I was 15, and we’d had an oops. Yep, teenagers having a good romp, made a mistake. Antibiotics were the culprit, but I had no idea I wasn’t supposed to go without while I was on them. Same prescribing doctor as my birth control. My parents forced me, with threats of course “no teenager of mine is going to be knocked up in my home” my step mother said. My mother asked me a little nicer to considered the ramifications of being a 16 year old mother. She gave me scary statistics and no support options. I was scared and I agreed to the abortion. It was done in a hospital, and it wasn’t scary, I just, wasn’t pregnant any more.
I was 22 and a single mother – my husband and I couldn’t make it work. I was dating a guy, on the pill, and another oops happened. He told me that he’d never support me or us if I chose to keep it. He wouldn’t come with me to the hospital, I went alone with my dad, he drove me home and didn’t even walk me to the door.
I was 24, and I had been with him for two years, on the shot, I got pregnant anyways. Once he found out, he started trying to control me, even started hitting me. I got thrown down a flight of stairs, and I knew then I had to make a decision. I went with my ex from two years earlier to the same hospital, he felt big because he was about to be there for me after abandoning me, I kept thinking to myself “this wasn’t part of my life’s plan”.
I was 29, and so so very sick. I’d lost 45lbs in less than 6 weeks. My partner and I weren’t stable enough to make a decision about having children together, we barely knew one another. We agreed that with how sick I was, and how we both weren’t in the best place for more kids, that we’d have an abortion. He drove me to the clinic, where behind bullet proof glass they informed us that he wouldn’t be able to come in with me. I went in alone. It was cold, and sterile and not at all like the hospitals in BC. It was cruel, no one smiled or was even friendly. I didn’t even have enough medicine not to feel it. For the first time I felt punished for making this decision. He was waiting for me when I came out, and was the first one to care for me afterwards. The first one to make sure I was okay, to ask about my heart.
And I still had to beg to get my tubes tied.
