Coerced Abortion and Why More People Need to Talk About It

(Note: This was written in September of 2015 when the #shoutyourabortion hashtag was trending wildly. Our son is now a thriving 16 month old toddler.)

I don’t think I will ever forget the sound of his voice that day.

“You’ll never amount to anything.”

“You’ll become trash.”

“I hate you. I hate the baby. You trapped me.”

“I’ll pay you child support but thats all you'll get out of me. I won’t have anything to do with either of you.”

Let me paint you a picture, because to go forward, I must first go back. I was 23, married, and had a full time job. We owned a home, a boat, and two cars. What looked like near perfection from the outside was an emotional nightmare. We were never made for one another, and yet we kept trying to pretend we were, only furthering our distance from each other, and building in our hostilities. 

I’ll own up to the fact that I had missed a few birth control pills. We were not being intimate, and there were so many other things going on that I lost track of it. I’m only human; and in the reality of being human, we all know it only takes once to make a baby.

I knew it would be bad when I told him, but the “A” word still caught me off guard. And instead of bending to his whim as always, I found myself being assertive, persistent, and protective - very unlike me.

I’m going to make a long story very short, because this is not about he and I. After some vicious fights, I was for a lack of better words, granted permission to have our baby, so long as I met a list of demands, to which I happily agreed. And then everything was perfect - until one day it wasn’t.

We went from relatively happy expectant parents to two monsters screaming at each other from within the walls of our home. He bombarded me with insult after insult, walking behind me as I walked from room to room packing a bag - I was leaving. I thought for good this time. I thought I could be strong this time. I thought I could make it on my own this time. I thought wrong.

Emotionally abusive relationships cause wounds just as deep and painful as physical ones. They can even kill. At that point in time, his existence was my air; his words, my gospel. I did not know how to function without him. So with all of my resolve gone, he won. I gave in. I scheduled the abortion.

I was educated on what would happen physically as I went back to my pre-pregnant state, but I was in no way prepared for the emotions that were ultimately going to bring me very close to death. You see, I had wanted that baby. I had loved that baby. I had seen it on a screen. I had heard its heart beating inside of me.

The first thing I remember resembling anything close to a feeling is the emptiness. Not just in my belly, but in my heart. I felt as if a piece of my soul had been ripped out, and it reminded me of that feeling when you’re short of breath and just can’t seem to get your lungs to fill. The next thing I remember hitting me was the finality of it all. There was no going back and trying to rewrite the chapter. It was closed, sealed up, never to be opened again. The baby that could have come to be was to be no more, nor ever again. The last feeling I remember coming back was a dark, raging anger, that poured into me and over everything in my life like a black, sticky tar, and no matter what I did it wouldn't come off.

The marriage I chose over my child ultimately became a battle zone, and after a year of being off and on, it eventually crumbled. I was left with nothing. I walked away with the clothes on my back, freedom of my mind, and a black hole in place of my heart.

The next few years afterward are a very dark place in my past. I became an emotional masochist. I was addicted to pain, and traveled near and far to find it. Fortunately, I bottomed out and sought help on many different levels; but even then, it was a few more years of burying the emotional trauma of my abortion until I finally started to accept what it had done to me.

It started to make sense why for quite some time vacuums made me anxious and stress riddled. Why April and November (abortion and due date) were two months where my depression would nosedive. Why I was terrified at the idea of having a baby and why, when I finally found myself in a loving marriage and pregnant, that I spent every moment concerned that the universe had “hiccuped” and my pregnancy was a divine accident, and it would be over at any moment. It explains why even now, with a thriving and healthy 14 month old son, I have a reoccurring dream every night that he in some way is taken from me and I can’t get back to him.

Yes. Abortion is a choice. But no one knows what is going on in the life or mind of the mother. And yes I know there are options, however referring back to myself, my husband didn’t allow me to consider it because “why wreck my body.” The honest truth is you just don’t know. Our society sends us the message that since we, as women, have and make this choice, that we are to move on, to not mourn, to not feel regret, or even sadness. We are pushed to suffer in silence, and sometimes silence can kill. It almost killed me - I am thankful EVERY day that I found my voice.

I am not preaching, and I am not saying every woman who has had an abortion feels like I do. I am not claiming to be pro-life or pro-choice. I am not claiming a religious stance or a lack thereof. I am a woman who found my voice, a woman with a story. There are so many political agendas going on around abortion currently. But for every hundred #shoutyourabortion hashtags circulating the internet right now, there could be a woman. A woman like me. Who wants to grieve, but can’t. Who wants people to know she LOVED HER CHILD, yet she can’t for fear of judgement from either side. To that woman, I want you to know I see you. I get you, and I’m hugging you right now. Find your voice, find a trusting ear, and love yourself (and its okay to love your baby, too). xoxo