When I got pregnant the first time, in May 2017, I was 27 years old. I had a miscarriage three days after I found out, at five weeks one day pregnant. I would have had an abortion if I hadn’t miscarried–in fact, I had called to make an appointment the same day I wound up miscarrying. The months after the miscarriage were very difficult emotionally and physically, and I initially believed that the intensity of my grieving must mean that I had changed my mind about wanting children (I’m firmly childfree).
When I got pregnant the second time at the end of October 2018 and felt that sinking feeling of dread in my stomach when I saw two pink lines yet again, I realized almost instantaneously that the reason I grieved so hard was because my choices were taken away from me all through that brief first pregnancy. I had no choice in the pregnancy’s beginning, nor its ending, and I had barely had enough time to process that I was pregnant in the first place before it was gone.
This time, the pregnancy seemed to want to stick, and so I called the same clinic I called the first time and made an appointment. I was only four and a half weeks pregnant, so I had to wait a week in order for them to be able to do the procedure. While I would never, EVER agree with any kind of legal mandate that pregnant people must wait a certain amount of time in order to obtain abortion care, in my specific situation, given what happened with my first pregnancy, having that week to process everything emotionally and mentally did wonders for my healing process the second time around.
I truly believe that being able to exercise choice with this second pregnancy healed me from my miscarriage. Realizing that I was definitely still childfree and being able to choose an abortion was empowering for me. Ultimately, having an abortion helped me take my life back–I was stuck in a rut, with lots of dreams but no self-confidence to do anything about them. After the abortion, I felt like because I had been given a second chance at a life that didn’t involve motherhood, I had to make it count. Having an abortion gave me the courage to take the risks I needed to take in order to create the life that I wanted–mine, nobody else’s. I never would have been able to do that if I had carried to term.
