I don’t understand why all the people talking about abortions are old white men.

That’s not fair: not all of them are that old. But every person I see on TV nowadays who wants to talk about how pro- choice women are monsters is inevitably a balding, just-past-middle-aged Caucasian politician who sprouts off declarative sentences that have no scientific basis. You couldn’t turn on a few American news channels during the most recent elections without the image of a god-fearing Midwestern congress-hopeful (or terrified seat-keeper bowing to the masses) using the most decisive argument in the country to his professional advantage.

Don’t get me wrong: men are perfectly allowed to have opinions.  But, on this matter, they are under-informed. They will never have the painful experience that is an abortion, will never have the anatomy to know how utterly frustrating it is. Though I don’t want to go so far as to say that in order to talk about abortion you have to have had one, many of the people who are discussing it in public forums and making laws are simply not informed decision makers. I don’t mind people having pro-life opinions.  They’re absolutely entitled to that. In fact, I would be very upset if someone’s opinion were suppressed.

But telling me what I can or cannot do with my own uterus is akin to me trying to regulate vasectomies.

It is particularly hurtful when I hear the responses to women who have had abortions – how they are called monsters. What irritates me more than anything else is how these reactions have made the topic of abortions taboo: voluntary abortions happen every day, all around the world, and yet we still don’t talk about it.  People turn a blind eye to something that is both common and, in a lot of cases, logically necessary. I want to share a portion of my own experience in order to push against the taboo of speaking about lived, real abortions, rather than ideological abstractions.

I found out I was pregnant in April of 2009. I had moved in with my boyfriend of four months because it made sense financially. (Anybody, everybody, knows that in my city this is utter relationship suicide.) Sexually speaking, we were stupid: no question about it. Shortly after said stupidity, I felt like I had the flu. But also suspiciously like I wanted a freezie dipped in sweet and sour sauce and nothing else.

So I peed on a stick.  And very quickly vomited at the results.

At that time I knew I didn’t want kids.  There was no second choice for me – having an abortion was a given.

My boyfriend did not agree.  He was very manipulative, and made me feel extremely guilty about my choice.  In a way, he was the personal echo of all those voices on TV.  But I knew what I wanted, and it ultimately wasn’t his decision because it wasn’t his body.

I went to see a doctor to confirm the pregnancy and ask about my options.  He was decidedly distant and clearly not impressed with me, but he gave me the leaflets I needed and sent me out. I did what I could: I took a buddy with me. The buddy system, guys: it works.  I can’t imagine having to do that alone; I think I would have cracked.

Let’s get into the more involved details.

There are two kinds of abortions at an early stage in pregnancy: medical and surgical.  The clinic I visited told me that I was under seven weeks along: I could have the less-invasive medical procedure.  They make you go through an extra-uterine ultrasound, and you have the choice to see the blastocyst if you want to.  I did see it.  I will never forget that for the rest of my life.  It looked like a splatter of paint on a newspaper, a spec of dirt on a potato

Tiny.

The place I went to – a women-run clinic – was excellent. They assigned me a counsellor to make sure I was happy with my care.  I was given options at every point along the way.  They understood how terrifying it was for a 22 year-old girl to need to have this procedure done.  I am so grateful for their understanding, and I can’t imagine how horrible the experience would have been if a politician’s agenda kept these women from doing their jobs. The doctors themselves were quite professional and clinical. I understood that: they have to keep a degree of separation from their procedures in order to remain non-partial.

A medical abortion involves four sets of tablets that you have to insert into your cervix to induce a miscarriage. I did it. It was not pleasant, though for the first couple of hours it was fine. I felt good: I felt like I could tackle whatever was coming.

They gave me three kinds of painkillers.  They told me, “if it starts to hurt, take the Tylenol.  If it hurts more, take the T3’s.  You’ll know when you need the Percocet.”  I took the Percocet about four hours in.

The counsellor told me it would feel like cramps.  Hey, whatever: I have those every month!  No big deal!  Right?

Wrong.  It starts like cramps.  Then it doesn’t go away.  Then it really doesn’t go away.  Even when you’re spaced out on T3’s, it’s there.  And then the bleeding gets really intense, and the Percocet and a makeshift diaper come into play.  This is hard enough if you’re in your own house, privately dealing with the process (or with someone supportive on the sidelines holding a towel and a bucket of morphine).  My boyfriend and I lived in a house shared by another couple and another man.  It was always full, and he hadn’t really been speaking to me for three days since I’d announced the pregnancy. It took him until the pain was really bad to decide he needed to help.  He did try, but I don’t think he really understood.   The only person who did was a friend of mine who had had an abortion herself.  She came as soon as her work let her go and she just sat with me, getting me through it. I remember a black Labrador puppy at one point. I hope that memory is real.

After the abortion is complete, you’re not quite done. You’re sore: you feel like you’ve been drained of everything wilful and energetic. You feel like you’ll never feel outside yourself again. (I still feel that, sometimes. Five years later.)

The body still has to pass everything placental.  Sadly, this happened while Boyfriend and I were walking back from the gas station (my first trip outside in three days), and I suddenly felt a shift in my uterus that shot up my spine. I went into shock almost immediately. I only barely made it to my home on time before I had a very unpleasant twenty minutes in the bathroom. Passing. Vomit. Sitting on the floor looking at tile. The feeling that something completely unutterable has just happened to you. More vomit.

On top of this, you still get the hormone imbalance that any regular miscarriage gets. And, if you’re unlucky like me, you spiral into a depression. This is not hard to spiral into. Easy, really: all you have to do is not go outside for quite some time.  This is my one big annoyance with the pro-life argument: do you honestly think that we don’t feel shitty enough after what we’ve done? We feel physically shitty too, as well as taking punches to our emotions.

Anyway.

After the abortion you have to have a follow-up ultrasound, to make sure it worked (because sometimes medical abortions don’t).  I went in terrified that I would have to go through the entire experience again.  Fortunately it did work, and I saw an empty uterus on the screen. I went home satisfied that I never had to have someone poke me up into my lady parts with an intrusive rod again. Which is, you know, not the thing that that sentence makes it sound like.

A few things happened after that. Mainly, my relationship with my boyfriend completely fell apart.  He tried his best, he did, but I could tell that he was still very angry. (Now, I do think the man – in a committed relationship – should have a say.  Maybe only 3.5% of a say, but a say. It just so happened that this say was the opposite of what I wanted to do.)  I spent all my time indoors, just not wanting to go outside. He didn’t want, or know how, to take care of me. And it ended.

There has not been a day that goes by that I haven’t thought about my experience.  Men don’t get that: they don’t get that it stays with you for the rest of your life.  Some men certainly don’t get how important it is, given the decision stays with you, to make the right one. If someone had said to me four years ago, “you’ll forget this eventually” I would have believed them.  But it hasn’t happened yet.  I quite honestly doubt it ever will.

There are those who would say I’m a monster; that I am guilty and morally repugnant.  They are happy to say so, content in their penis-laden bodies and safely far away from anyone actually experiencing this kind of decision. I don’t feel guilty about it.  I am actually very proud of myself: I made a logical decision.  I didn’t do it out of spite, or to hurt anybody. I did it to prevent a child being born into a completely unhappy relationship.  Because who knows what kind of damage I could have inflicted on an innocent life if it didn’t have the proper emotional, financial and familial support with which to grow up.  I did it because I am an adult, and I make my own decisions.

Now back to my point – why is it still taboo to “come out” as having had an abortion?  Why is the story I have told here so rare, whereas talk about closing abortion clinics, or hearing about attacks on abortion coverage are all too common?  Without understanding, or at least knowing, what a woman in this situation goes through, we cannot make good decisions, nor elect the people who make them for us.

So, male legislators of the world, until you’ve been through what I’ve been through: get your political agenda out of my vagina.