The Abortion Debate: My Story

We’re divided on this subject. Pro life, pro choice; wherever you stand, you’ll stand somewhere - even if it’s in the deepest part of yourself that nobody ever gets to see. That’s where I’ve been hiding, for over a decade.

Within this hidden cell, I’ve regularly subjected myself to a barrage of self inflicted torture and loathing. Telling my story, I hope to continue in the peeling back of the onion layered damage I’ve done to myself over time and pray that my story might help another human being, to either make a choice that’s right for them, or to educate people that this isn’t just a debate for some of us, it’s our reality and for others, it’s a prison.

I had an abortion in April 2001 and the regret hasn’t ever gone away for me. In fact, I believe I was trapped in an unknown grieving for my child for many of these years and if it hadn’t been for a very close friend of mine -a sister, of sorts (who is passionately anti abortion) - talking about a girl she knows experiencing this, I don’t think I ever would have come to this understanding on my own because I never, ever talk about it. Through years of therapy, none of my therapists have known about it. It’s been my darkest secret aside from the people that surrounded me around that time. I’ve mentioned to very few people that I did this and I’d not before understood the emotions that were within my unconscious mind and buried within my shame, due to having made this choice.

Two years ago, I was introduced to the concept of grief setting in, after having had an abortion. Nobody at that time suggested this as being a potential possibility and in the last couple of years, with thanks to my friend, I have been able to process this and come to a better understanding of my emotions then and following the decision, in the months afterward. Nobody told me that my body might recognise the swift loss in hormones that I'd already been pumping. Nobody ever encouraged me to seek counselling as an after-care source. Nobody told me anything.

I was young and entirely irresponsible. I moved out of my family home quite young and I lacked very basic skills. I’d started out living with a couple of friends whilst I finished school and as I’d made sure to fail all of my courses, by getting stoned, high, drunk and/or bunking most of the last year, I eventually found myself being asked to leave my friends house because my behaviour with the boys was becoming less than wholesome. I didn’t like being told not to seek love, as it was in my mind then. I couldn’t see that this was the very love I was truly seeking.

Following exam failures, I found a job and with it, a lady who I could lodge with. She was lovely. A really nice family, in fact. It didn’t take too long until I was gifted a bedsit, with a communal bathroom and heroin to be scored if I so fancied. It had a unique charm.

My job came with a boss on my particular department. We’ll just call him Bender (like Bender from Futurama, but with less humanity). I thought Bender was the business. I mean, he had a beard. He was a man and I was a lost little kid in a world I really didn’t understand yet. Bender liked me, so I found out. I remember little of our times together and I don’t know if this was a deliberate memory wipe on my part or if it's just faded, over this time. A couple of things I do remember vividly - he used to vomit blood on the way home from the pub, before using a bottle to urinate into (he’d kindly leave me with this scented gift when he 'd leave my bedsit in the mornings) and his prized U2 CD. I wish I could remember other things about him but you could understand why these might stand out. Oh, I tell a lie. One other thing – I recall a night he took me to his brothers flat and they both proceeded to put their hands down my top at the same time and as much as I felt sick, I could not speak the simple word of no. I wasn’t wholesome, so what right did I have, exactly?

Being irresponsible and such, at least got me as far as getting a prescription for the contraceptive pill. Trouble is, you really need to take the pill responsibly for it to be effective – which I did not. I just figured,

"Oh, I forgot it for a few days, I’m hardly going to get pregnant from that, if I take it now”.

No, Laura. No. It most definitely doesn’t work like that(is the advice I’d give to my former six stone self).

I started feeling peculiar one morning and I assumed it to be a bug to begin with but it was persistent. I was 'whooshy' and weak, often. Pulling back on a toke of a cigarette in the morning was literally making me retch and I loved my cigarettes then, so I knew something was up. I spoke to my best friend and her mum (who I’d previously lived with) and the immediate response was that I needed to get a pregnancy test. I somehow, instantly knew that this must be it. I could feel it and that's hard to explain. There was an intrinsic knowing as soon as I considered the possibility. I did a test and voila, I got a positive reading and I messaged Bender that we needed to talk. Another test was taken to show Bender that this was indeed the reality but I think he needed to see that reality twice more, with fresh tests. His only reaction after that, was an order that I should book in to organise an abortion.

“Hold on a minute, what? What if I don’t want that?” I’d asked,

“Its fine, do it now and we’ll have a baby soon. Just not yet.”

This would become his one and only mantra, alongside his wonderfully kind gesture of driving me in his car, so as I didn’t have to go alone, on the bus.

I found myself in one of the loneliest places I’d ever been, with everyone who knew about it eager to impart their opinion on the subject.

"Get rid of it",

“You’ll not be able to look after a baby”,

“You’re going to regret it”,

"Keep it, Laura”,

- and so on.

Two people gave me the only advice I don’t hold any negative memory for – my best friend and her mum:

“Do what feels right for you, Laura”,

I wish I’d known how to recognise real affection in order that I would have listened to the only advice being presented by it, instead of having created a tally in my head of other people who were telling me it was something I couldn’t do, or didn’t deserve to do. Before I’d reached a conclusion, I also felt the Drs adding to this sense of pressure on me. The weeks were passing by so,

“Time is running out", they’d say, as I left the office with another urine infection, caused by the extra protein in my urine - a common symptom of pregnancy.

The pressure I felt was immense. I’d go as far as to say it felt impossible. I suppose I allowed this feeling of impossibility to influence the swaying of the pendulum - For the record, I never used the 'pendulum swing test'. Maybe I wish I had. I went in for a scan quite early on in the process to confirm how far along in the pregnancy I was – typing this, I realise I avoided saying to see how old my baby was, because we don’t say that when we’re talking about abortions. So – my child was eight weeks old at this point and yes, I was told it’d look like a peanut and yes, I did see. This image is etched into my memory like the brightest light you could imagine, only it’s not a bright light, it’s a very dark hole, the shape of my heart.

One afternoon, I walked from my bedsit, an infamous drugs haven and getting to town, I felt so ill. I was sweating and shaking as if the floor was moving beneath me. My legs were enormously leaded and weak; I thought I might faint. I made it to the charity shop, where my best friend and I would often volunteer, with her mum being the assistant manager. I was ushered to a chair and offered a sugary tea. It didn’t take long before I felt okay again but I do remember thinking, I am so scared, in that moment. I was completely terrified and I didn’t think anyone was able to understand my situation. Another day in the shop, I sat outside on the metal black steps and going through a magazine, I looked at pushchairs I liked; I’d look for baby clothes going cheap and I was feeling both lost and found, all in a messy, adolescent confusion.

I’ve touched on not recieving much affection in my childhood - it wasn’t common and I couldn’t really see what it actually was, in any way that was meaningful. To me, the words I love you was as good as it had got. There was no tenderness or cuddles for me growing up. My stepmum tickled me once - only once. I went to bed and thanked God for it. Another parent brushed my hair when I was six and still tells the story over and over, as if to imply it was a regular interaction. I cringe, but I’ve forgiven as much as I can. I was, on the other hand shown what physical pain looked and felt like.

So, here I was, in this 'relationship', albeit with a dude who didn’t want to walk ten steps to an actual toilet and invited his brother into my bra... But he didn’t leave bruises on me and he said those magical words to me. He loved me. My Bender loved me and so that meant he won't hurt me if he’s not throwing things at me or leaving bruises on my skin. This is what love looked like to Laura, circa 2003. I absolutely craved love, even without knowing what that actually meant. So, when the repetitive promise kept being whispered into my ear, in the future, I believed it.

I was not educated in so many ways and yet people would always be telling me how 'street smart' I was because I lived on my own so young but here's the thing - you don’t get street smart because you live on your own at a young age, you get street smart by meeting a variety of people, making a montage of epic errors and failing – all of the time. I least of all had any education on what abortion might look like to my adult self.

As already exampled here, the language we use around 'abortion', or 'termination', totally detaches itself from the humanity; from the depth of this dilemma for young girls who haven’t got a clue who they’re going to be yet, or even who they are now.

With all of this being said, I gave in to the ideas that I couldn’t do it, that I wouldn’t cope, that it’d happen in the future, and that I was loved. Telling some people that I had decided to end the life of my baby – or to most – have an abortion, my beliefs about myself were solidified when so many people answered with,

"Its for the best”,

Or,

"You’re making the right choice”,

It was as if I'd found myself in a living, breathing version of Catchphrase and people were praising me for guessing the answer, whilst only having revealed a corner square. I don’t doubt the good intentions of 80% of these people. We all try and offer support in the way we know how and for the most part, I see that this was the case.

The day of the procedure arrived and I had an early morning appointment at an abortion clinic in Brighton. There was a pill you could take back then but I was 'too far along' in the pregnancy and already over the edge of what was considered too late for the surgery, so basically, my child had grown too much for the easy route of swallowing a tablet. Driving me to the clinic was Bender and accompanying him, was my mum. The mood from both of them was eerily jolly and I totally lost it. I screamed at both of them. I have no memory of what the words were, I just remember having a total meltdown. Bender excused this as me not being allowed to smoke that morning.

I don’t remember entering the building or what it looked like. The next memory I have, I’m sat in a robe next to another lady in her own nightgown. She leaned in and whispered to me,

“Is this your first?”

To this day, I wonder if she meant pregnancy or abortion and when I responded with a nod she continued,

“It's alright, it’s my third”,

I still wasn't sure what she really meant. All I know is that she was someone who extended an offer of comfort that day. I remember holding a nurses hand after I’d been led to a room and being told to relax and offered assurances,

"This will all be over before you know it."

I woke up wearing an uncomfortably large sanitary towel which I knew full well was already drenched and I was told I had to try and wee. Another image is ingrained here. As I sat in a daze, I was told I had to eat before I could go. I was desperate to leave but I wonder now if I wanted to run away from myself.

It took me forever to try and eat a ham sandwich. All I wanted to do was go home but I couldn’t seem to get the food to react properly in my mouth. You know when you get a really chewy bit of dry beef and you chew and chew and chew some more, with no promise of it breaking down? It was like that. I never finished all of it but I’d clearly made an effort and had managed to drink half of my tea, so I was given the go, to go.

I walked out into the waiting room and this is the third, image that's burned into the back of my retinas - the smiles that awaited me. I think my mum was at best, ignorant; attempting to be encouraging and supportive but Bender was awake on Christmas morning and that was the moment I began to suffocate alone.

Bearded Bender dropped my mum and I at her house so that I could sleep off the residual anesthetic and dropped me altogether after bringing me an easter egg in the evening. Well, I think there were two, but who was counting like the lady in the waiting room?

Once I was medically recovered, I was now somewhat on a mission to ensure I derailed my own life, one way or another – which is what you do when you have no idea how to recognise the actual affection presenting itself to you and you have no tools to affect this mystical ideal within the self to cope with undiagnosed depression - at 16. The emptiness I felt was filled by using drugs. The lack of love I felt continued to present itself as promiscuity, now I was again single and my life went from bad to worse, leaving me homeless and isolated. My old friends didn’t want me around because I was so regularly using drugs, with an open refusal to stop, and my new friends ditched me, once I lost my bedsit – the drug den. One night, it kicked off and I left. I moved away.

Of course, many details of my life brought me to this place. There have been so many good things and a lot of bad. It’s a life! A decade and a half later, I have reached a place of wanting to share my secret, not just for myself, but to hope there can be a shift in dialogue. This experience changed the course of my life and it still presents me with lessons to this day. Forgiveness, self acceptance and accountability; compassion and empathy are all qualities that have in part, been shaped by this part of my journey.

So... I have decided to detail this for reading by strangers - my only regret; my deepest secret – that I feel I murdered my child – Why? Because it’s of no use in a heart shaped, locked box. It doesn’t teach anything, it doesn’t allow me to grow, to accept, to forgive and it doesn’t pay respect to my baby, who had a life and who’s life I ended.

I don’t blame anyone else for the choice I made. Even pressured, I allowed myself to be pressured and I allowed all of this to happen. I caused the chain of events by being irresponsible in the first place and that’s why I have carried the depth of the pain in silence for so long.

I used to tell people I never wanted to have children. I used the excuse of not wanting to repeat my history and though there is truth in that, the wider truth is this – I had a child and I killed him, or her. I felt for a long, long time that I did not deserve to have another child after that. My child would be fifteen now, maybe struggling with exam results as so many are, maybe spray painting graffiti onto a wall or maybe making a romantic partner laugh.

Before we start debating subjects, we first must be educated on them properly, and with a no holes barred approach. Language should be used appropriately so we as people may recognise when a spade is a spade.

That being said, each and every person on this planet should have a right to be heard on this subject. Not if you’re the only one with a uterus. Every single man, every single woman. We must stop judging other people’s journey's and choices.

My feelings and emotional attachments to the subject; the ways I dealt with this are mine, part of my personal story, and I am not in any place to get to judge the thoughts of you, or someone else’s actions or choices. We all have our own story to tell; all have unique experiences that shape the person we stand as - today. We are not authors for other people and we most definitely, are not qualified to be their critics.

Though, I passionately believe that as a society and in the spirit of long term wellbeing for young people travelling into adulthood, we must also expand the education around the subject of abortion – let’s stop depersonalising the personal.