The Extraordinary Abortion Care I Received Should Be Ordinary

I’m a pro-choice American woman and more than five years since my abortion I’m still gathering the courage to say that word: abortion.

When strangers muse on the age gap between my son and daughter, I’ve pointedly used the phrase “pregnancy loss” to explain how my second pregnancy ended. Loss is a statement of fact; the subject matter is both uncomfortable and sad enough to keep even the most nosy from inquiring further. Among trusted circles of fellow physician friends, I choose the word “termination,” but rarely “abortion.” “Termination” is polite, clinical; it provides a quiet and somber nod to what actually happened without saying it directly.

Eight days before my abortion in 2016, I was picking out baby names with my husband. I ran errands that morning, and my 20-week anatomy scan was set for that afternoon. I remember the ultrasound tech falling silent as she moved the probe and dragged cold gel across my swollen belly. Before I could make out the grainy screen, the doctor burst into the room and broke the news that the fetus’s brain had a large anomaly.

Few people will tell you that when you have an abortion at 21 weeks, your body is wrecked: You can bleed for weeks and your breasts ache, swollen with the milk for the baby you didn’t bring home. I’m lucky to have undergone an abortion in a state that recognizes a woman’s full humanity so that I could focus on healing, even if it felt emotionally impossible at the time.

I majored in English in college before I became a doctor. In the weeks after my abortion, I read and reread Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “The Mother” and now know it by heart. The second line is seared into memory: “You remember the children you got that you did not get.” Nearly every day I think of the child I got but did not get. But even in my lasting grief, I felt—and still feel—enormous relief. And I have no regret.

I Always Cry After Coming—Should I Be Worried?

By Colleen de Bellefonds

I’m aware that I likely cut a sympathetic figure: a married professional mother of two, the carpool parent who picks up your kid, the guest who sips red wine at your cocktail party. How tragic that this couple wanted this baby, faced bad news, and proceeded with a sad choice. My story may hold up as a morally comfortable example of why abortion should be available, particularly in the second trimester, but the reason for my abortion doesn’t matter, nor does any other person’s reason for their abortion. “I do not want to be pregnant” is as valid as “This fetus has an intracranial abnormality.”

Privileged people of means like me will always be able to get abortions. Draconian anti-abortion laws disproportionately hurt poor people, especially people of color. Abortion rights are civil rights, and in this capitalist society these rights are an economic issue. If I had been forced to carry that second pregnancy to term, I wouldn’t have been able to work; to treat my patients and support my family. A person’s zip code, income, or race should not dictate whether they can readily access abortion care.

I entered the hospital that winter morning like any other patient arriving to get labs drawn or have an imaging test. I didn’t walk through doors blocked by trespassing, terrorizing, and menacing red-faced forced birthers haranguing and harassing me. Everywhere I went that week, and on the day of my abortion, I received warmth and kindness: from the scheduler on the phone who gently told me when to show up at check-in, from the nurse who wrapped me in a warm gray blanket, from the transport staff who advised me to take deep breaths, and from the excellent and compassionate doctors who saved and changed my life. The extraordinary care I received should be ordinary. It should be available to everyone in America. Abortion is health care and abortion is a human right.

Prepandemic, the U.S. held the dubious distinction of having the highest maternal mortality rate among similarly developed nations, with Black and Indigenous mothers two to three times more likely to die from a pregnancy- related cause than white mothers. In light of Texas’s brutal abortion ban, SB8, an oppressive law that prohibits abortions at six weeks (before many people even realize they’re pregnant), a 2021 study in the journal Demography found that abortion bans would lead to a 21% increase in pregnancy-related deaths, with the largest increase in such deaths among Black people. COVID-19 has exposed the fault lines of our society and exacerbated its economic and racial inequities. Abortion bans like SB8 compound them.

I Always Cry After Coming—Should I Be Worried?

By Colleen de Bellefonds

It’s been nine months since people in Texas, the second largest state in this nation, have been unable to access comprehensive abortion care. More recently Florida, West Virginia, and Arizona have bills poised to ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Like Texas, Oklahoma has passed a six-week abortion ban. And, most alarmingly, last month a leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court revealed that its extremists are ready to overturn Roe and strip Americans of their civil rights.

People’s lives are on the line, and unless the Senate ends the filibuster to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act (a bill designed to codify Roe into law), and we expand the courts at all levels to ensure that our constitutional rights are affirmed, all we can do is exercise our agency as individual citizens. We can try to protect and advance reproductive justice by donating to abortion advocacy groups like the National Network of Abortion Funds and local abortion funds in vulnerable states, volunteering with or donating to Planned Parenthood and NARAL, subscribing to reproductive justice-minded news outlets like Rewire News Group, and working to get out the vote for pro-choice candidates to serve in state legislatures and Congress.

Like other parents I know, all I want is to build a better world for my children. I look at my little girl and vow to fight even harder. I may be fighting for a future I won’t see in my lifetime, but I’ll be fighting for the life and rights her generation deserves. If my rage is fire, then my grief is the gasoline and the match. We won’t go back. That is my promise to her.