Sometimes I Wish I Had Had an Abortion.
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Sometimes I wish I had had an abortion.
Don't get me wrong, I love my son. I love him when I get to see him, which is only very occasionally, and I marvel at how similar he is to me, even though I didn't raise him. I had him when I was 19; he was the consequence of an incredibly abusive and toxic relationship. We don't have to speak of it except that it hurt and hardened me, and never have I since been in a room in which I didn't automatically look for the exit.
I was young, and I was alone, and I was panicked, and I thought the good thing to do was to carry my son through the pregnancy, while I waddled through my college classes and my complicated feelings and traumas. I wanted to be a good mama to him; loving him lopsidedly with my crooked heart.
When I had first told my father about being pregnant, he wanted to know how. What I was wearing, what I was drinking, how I ended up so fucked up. He told me I should keep him; and raise him. He told me that it was the only right thing to do.
The bills piled up. I was on WIC and ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches and drank a lot of milk. I went to the food bank a couple of times but I was embarrassed to be there because of my age and my pregnancy. Was I really such a cliche? Was I really that dumb that I ended up being a teen mother?
I asked my dad for help, and he said 'this is your problem to deal with.' I realized that he didn't want me to keep my son because he thought it was the best thing for me, I realized that my father wanted me to keep my son to punish me. How else could a grandfather abandon his first and only grandchild, how could the father of a daddy's girl abandon his darling daughter so easily?
I read a lot of books while lying on the couch, and I would balance the book on the round tautness of my belly. Sometimes I would feel him hiccup inside me and it made me want to curl around him; a little comma of love from this crooked girl. It hurt to feel like I wanted to give him the world, but I couldn't even afford the books for my class.
When he came it was quick and it was easy; to easy. The hard part was letting him go the next morning. I felt empty; a balloon that had slowly lost its air over the course of nine months. I felt bitterly jealous of people who had lost relatives to old age. When someone dies; they slowly fade and become less and less of a person in your mind, and more and more an idea, a feeling, a memory. Giving my son away felt like a betrayal, and with every passing day that he grew bigger, older, smarter, more experienced, he was becoming more and more a person. It was the opposite of death, and yet it hurt so much to know I wasn't going to be the one to watch him grow.
My dad and I stopped talking. I couldn't get over the feeling of abandonment, a distrust I had that he wouldn't do it again. The distrust he has in me, that I was nothing but a whore. What a disappointment I must still be to him.
I felt empty for a long time, but I had the stretchmarks that proved I had been full once; that I used to be someone's home. I started spending every waking hour looking for that feeling again. I wanted to be full of whatever I could put in my body. I binge-ate, I slept with anyone who looked at me, I swallowed any pill placed on my tongue.
I just wanted to go home to a place that had burnt down. I just wanted absolution for a sin that was sewn in red to the front of my dress.
With all the stuff happening with Roe vs Wade I've had to reexamine my feelings about my pregnancy. Am I glad I had him? I am glad he's here. I'm glad he's alive. I'm glad I get to love him from a distance. But sometimes watching him grow apart from me is so painful, so impossible. Sometimes I feel like only a sad, pitiful approximation of a whole person after he left and it hurts so bad that I wished he didn't exist at all. Sometimes I fear that the trauma and complex feelings he has to process; of being an adopted baby, will mess him up as badly as it messed me up. I am pro-choice, but sometimes writing this makes me a traitor. Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if I had had an abortion; if I hadn't gone through nine months and more of humiliation, isolation, and pain. I am glad I at least had the freedom to choose, that despite a parent telling me that my child was not only my responsibility but my penalty, I still was able to make a choice that was good for me.
I don't know if motherhood is in my future. I've had partners in my past who have wanted children and I have pictured it happily with them. I worry that having a baby won't fill the hole of that loss; that I'll feel like I'm being disloyal to my firstborn. I worry that I don't deserve it. Those are issues I'm working through. But motherhood should be chosen. It shouldn't be forced on people who don't want it, or aren't ready for it. I know that if I choose it, it will be because there was so much support and love behind me that I would know that my baby would be taken care of, this time.
I used to be pro-life until I experienced how me and my unborn baby were treated. How there was no support for us, and in fact, there was a cruel glee in seeing how I suffered for my mistake, for trying to find love in a bad place. I wouldn't wish that betrayal on anybody. I don't think abortion is easy, but I do think it's a better option than treachery and judgement.
If you've had an abortion, I see you and I support you. I love you and I hope you feel that. If you haven't but wish you had, I see you too. I can understand that feeling because I've experienced it myself. It takes a lot of bravery to lead a true life in this rocky world. My crooked heart is yours.
A Note About Texas
Sometimes when I write for this blog, I feel like I'm just another noise in an already massive echo chamber. I get discouraged, I feel invisible. I think to myself, 'maybe it's okay to be invisible, maybe you shouldn't have a voice in this.'
I've been writing since I was ten, and as a junior I started a magazine at my high school called The Voice. But I've always been shy about my writing; my poems are all small, crammed into tiny spaces as if someone was going to come and take up the rest of the page. My first chapbook was called Shy Knees. I rarely share my writing with other people, I rarely reach out to publications to ask them if I can write for them. I rarely even post on this blog. Some of it stems from fear. I don't want people to think I'm a bad writer. I don't want to read the mean and cruel comments that can sometimes follow the bottom of a post. I don't want to talk about myself. As a white-presenting middle-class woman living in San Francisco, I'm sometimes the last person in the world who needs to have an opinion on something. It's better for me to step aside and let other people have the floor.
I think, too, it's hard to tell when writing has impact. I've always loved to-do lists and I still have a bucket list I wrote over ten years ago that includes the missive "change someone's life." I wonder if I've ever done that with my writing. I wonder if anyone has ever read something I've put to paper and walked away feeling different, or feeling anything at all. Internally, I wonder if my writing has any impact on me. I've journaled nearly every day for the past three years, all of it introspective and self-analyzing, and I still feel like I miss the forest for the tiny trees; that I've made the biggest mistakes of my life in just the past week, and that while I wrote about being stressed at work or fights with my partner, my journal rarely touches on my sexual assault or my brother's incarceration, two of the most traumatic things that happened to me last year. I wrote about petty fights with my boyfriend, using words to store my bitterness in instead of using them as tools to break apart my outer hardness to find my vulnerability and gentleness inside.
I feel angry with myself. I feel like I've wasted time, or not been productive. I hate that I use the word 'productive' as much as I do. I take stress naps and wake up exhausted, and I check my bank balances every day because I have an anxiety that what I have will be taken from me at any moment. I feel shame, and I don't know for what.
I think this is all called exhaustion. I think this is all called being stressed and overwhelmed and not dealing with grief and taking too much on and ignoring the important things and losing the essential things and turning into the worst part of your parents and then fearing you're not turning into anything worthwhile at all. I want to be more quiet. I want to stare out the window more, I want to read on my couch for hours without worrying that I'm missing something. I want to put my phone in a box and put that box into the closet for the weekend. I feel guilty for not doing any of those things, and no pleasure in the things I am doing.
This is a long intro. This was supposed to be a post about how Texas is shitty and how, since The Voice, I've written about abortion access and rights. I wanted to write about how planned parenthood saved my life twice, by giving me information about my pregnancy that was fair and good and put me forward instead of the conservative agenda my dad put forward, that saw me as a sin and not a person. They saved me too, by giving me access to birth control I couldn't afford. I wanted to write something about all the different ways writing hasn't gotten us any closer to convincing people that maybe women shouldn't have to carry fetuses to term if they don't want to, that they exist as more than just reproductive machines.
But I just feel tired. So I'm keeping this space small, and safe. I am posting below some abortion funds that people can donate to if they feel so inclined, to help people access abortion care if it is no longer safe for them to do so where they live. And I want to hold space for the people who are exhausted and discouraged. It is okay to be like this. It is okay to want to stare at the wall for a little while. Let others take up the mantle when you no longer have the strength to do so. We will be coming back.
Abortion Funds:
The Whorticulturalist is the mother of this magazine. She is a sex-positive blogger and creative who enjoys rock climbing, dancing, and camping. In her spare time, she’s probably flirting.
The Susan B. Anthony List: Lies and Misinformation
On Sunday, September 6, 2020, my local paper, the Scranton Times, ran a full-page advertisement paid for by the Susan B. Anthony List. The Susan B. Anthony (SBA) List is a non-profit whose goal is to end abortion in the United States. The name of the organization is supposed to be a tribute to the suffragist movement. The leaders of the SBA List contend that Susan B. Anthony was pro-life, a proclamation that has been disputed by the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House, who argues Susan B. Anthony never spent any time discussing her stance on abortion. I offer little weight to the emotional connection the SBA List is trying to tie between the anti-abortion groups to the women’s movement; instead, focusing on the issue with the SBA List's misinformation is spreading.
In the advertisement, the question below was posed to readers, and they had three statements to choose from:
“Which is your view?
Abortion is TRAGIC but sometimes necessary
Abortion is INHUMANE, unacceptable, and wrong.
Abortion is ACCEPTABLE at any time.
The SBA List accentuates their beliefs by capitalizing the words “tragic” and “inhumane” to drive the pro-life viewpoints on abortion. Then they use “acceptable” to underscore the supposed pro-choice or Democratic beliefs. The ad elaborates that choice A and B align with 70% of all political affiliations based on the 2020 Marist Poll.
The first inaccuracy in the ad proclaims that, according to the democratics.org/where-we stand/party-platform, the Democratic Party Platform aligns 100% with choice C, Abortion is Acceptable at any time,
I searched the Where We Stand Platform for the claim that Democrats categorically support option C, Abortion is acceptable at any time. The official democratic platform states, “Democrats are committed to protecting and advancing reproductive health, rights, and justice. We believe unequivocally, like the majority of Americans, that every woman should be able to access high-quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion” they go on to state, “Democrats oppose and will fight to overturn federal and state laws that create barriers to reproductive health and rights. We will repeal the Hyde Amendment and protect and codify the right to reproductive freedom. We condemn acts of violence, harassment, and intimidation of reproductive health providers, patients, and staff. We will address the discrimination and barriers that inhibit meaningful access to reproductive health care services, including those based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, income, disability, geography, and other factors. Democrats oppose restrictions on medication abortion care that are inconsistent with the most recent medical and scientific evidence and that do not protect public health.”
The Democratic Party Platform doesn’t say that Democrats support abortion at any time during pregnancy. According to a poll on NPR, only 31% of Democrats agree that abortion should be legal at any time in a pregnancy with no restrictions.
The SBA List cannibalized the words of the democratic platform to spread inaccuracies. They make it seem like women are deciding to have an abortion at thirty-six weeks, and the Democrats are like, “Well, go on, we get it you changed your mind.” That’s not reality.
One of the most significant issues I have with the advertisement is that it forces people into two distinct categories: Democratic or Republican. Impelling people into a label doesn’t allow them to think on a spectrum regarding their abortion stance. In her book, Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law, and Politics of Ordinary Abortion, bioethicist Katie Watson discussed the moral value to an embryo and how someone assigns value is critical in deciding where you stand on abortion. To simplify, what rights you attribute to an embryo, and when you believe those rights pertain to a fetus are critical to determining your abortion stance. People need to give thought to moral value, and when they believe life begins, conception, implantation, viability are considerations. Many people probably fall somewhere on the gamut of abortion is Not Acceptable in any circumstance to its Always Acceptable. Pigeon-holing, all Republicans as never supporting a woman’s right to choose, is naïve. Conversely, suggesting that all Democrats are pro-abortion is not correct. According to the Gallup poll in 2019, 21% of Republicans self-identify as pro-choice, and 29% of Democrats report they are pro-life.
The SBA List goes on to espouse the Democratic platforms supports abortion in the following scenarios:
“Abortion permitted until birth;
A baby born alive after attempted abortion can be left to die;
Taxpayers must fund late-term abortion, even against their conscience.”
Let’s look at the claim that Democrats support abortion until birth. The Reproductive Health Act of New York doesn’t allow abortion up until the moment of birth. When abortions are performed after 24 weeks, it’s because the mother’s life is in danger or the fetus isn’t viable. The claim doesn’t consider that a doctor must determine that woman’s life is at risk or any fetal conditions that are incompatible with life. Someone can’t walk into a clinic at 39 weeks and request an abortion and expect it will be done no questions asked; that’s what the SBLA wants you to think. According to the Guttmacher Institute, only 1.3% of all abortions are conducted after 21 weeks. In most cases, a woman is faced with the decision to abort when she has learned new information later in her pregnancy that shows severe fetal anomaly or a risk to the mother’s health. The Republicans and Trump propagated misinformation that abortion is an option until birth in response to the NY Reproductive Health Law that allowed practitioners to perform abortions after 24 weeks in fetal anomaly cases and if the mother’s life was in danger.
Next, let’s dive into the claims that a baby born alive after attempted abortion can be left to die. The accusation of aborted babies being left to die is not valid. President Trump claimed in a tweet, “The Democrat position on abortion is now so extreme that they don’t mind executing babies AFTER birth,” stoking the fears that infants born after an attempted abortion wouldn’t have care. He doubled down on the older tweet recently when he tweeted about voting in Virginia when he claimed the Governor is “in favor of executing babies after birth-this is late-term abortion.” I don’t think he understands what he is talking about or doesn’t care since he is grasping for the pro-life vote. The claim that babies are executed after birth is wholly unnecessary since the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act” passed Congress in 2002, reaffirming that infanticide is illegal. In the small instances, when an abortion results in a live birth, it is because of a fetal condition, and the infant would be given comfort care in line with parental wishes and the care team recommendations. The claim that babies born alive after an attempted abortion are ludicrous and pandering to the pro-life contingent.
Finally, the last claim that taxpayers must fund late-term abortion isn’t entirely valid, even against their conscience. The Hyde Amendment bars the use of federal funds for abortions, except in case of rape, incest, or life endangerment. However, states can provide funds to pay for medically necessary abortions. Currently, fifteen states have more strict restrictions and don’t comply with the Hyde Amendment to provide Medicaid funding for abortions in rape and incest cases. Some Democrats have said they will repeal the Hyde Amendment ending the ban on federal funds used for abortions. The Hyde Amendment prohibits poor women dependent upon Medicaid from getting abortions and furthers economic and healthcare disparities.
The SBA List is excellent at spreading fear, and I wonder if the pro-life sect realizes that the SBA List considers the emergency contraception pill abortion? If you visit www.sbalist.org, you can link to www.lifeissues.org and search under abortifacients; their stance is clear. Let’s take the scenario that a woman was raped on a Saturday and went to the emergency room. As part of her care, the doctors offered her emergency contraception to prevent pregnancy. If she chose to take the pill, the most stringent pro-lifers deemed this an abortion since the pill prevented implantation of a fertilized egg, which they claimed can happen within thirty minutes of sperm entering a woman’s body. I used the extreme example of rape instead of birth control failure or other consensual encounters. The rebuttal to those examples by pro-lifers is usually something along the lines of people consenting to have sex know the risks. But emergency contraception should be available regardless of the scenario. Other Pro-life organizations like Focus on the Family explicitly denounced any birth control method that interferes with implantation, such as an IUD and some birth control pills.
If the SBA List wants to spread false information, I hope people on both sides of the aisle are smart enough to do the research and think about where they fall on the spectrum of abortion access.
The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg proved we must have a Superior Court judge that will uphold Roe V. Wade and a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. Those who support a woman’s right to choose must call out the half-truths and blatant lies spread by pro-life groups, such as the SBA List. The pro-life supporters are entitled to their opinion, and although I disagree with them, I ask that they educate themselves in facts, not fiction. There are studies, polls, and research articles that refute the lies that the SBA is spreading. If you are anti-abortion because of your religious beliefs or moral code, that is your right, but you have a responsibility to educate yourself. I challenge you to remove yourself from the cocoon of it’s never going to happen to me or someone I love; it’s a cozy place to stay until reality hits.
Maura Maros has a master’s degree in Human Resources Administration from the University of Scranton and Creative Writing from Wilkes University. In 2018 she completed her Master’s in Fine Arts at Wilkes University. Maura’s short story, Hidden Gem (February 2016), and her book review of The Self-Care Solution (June 2016) were published in Mother’s Always Write. Her short story, The Warrior, was published in the anthology I AM STRENGTH. Maura’s poem A Mothers Guide to Getting By is in the summer edition of the American Writers Review 2019. In November of 2019, Maura’s short story Calling Mum…Home was published on Mum Life Stories. Most recently, her poem Bloom was part of a collection of isolation poems and short stories on The Dew Drop.
Under Attack: The Fight For Abortions in Poland
In late October of 2020 protestors descended upon the streets of Poland’s largest cities. An affront to both coronavirus restrictions and the brutal action taken by the police, protestors stood up valiantly in cities like Warsaw and Krakow to fight against the Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) party’s latest attempt to erode the rights of Polish citizens. Voting in a new law that threatens to end abortion access for the majority of Polish women.
Since the fall of the USSR Poland has struggled to define its national identity, and as the idea of “Polishness'' becomes more obscure, PiS (Law and Justice) have weaponized notions of tradition and identity to ignite their base and join the many other far-right parties that have risen to power across Europe. Initially PiS began, like their neighbours Fidesz in Hungary did, by fear mongering. Their first target were the many refugees fleeing violence and war in the MENA region, then it was the LGBTQ+ community, and finally women.
Leader and co-founder of the party Jaroslaw Kazcynski has said that refugees are not welcome in Poland, and openly called the LGBTQ+ community “threat” to Polish values, now his sights have turned to the women of Polish society.
Just a year after winning their first election the party attempted to introduce a total ban on abortion, threatening jail time for both women and doctors as well as committing to investigating any miscarraigges. In this time Kazcynski was quoted as saying “We will strive to ensure that even in pregnancies which are very difficult, when a child is sure to die, strongly deformed, [women] end up giving birth so that the child can be baptised, buried, and have a name.”
These comments and the proposal of such a complete ban sparked major protest all the way back in 2016, though the world wasn’t paying as much attention at the time. It was in reaction to all of this that Polish women began the Black Monday Protests. The tradition of Black Protests has endured especially in major cities like Warsaw and Krakow since then, but in October of 2020 something broke in Polish politics that reignited the movement and brought international attention to Polish women.
In their just 5 years of power Law and Justice managed to disturb the balance of the Constitutional Tribunal by appointing judges that they knew would remain loyal to the party. Now, of the 15 judges that sit on this tribunal which is responsible for the judicial review of certain laws 14 are known to be loyal to PiS - a clear affront to the very nature of the tribunal itself. This power is proving to be incredibly dangerous, and it's just one of the reasons there were so many people in attendance at the October 2020 protests.
Image from foreignpolicy.com
After spending the last 5 years in power uprooting and decimating Poland’s system of checks and balances their previously tabled restrictions on abortions were now possible - a testament to what they can now achieve. Previously abortion was only accessible under 3 conditions - threat to the life of the mother, sexual assault, or fetal abnormality. The bill which passed late last year said that fetal abnormalities, which account for 98% of Poland’s legal abortions, will no longer be a justification.
This reignited the feminist movement and even amid pandemic restrictions thousands and thousands of Poles poured into the streets to defend women’s rights, abortion rights, and the very future of Polish democracy. With 4 more years of their reign over Poland ahead many feminists across the country fear this won’t be the last attack on their rights to come.
As the movement both for women and against PiS grows, the youth are coming to the forefront. I spoke with one youth activist, Antonina from one of Poland’s more progressive cities in the north, and she told me a bit about her experience.
Amid the chaos, and despite being just 17, she too felt the weight of this moment in time so she took it upon herself to get involved. She and 4 other student leaders got together and organised a protest in her home city of Gdansk. The protest was illegal because of the current COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings and in setting it up she was well aware that it means she now has a criminal record saying: “It was illegal [...] but honestly whatever they [the police] do it was definitely worth it because the cause is way more important to me than actually having something on my record or in my CV”
Their first protest saw a turnout of around 3,000 people and after collaborating with another, larger group their turn out hit about 6,000 protestors. While this was all amazing in the end, Antoninia admits setting all of this up was incredibly hard commenting; “We did a lot of work mostly with other organisations because there are lots of NGOs right now that want to do something good [in Poland] but sometimes the communication was hard [...] I mean, we are kids and we didn’t really know what we were doing. It isn’t something we do every day.”
She, like many young women and young people at large, is occupying political spaces in a way that is new and unfamiliar. For years now the youth across the world have been taking up even more space in activism and local politics, and last fall this sentiment made its way to Poland. We are entering a new era of Polish activism, one where the youth are coming to terms with their role as political actors and the situation they have been born into. As Antonina puts it; “the political situation with PiS is deeply complicated and is rooted in Polish culture. The divisions were here way before I was born - it's the country [rural areas] vs the cities and the old vs the young. It's a similar mechanism that we are seeing in the US and France with Marie Le Pen”
On the 27th of January the government officially made this law, sparking yet again more protest. These moments of massive unrest have to be followed up by further action which the Polish people have clearly committed themselves to doing.* The fight continues to spill over into 2021 and though it began in 2016 there is the same fervour and large scale mobilization. This isn’t PiS’ first attempt to limit women’s rights, it isn’t their first attack on a vulnerable population, and for Antonina and many other young people in her position these are terrifying times.
She says that this moment back in October was a time of realisation. The protests were the “wake up moment for the youth.” She continues, “this was the first time when many of my friends who were never into politics understood that actually they need to be interested in it, because if you are not interested in politics, the politics will get interested in you.”
This moment in time is so important, as she and her peers come into adulthood under this protofascist regime it feels that the political landscape of Poland no longer welcomes her. She opened up about her own fears about the changes she is seeing saying: “They have been in power since I was 13, and my family is very political so I have been aware of what is happening since the beginning. [...] I am pretty scared, I don’t want to stay in Poland for my studies but I hope I will come back.[..] It is home but with the current party, the government, and the current situation I just feel scared especially when it comes to abortion rights, womens rights, and the discrimination. It’s really not safe for many people here which is really scary and sad.”
As these divisions over body politics, reproductive rights, and the nature of human rights as a whole continue to rage on in Poland there are greater questions to be answered about the future of their country. These protests were about preserving women’s rights but they were also about what it means to be Polish today. Will Poland continue, after the next four years, to be a country that calls for conflict and discrimination, or will it be a place where women like Antonina can feel safe?
These are the questions the Polish people will need to answer for themselves, for the women in their lives, and for the future of their nation. With PiS shifting the very foundation of Poland’s two party system, and its judicial review, and even attempting to sever ties with the European Union some have called into question if this will be a choice for the people to make. Antonina, however, feels confident that Poland’s democracy will continue to thrive long after PiS leaves office.
Though the next election is about 4 years away she is excited to be able to fully voice her opinion as she expressed excitedly, “I really look forward to voting for the first time.” For now though, she, like so many other Polish teenagers, has to rely on activism and education to fight off the worst actions of their current government.
In a moment in time where the world seems to be in complete political turmoil, the youth continue to be a saving grace and a guiding light towards hope for a better democracy and even more rights not just for women but everyone.
Hayley Headley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley
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