The following transcript shares a few brief parts of an episode of the podcast R-Soul: Reclaiming the Soul of Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice. The title of the full episode is Celebrating Roe (Part 1): Abortion Patients Share Their Stories.
My (first) abortion was in 1988. I am a Gen-Xer. I was 18 or 19, and when I found out, it wasn’t even a question of what I was going to do. It was the only decision I knew that was right for my life. My mom agreed it was the right decision. My boyfriend agreed it was the right decision. So on that front I was really lucky to have such positive support and financial support . . .
. . . I don’t hide that I had an abortion back in the day. I didn’t go around telling people, either. I wasn’t really embarrassed. But back then it’s just what you didn’t do. I have no problem there now. I’m a clinic escort. I talk to my patients who I escort all the time, and try to reassure them I know where they have been.
I did not have the privilege of medication abortion that they do and is so wonderful.
Again, a five-minute procedure has given me a pretty great life. Is it perfect? Nope, but it’s pretty awesome from my aspect.
I do want to say that I am a multi-abortion person. I ended up having two more.
I don’t really tell those stories all of the time. I did feel kind of ashamed, but I think embarrassed is a better word for it at the time.
My first husband was abusive so in the beginning we got pregnant and I had one, to the point where I didn’t pay for any extra anesthesia because I was punishing myself even though I had the privilege and the means to do it.
I had a child with him, had another child, and realized I couldn’t have another. After the birth of my second child I two years later got out of that relationship.
I reacquainted myself with a high school sweetheart and we’ve been together for 20-plus years.
Without my abortions, I would have never gotten myself to this life, never gotten to have the two daughters and stepson that I have, never gotten to move forward.
So I hope my story shows that there’s a positive. I am an empty nester now on the other side of abortion and I just want people to know that if you are struggling right now, if you have the confidence to make the decision but you are second guessing yourself, I think you are going to sit back and realize that your life turned out pretty darn great because you had the privilege of access to abortion . . .
. . . All of our stories have a common thread. We have to talk about them and get them out in the open.
With me having an abortion before I had children, and then having two more abortions after I had children, I knew I was having my first abortion so I could have children later — to give them a life that I thought maybe they deserved and I needed to give them as a mother.
And the same theory goes forward with my abortions after I had children. I knew what kind of life I needed them to have. I knew what kind of horrible life I was secretly in already trying to find a way out of abuse, just not knowing how.
And I knew I could just not move forward — for my two children I already had in this relationship — with two more children.
~Rachel
Listen to the full episode: