Abortion: My Friend's Experience

With all the talk as of late about abortions, and why people choose to have one, or choose not to have one I felt compelled to get a different aspect of this issue out to people. I would like to reference an article on Associated Content by Mommy2lots titled ABORTION:CHOICE OF LIFE. Mommy2lots makes a lot of great points in her article. She does not give her opinion to throw it on anyone who makes the choice to have an abortion. She just offers her opinion on the subject. In this article I want to give you an account from a dear friend who had an abortion.

We will start with a flashback to the winter of 1997. The location is Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The people involved will not be named however for this piece we will call them Karen and Mike, but they were a fairly new couple and had never talked about children beyond jokingly talking about names they liked for their future children if there were any. This particular couple had just moved into the area and were beginning to settle into their lives there. Karen was barely 19 years old and Mike was pushing 26 years old. The prospect of being pregnant never entered her mind and it certainly had never entered his.

That is until one morning when Karen had taken Mike to work and started feeling extremely ill on her way back to their apartment up from the beautiful beaches of South Carolina. Karen got so sick at one point she stopped at a gas station and asked where the closest emergency room was located. The attendant at the station said it was almost 30 miles away from the current location. However the attendant could see how sick Karen was feeling and directed her right across the street to a small town medical clinic. Karen made her way across the busy street feeling sicker and sicker every inch. When she finally made it into the clinic and explained how she was feeling she was told to take a seat and that someone would be right with her. What was around 30 minutes later a nice nurse practitioner called Karen's name and took her into an exam room, she went over Karen's symptoms and drew a little blood for the lab to work up and then asked Karen to go the bathroom and use the provided cup for a urine sample. Once Karen was finished with this she made her way back into the exam room with the nice nurse who then asked her all sorts of questions. One of those questions was if there was a possibility that she was pregnant. Karen answered no that she was on birth control and she and her boyfriend were being very careful. The nurse took notes and left the room. When she returned she had a smile on her face and told Karen that she was about 8 weeks pregnant and the blood work and the urine sample had confirmed this. She then did a pelvic exam on Karen to better assess due dates and to be certain that Karen was around 8 weeks pregnant.

When Karen left the medical clinic she made her way back to where her boyfriend was working to tell him what she just learned. The first words Karen said to Mike through her tears was "You're going to hate me, just tell me you hate me now." Of course Mike had no idea what she was talking about, and asked her what was wrong, what had happened. Mike was in a state of panic from the silence other then Karen's tears. She finally let it out, she finally told him that she was 8 weeks pregnant. At first Mike just stood there, he could not speak, he could not put words together. He finally said we will figure it out, don't worry.

Karen left Mike at work and made her way home. As the day went on she called her closest friends to ask them what she should do. She had all kinds of thoughts running though her mind at the time and was absolutely exhausted from worry and crying. The thoughts of abortion never crossed her mind. She had friends who had chosen to have abortions, and she had seen what they went through. She decided during the times that her friends had chosen to have abortions that she would never in a million years do that. Karen told me this when I spoke with her about her situation. I told her to do what was best for her, and not to be forced or feel forced into doing something she was uncomfortable with or uncertain of.

When I spoke with Karen again she was pushing 10 weeks in her pregnancy and she was still distraught with worry and frustration. The frustration came into play because one minute Mike would tell Karen we will make this work, he had moments he would touch her stomach and she felt like he was connecting with her and their unborn baby. She grew more frustrated when those moments would change and Mike would tell her things similar to she had to have an abortion, no one would want her with a kid, and the most hurtful thing of all was that he would tell his parents not to have anything to do her or the baby and he insisted that they would do exactly that if he asked it of them. Of course being 19 Karen thought that was all true. She thought she would be all alone, and that Mike's parents and Mike would never come near the baby or love the baby the way that she was beginning to. Karen's frustrations then turned to fear. She was rattled with fear. She loved Mike and thought that he was just as scared as she was. She wanted to be with Mike and the baby she was carrying so desperately. Her thoughts that Mike was just as scared as her went away when he found out that an abortion would cost a little over $300 and that if Karen's blood type was O+ it would be closer to $400. That was almost enough to kill my dear friend Karen. She then heard a phone conversation that Mike was having with a friend of his, Mike was asking his friend if push came to shove if he could loan Karen and him $400 to have an abortion. I spoke with Karen shortly after and she was on the verge of having a nervous breakdown, she was far beyond being hysterical.

Later that week Karen called to make an appointment at Charleston Women's Medical Center in Charleston, South Carolina to have an abortion. By the time of the appointment the next week Karen was getting into the 11^th week of her pregnancy. She called to double check the appointment time and found out that the doctor personally was having an operation. Karen for the first time in almost 4 weeks felt happy. She was told by the receptionist at the Medical Center that their office would not perform an abortion over 12 weeks. However, Karen went ahead and made another appointment for the first of the next week, because the receptionist told her that they would do an ultrasound and exam to confirm the pregnancy, and to check the gestation of the baby before doing any procedure.

We will skip the ensuing drama from the delay and move on to when Karen and Mike made their way down to Charleston. When they got into the car that dreaded morning Karen was crying, and hoping Mike would change his mind. She refused to drive to the Medical Center, she refused to talk to Mike except to say that she was not driving to Charleston, and that she was not sure if she could go through with the abortion.

When they finally arrived at the Center they went inside and did the paper work and paid up front for the procedure. Karen was then herded into a tiny room with at least 10 other pregnant girls and women. They were given the speech about what the procedure was, how it would work, what to expect and so on. The nurse told them all that they could change their minds up to the point that the instruments were inserted into their vaginas, and that if the ultrasounds and paper work showed them to be over 12 weeks they would receive their money back. The nurse also told the girls that if they did not want to be pregnant shortly after this abortion to especially careful after the procedure because getting pregnant maybe easier after having the abortion. The nurse then filed all of the girls back out into a waiting room and took them one by one into a lab to do blood work to check for HIV and Hep. A, B, and C. After this was finished all of the girls were taken back into the tiny room to take a small blue pill. After taking the pill they were able to leave the room and make their way back to the waiting area for the clinic.

Karen immediately felt sick after taking this pill that was suppose to help calm her down, and also help relax her muscles so that dilation could begin later in the process. Karen found herself talking to the baby inside her, she swears at that moment she could feel the baby move inside her. She prayed to her Grandmother in Heaven and asked her for a sign that everything would be okay. She told herself that she would not go through with this abortion if she felt she had received a sign. Karen says it was less then 2 minutes later that she made her way to the bathroom and threw up. She thought this was her sign. She made her way back to Mike and they went to sit in the car for awhile. Karen told me that she then told Mike that she thought she felt the baby move, that she had prayed for sign that everything would be okay, and that she thought her throwing up the pill was their sign that everything would be okay for them and their baby. To this day Karen can not remember what Mike's response was. She got out of their car and went and sat on a stoop outside the clinic with another woman that was there.

While looking across the street and talking to this woman, Karen saw a man holding a sign of a healthy baby on one side, and on the other was an aborted fetus. Karen broke down into tears again, all the while listening to this other woman tell her story about this being her 7^th abortion, and that this was her 3^rd at this clinic. The woman went on telling Karen that she was going to have to find another clinic after this to have abortions. This woman's husband was in the military and stationed away from her and their kids. She was having affairs and getting pregnant and just kept aborting the babies that she knew were not her husbands. This made Karen throw up again.

Karen told me that after all of this she felt like she was not herself anymore. It felt like she was just floating around, looking at all of these young couples laughing and kissing like having an abortion was not a big deal. She started to wonder if she was the strange one in the group. Karen heard her named called and clung to Mike like she never had before. She told him she did not want to have the abortion, she wanted to get their money and leave. Mike walked her to the door to go back to the exam room for the ultrasound, she asked if Mike could come with her and was told that only women there for the procedure could go beyond that door. Karen said she laid on the table and had the ultrasound gel put on her stomach, she turned her head to see what came up on the monitor when the nurse started. There was something Karen said she never expected to see. She could see a profile of a baby, she could make out fingers, and toes, and she could see a little transparent heart beating below the ribs of the baby inside her. This was another moment that Karen cried that day. When the ultrasound was over Karen asked the nurse if she could have a copy of the ultrasound and the nurse told her that was against Charleston Women's Medical Center's policy that it was for their records only.

Karen once again was ushered out into the waiting room to Mike. She told Mike what she had just seen, but the entire time she said she did not look at him. She knew if she did there was no way that she could go through with this, she knew that she would see his face and want to keep their baby, she knew that if she looked at him she would see that he still did not want the baby she had just seen.

Karen told me the next time she heard her name being called that it was time for procedure, she walked to the door without looking at Mike and without saying a word. She made her way down the hall past where she had, had the ultrasound. She walked into a dimly lit exam room with all kinds of things she had never seen. She was asked to put on an examination gown and to get on the cold hard exam table. Karen said that she laid back on the table waiting for the spawn of satin to come in and could hear a girl in the next room crying. She knew she was next. Karen once again prayed to her Grandmother, she asked her not to hate her, and asked her to help her through this awful thing she was about to do. The doctor came in with a nurse and said something's to Karen. It was hard to understand or remember what he was saying. He inserted a speculum into Karen and she said that she was yelling inside for him to stop, the words were on her lips but when she opened her mouth nothing came out. She tried her hardest through tears to get the words out but they refused to be audible. She then heard a vacuum sound and felt the worse pain she had ever dealt with in her life. She had noticed a jar covered with blue pads and held on with a rubber band when she came into the room and she knew that the baby she had felt moving minutes before was no more and was inside that cold jar. Karen said she watched the doctor carry the jar out of the room with him and the nurse, she also said that in that jar she saw blood, and other things that she just does not want to remember.

She laid there and listened to the doctor saying that he was finished with the procedure, she wanted to turn back time as the nurse told her to gather her clothes to go into a recovery room with the same girls she had seen earlier. Now most of those girls were crying just like my friend Karen was. They were shivering and not looking at anyone. Karen told me that she was feeling dirty, and just wanted to die at this point. When the nurse asked her about 20 minutes later if she could get up to get dressed Karen told her yes, and made her way into the bathroom to change into her clothes and to put on a huge maxi pad the nurse had provided to her.

Once Karen was done dressing she was directed back to the waiting room. She knows that she was a sight for the girls and boys sitting there waiting for the same procedure she had just endured all alone on a cold hard table. Karen said that she walked right past Mike and went straight to their car in the parking lot. She sat down in the car and cried like she never had before. When Mike got into the car with her told him to take her home, not the home that they were making for themselves but to her real home that they had left behind to live in South Carolina. Mike tried his damndest to talk to Karen about what had just happened. But, she would not talk to him. When they were almost back to their apartment Karen told him everything she was feeling, everything she had felt, and seen. That is when Mike showed emotion to Karen, he then apologized for the way he acted and almost started to cry with her.

Karen locked herself in their apartment for over a week, she did not call her family, her friends, or her two jobs. She basically fell off the face of the Earth for over a week. When she finally emerged from feeling as she says sorry for herself, she was still sore and was still bleeding from the abortion. She still felt pregnant also. She told me later that she bleed for over 3 months from the abortion, and that it took almost that long for her to feel somewhat normal again.

Karen also told me she would never have an abortion again, she told me how dirty and low she felt and still feels about having an abortion all those years ago.

However, Karen is now a mother and Mike is now a father to their 2 wonderful children. They are happy together and loving their life together. Though they never talk about the abortion in Charleston, Karen always remembers the baby she chose to abort, she always remembers on March 12^th of every year that the baby would have been a year older, and she thinks back to that dark time in her life often. Karen did have to endure another abortion but this time it was called a DNC and was administered by her OBGYN when she miscarried a baby in 2004. That one was also difficult and made Karen think back to that day in 1997.

Karen says that all though she thinks of the baby that she basically killed all the time, now she can say that she would not change a thing about what she ultimately decided to do that day. If she had not had that abortion no matter how much pain it caused her or how much she regretted it she would not have her and Mike's oldest child. Also no matter how hard the DNC in 2004 was she tries not to dwell on it too much because she says then she would not have her and Mike's youngest child.

All though the choice to have an abortion is each individual's choice I hope that Karen's story helps some make a better choice for them. The thoughts that people have about abortion are not what you see in movies, and it certainly will not make you forget about a child that you chose to abort. No amount of time will ever make you forget the pain that you feel, or the heartache afterwards. When making a choice to have an abortion you need to think of the long run after the fact, are you willing to deal with the depression, the terrible thoughts, and haunting dreams for years to come? If you are not prepared for all aspects then do not rush into making the choice. Better yet, the best advice is if you are not ready to have a child and take responsibility for all the things that come with it then do not have sex at all.