Happy Birthday to the Land of the Free, Except if You're a Lady.

Fourth of July used to be my favorite holiday. Not because I was an overtly patriotic person but because it was always a great time to come together with friends and family. Spend time camping, drinking, eating good food and playing games. Always a fun time. Always a time that felt like everyone was celebrating the same thing and that people were really united.

I decided to spend this year driving 11 hours across the country, with a shortcut through Canada, alone, because I would rather have done anything but watch ignorant drunk assholes celebrate a country that has done nothing for its people lately. I have decided to spend today sharing my abortion story as a gift to these here “United” States.

This month, ten years ago I got pregnant. My boyfriend at the time had cheated on me, then broke up with me and I decided break-up sex was the answer. I had just come off the depo-provera shot a year prior and hadn’t had a period in years. I still had yet to have one so it was normal for me. September came around and I noticed my boobs had gotten huge. So big, they looked and felt like fake boobs. I was very excited about this but also very confused. I hadn’t really had a period since middle school so I never really had experienced the symptoms of PMS or anything like it. The thought of being pregnant didn’t even cross my mind until a friend had suggested the idea. I bought a few pregnancy tests. I remember drawing a bath, with candles, and a bottle of wine. I took one test. Two lines came up but not exactly like the box said it was supposed to so for all I knew I was clear! I was 23 at the time so I proceeded to get black out drunk, like ya do. Another week went by and my boobs had become painful to the touch. I finally did the math and realized it had been over a year since getting off birth control and I definitely should have already had my period by then. I took another pregnancy test. The lines came up the same way. I took a picture and sent it to my friend.

“Pregnant is what that means.” She responded.

I stayed up all night contemplating what I was going to do. My ex was working at a bar until 2 am and I couldn’t tell anyone else. You see, I was raised in a catholic home. I was always against abortion. For myself, not for anyone else, but all of a sudden I was in this position I never thought I would be in. My ex didn’t want kids, I was brand new to the city I was living in, I had no family around or friends I knew that well and I had never felt so alone. I knew I wanted to keep the baby but I also knew if I did what that would mean. I text my ex and waited for him to get off work. I met him outside his job and went back to his place and told him. His initial reaction was to question whether it was his, which I am sure doesn’t really surprise anyone.

I knew I couldn’t take care of a baby on my own. I also knew it would have killed me to move back to Michigan and in with my parents if I had told them the truth. My ex didn’t want a kid and I didn’t expect him to. I even let him off the hook in case I decided to have the baby giving him the choice of whether or not to be in the kids life. I wanted to have the baby. I needed time to make this decision. By the time I learned I was pregnant I was already 7 weeks. I could barely take car of myself at the time. I didn’t even own a car. I had to ask a friend to take me to Planned Parenthood. They gave me the Mifepristone and Misoprostol and my friend dropped me off at my ex’s. He was going to a football game out of town that weekend but let me stay at his house while I went through the medically induced abortion alone.

Two weeks later I went in for my post abortion check up. The baby was still there. There is a 1% chance of that happening. That is what it tells you on the paperwork you sign. I had to meet with the doctor to discuss all of the dangers in keeping a baby that survives an abortion. It was extremely difficult for me not to think of this as a sign I was meant to have this child. So, I decided I was going to keep it.

Over the next month I was told I was lying about being pregnant, and I was lying about who the father was. Not just by my ex, but by a lot of people in the town I lived in. In fact, it was people who didn’t even know me that had told my ex I was lying about both of those things. It was also a “friend” of mine who told him those things. It was so bad I had to force him to come to Planned Parenthood with me so that he could see the unltrasound himself to know for sure that I wasn’t lying. I was also still unable to tell anyone close to me at this point in fear of my family finding out. One of the only people I did confide in was a guy I had previously dated, and after telling him everything I was going through he proceded to try to force me to have sex with him and when I refused to do that he went to my boyfriends bar the next day and told him I tried to sleep with him while pregnant with his baby. I realize how much this sounds like a soap opera and too insane to be true because why the fuck would anyone care enough to be this involved in someone elses life?!… but as we can all see from the decision made by the Supreme Court last week, people love to insert themselves into other peoples business constantly.

This wasn’t the first time the people in this town tried to bully and harass me and it certianly wouldn’t be the last time. Why they did it? No fucking clue. I have my theories, but at this point it doesn’t matter to me anymore. They tried to break me for whatever bullshit excuse they had, but ya know what? Look at me now.

I decided to set a date for a surgical abortion on the last day possible for me to get the procedure done. I had no intention of going but just in case I changed my mind I did it. I am not going to get into all the nitty gritty details of what I do and don’t believe in right now but I will tell you that in this time I started attending group reiki sessions on a weekly basis. Two days before the abortion was scheduled I went to a reiki session. During the session I saw the baby inside of me with a rainbow in its heart and a rainbow in my heart and the rainbows connected through an umbilical cord made of white light. In the moment, and shortly after all I could make of it was that the baby and I had connected and that it was happening. I was going to have this baby. I went home and went to sleep. The next morning I woke up and had the strangest feeling. I don’t know how to explain what or how I knew it but it felt as though this huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. As though the baby had told me; It is okay, we have made our connection and I can go now.

I called my ex and asked him to take me to Planned Parenthood the next day. I brought my bible with me to hold as I walked into the office while protesters stood outside. I was further along than the rest of the girls who were there and so I had to be dilated further and it was going to take longer. So I was the first one in the office and the last to leave that day. The room they put you in is filled with lazy-boys all set in a circle so you can look at every girl about to get an abortion and then watch her after it is completed. By the time it was my turn I had been sitting in my lazy-boy for over five hours and watched 8 women go in for their abortions. By the time it was my turn the twilight (drug they give you for the procedure) had kicked in and I wasn’t holding anything back. I was enraged, scared, sad, and alone. The nurses set me up with one on each side holding my arms and legs. The doctor came in and I started yelling at him as he picked up different utensils. I called him a murderer of babies and said “I bet you like this. I bet you get off on the idea of murdering babies everyday.” So he stopped. He told everyone to stop and step away and he sat down next to me. He told me, “I don’t want to be here anymore than you want to be here. However, the only way you can make it through this process is with the help of me and these nurses today. I am here for you, I am here to do the part no one wants to do and I am doing this for you.” I wish I knew the name of that Doctor. I wish I could tell him how grateful I am to him for everything he did and said to me that day and just how much his words have stuck with me for the past ten years. How the grace and care he showed me changed me forever.

The nurses took their places and with an eased mind and plenty of drugs in my system the procedure began. I told him he “was like a dentist of my vagina with all that suction” and he said he was going to get a coffee mug that said that. I used humor like I always do to get through a hard situation and we all were laughing and crying by the end of it. I am grateful I was awake for the procedure and able to have closure in that regard. After it was over I went back to my Lazy-Boy and cried. I couldn’t stop crying. My ex took me to get my favorite pizza and we went back to his house and watched movies.

Two weeks later I went back to reiki. Normally at the end of our sessions the woman would ask people about their experiences and to share with the group. Instead, before everyone opened their eyes she came to me and whispered in my ear “I have a message they want me to give you: The soul wasn’t ready yet, and you can’t blame yourself.”

I would have a nine year old today had I not had those two abortions. I told my family later that I had gotten pregnant and had a miscarriage because I didn’t know how to hide my sadness when I came home for Christmas that year. I have never shared the truth with them, and if they are reading this it is the first time they are hearing it.

I made a choice. I wasn’t raped. I decided to have unprotected break-up sex with an ex, was 23 years old and alone. I did not want to have an abortion but made the difficult decision that was right for me. That is all that matters and that is all that should matter. Maybe I would have had the baby had I known I would have been taken care of as a single mother, or that my child would have been taken care of if I was unable to adequately provide for my child, but this country has shown it does not care about a child outside of the womb and nor does it care for single mothers. So as an almost mother, I did what was best for my child.