I found out a few minutes before meeting a friend for drinks. I got drunk out of my mind and went home and cried. This went on for days, I was scared. You don’t get taught about this at religious school, you get taught it’s bad, taboo, not something to be open about. Who even knows where to start about what you’re supposed to do.
I immediately confided in the guy involved, and he took it as an assumption that I’d get an abortion. He wasn’t supportive or understanding at all because it was just a simple case of taking some tablets, as it was early on, and that was that. I felt like I was being overdramatic. We stopped speaking.
I felt alone, so I confided in a friend. She got completely controlling about how I dealt with it. She took it as an assumption that of course I shouldn’t be drinking, ‘for the baby’. It isn’t a baby, it’s some cells. She told people I would never want to know and constantly reminded me about it, getting angry at me for not wanting to discuss it. I felt like I was handling my body and my choices in the wrong way. I wasn’t being dramatic ENOUGH. We stopped being friends because she decided I was reckless and handled my life poorly (with a lot of my flaws being based around my abortion).
It felt like people would decide for me how to act, who to tell, what to do. I just wanted to have an abortion, as a normal medical procedure, and get over it as fast as possible.
I finally did. A few months after the termination, my mom went on my medical records and found out. She was really upset and told my sister, giving her loads of questions. We’ve never talked about it, it’s like an unspoken secret that I’m too ashamed of to talk about. I feel uncomfortable when pregnancy is talked about on TV, just in case she’s thinking about it.
My abortion was very regular, unproblematic. I’m lucky for it to have been so accessible. But it will never be made easy if we’re not taught about them in a non-taboo, guilt-provoking way.
