friends, family or the church make this decision for me. It is my body; I have the final say, so how did a law become the supreme ruler of my body?
I had to lie about why I needed the abortion. I just didn’t want a baby. Yet in our law that means nothing. I had to say that I believed it would damage my mental health. It was humiliating. I had been dealing with so much both physically and emotionally. Yet my decision, “I don’t want a baby”, is criminal. If the government had really given a crap about my mental health then they wouldn’t force me to lie and to treat it like a ‘necessary evil’.
I am so tired of being scared of what other people think. I care about human life. I care about all the lives of the women who have been in my situation; I care about all the girls who one day might be. I wish I could care about a cluster of tissue but it just doesn’t seem to compare to real lives. This law isn’t just about services; it is trying to sit on the fence. You may have an abortion, but you better lie about why you had it. Be thankful we gave it to you. Be ashamed and silent. We need to keep the pro-lifers happy.
I went to the hospital for my procedure. I felt calm; this was the right decision for me. I lay on the table awake as they removed the foetus. I felt no pain, just the constant voice of the nurse holding my hand and keeping me talking. Once it was over I got wheeled to my bed to have a nap before returning home. It was gone.
I lay in bed with a hot water bottle and I cried harder than I ever have. I grieved what I had lost. All the stress, panic and sadness finally released itself. It was a strange emotion. I was relieved and didn’t doubt my decision. Yet I was still sad for what could have been.
I had to guard it as a secret for so long. Then I realised that was what was damaging my mental health. Because it was a decision I made, I felt I couldn’t express all the emotions I was feeling. Some people are so hateful—can you imagine what it is like to be called a murderer by people who have nothing to do with you? I couldn’t understand how this natural and widely accepted choice for women over centuries had become such a taboo subject.
Men have the choice of taking drugs to keep a dick hard for five hours. Yet women still don’t have a drug to fully protect them from getting pregnant. The amount of times I heard the “that baby could have been the next Einstein” was unbelievable. My abortion prevented a special life—could I make the same argument every time a boy leaves his juices in a condom? As a man do you feel guilty tossing your sperm away? When you put on a condom you are actively stopping creating another life.
Not being able to talk about what it is really like to go through an abortion openly confirms the myth that it should be a dirty secret. The idea that I could have a one-year-old now never leaves me. But at the end of the day I still feel that I made the right decision. This is something I should never have to justify or feel the need to hide. It is 2010. Sadly, this doesn’t mean much for feminism. Both Canterbury and Auckland Universities have very active pro-life clubs. These clubs protest to make abortions harder for women.
I am one out of every three New Zealand women who will at some point in their lives have an abortion. And this is one story.