Second Pregnancies

First off, I'll say now that I will always be pro-choice, no uterus no opinion, and will always respect those who are pro-life. I genuinely think that until the day you experience an abortion yourself, you will never understand the emotions, thought processes, planning, rationalities that come up for a person who is in the middle of making that decision. Religion or not, beliefs be damned, you're just not going to get it. It's difficult to describe beyond this, your mind will never have to or ever understand what going there is like, the flip of switches that take off upon hearing "your pregnant" but knowing it’s not your path.

In my early 20's I had an abortion. I found out at my school's health services and immediately called my partner. We had talked about it in the past, the what ifs of pregnancy happening when we were still so young. It was an easy decision to make, there was no fighting, just rationale thought processes that led to "no, we can't do this right now, and don't want to." I went to therapy after it happened, for a long time. It helped me work through the experience of the clinic, the surgery, the loss of friends, the breakdown of a relationship afterwards and more importantly, if I was suppressing feelings around it all. I would say that all around, the worst part of it happening, wasn't that it happened, it was the amount of people it was hidden from, parents, family, friends we knew would be unsupportive or immature. That weight of having no one know but yourselves is a lot, some are better at dealing with it than others. It took me a while to get past it, and once I did, I was better off for it and so was my partner.

Every once in a while, things would happen that would trigger an emotional reaction I wasn't expecting. Tv episodes about child loss, my sister getting pregnant, friends getting pregnant, religious co-workers and their opinions that weren't solicited. Again, as long as you can identify that's what the trigger was, it was easier to talk it out, to address it, to support others when it came up in their lives. The taboo nature of women's health and rights means that it's barely discussed as an everyday topic, the regular occurrence that it really is. There is shame in bothering to have the conversation to begin with even if it’s not an event that’s actually happening to any of you. This is problematic. It makes any of the abortion options available to women woefully understated, and the extreme lack of knowledge that isn’t regularly talked about makes it almost scary to anyone who needs it. This is a rant for another time, however.

What I came here to write about today wasn’t a traumatic experience, a regret of actions, or the disgusting lack of women’s health information available, it was to talk about my second pregnancy.

Now married, two degrees later, I am pregnant for the second time in my life. This will be my first child, and I am genuinely looking forward to what’s to come next. Although the first 4 months of pregnancy lacked the same enthusiasm. I went into the doctor’s office for the only in-person appointment I’ve gotten so far due to COVID, and had already taken the stick test and knew I was pregnant and wanted to know what was next. The last time this happened, I wanted the info for the abortion clinic and wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. What caught me off guard was that I hadn’t even considered the number of questions I was going to get around whether this was my first pregnancy and what happened the last time, and why. I didn’t think it was that important, and it’s not really. There are a few things they might watch out for that all have to do with genetic and internal development and matching blood types and etc etc., but even though those are things they need to watch, they are not by far the most important parts of the pregnancy journey. The doctor I met with was unphased by abortion, asked what she needed to know and moved on. Did I want to see a midwife? An OB? I should start thinking about this now since I will need to get one and in the meantime my care will be with a GP.

Fast forward to searching for midwives, everyone I knew with children or recently given birth all recommended midwives for more personal attentive care. This sounded like the best thing given it was my first pregnancy. The number of offerings for my region were small, some had over the phone intake some had online forms. All of them had questions I hadn’t anticipated – is this your first pregnancy, yes or no? If no, how many children do you have? Not applicable. Was your first pregnancy viable (some said successful) yes or no? If no, provide details – abortion. Follow-up questions that often accompanied on the phone, was there a medical reason for abortion? “No I just didn’t want a child; I was too young.”

This entire process of filling out forms for the child I was having, the child that was going to become a fully formed and loved human, dredged up shame, guilt, embarrassment that I hadn’t had in years. I am vocal about women’s rights, even with family who are too misguided for their own good, I support talking about political movements that are on-going involving women’s rights, and if it comes up, I am not afraid to say I’ve had an abortion. In those moments though, the ones where I currently decided to be a mom, a soon to be mom, the amount of shame I felt answering those questions and explaining myself to complete strangers was surprising.

That was nearly five years ago that it happened. If I had a child, I would be living at home, probably working fulltime at the job I used to have part-time, I wouldn’t have finished my master’s degree, owned a car, started my doctorate or had the work opportunities I have had because I had a child and the support that was needed at that time, wouldn’t have been available from anyone. My partner and I agreed we wanted to be in a place to provide a good life and be able to have the lives we wanted when we started a family, not to mention be older and be married. These were all things I had and have come to terms with numerous times over since it happened so why the shame, why the guilt? I have no idea.

All this to say, that abortion is always right if you think it’s the right decision for you. Be aware of the long term psychological impacts though, regardless of how supportive and okay with the decision you made, it sneaks up on you when you aren’t expecting it. Be sure you have the tools to deal with those emotions and thought-processes when they come up. If I hadn’t gone to therapy I wouldn’t have them, and I certainly wouldn’t be writing this post today.