This is an excerpt from the original story published in the book Focus On Abortion.
My mother came to the United States to get away from the civil war in El Salvador and my father emigrated from Peru. I'm a US citizen, but I'm so much more. I'm connected to both the promise of what the United States is and also the feelings of what it is not.
I was the first person in my family to graduate from high school and college. I got a scholarship to Amherst College in Massachusetts. Arriving at Amherst was really tough, very alienating. But I found my home there in the Black Studies Department.
My first abortion happened when I was in college. First of all, I want to say I've had multiple abortions. I think that that's important to state right off the bat because there is this stigma about multiple abortions. But it's a reality. They happen for a variety of reasons.
In college, I had a partner I really loved and saw a future with. Yet, the minute I found out I was pregnant, I knew I was not ready to be a parent. I had things I wanted to do. Even though the decision was immediate, I could not bring myself to have a conversation about it with anybody. Even though I knew that my partner would be very supportive, I did not tell him about it until after the abortion.
I found a Planned Parenthood clinic in western Massachusetts. I was working and going to school, and the cost of the abortion--$600 or $700—was way more than I had. When I called to schedule an appointment, to my surprise I learned about an abortion fund that would contribute half the cost.
On the day of the appointment, I got up early, took a two-hour bus ride, and went there all by myself. I did tell my partner to pick me up from the appointment, and it was one of those things where he didn't ask, he just picked me up. Then I went back to school, I think the next day.
I felt like I had made the right choice by me and by my partner. It felt like an affirming thing that he and I didn't have to have the abortion conversation, even though we had talked about wanting to have children and about a future. It was affirming too, that I could choose to not have a child now, but that didn't mean that I didn't want a family in the future.
I didn't feel any stigma. I think that that probably goes back to when I was a kid having heard of people having abortions. My mother talked to me about abortions, never in a way that had any kind of like value judgment, which is interesting because my mom is a Jehovah's Witness. As a kid, I went with her, knocking on doors and spreading the good word on street corners talking about the good word. Jehovah's Witnesses are super conservative. They don't believe in abortion, birth control or sex before marriage.
After graduating in 2012, I accepted an executive assistant position in with the ACLU of San Diego. I started dating somebody new. I felt the relationship would be the one to go the distance, but really it was not a great relationship. In fact, we had pretty much broken up by the time I got pregnant.
Finding out that I was pregnant was devastating. I felt ready to have a family, but I knew this was the worst possible environment that I could bring a child into. My partner said that he would resent me if I had a child. The relationship would be a breeding ground for terribleness. I thought about not telling him I was pregnant, but I also felt like this was something that we had done together and I wanted us to figure it out together.
Making the decision to have an abortion is a complex and quiet calculus. Even when it feels uncomplicated, there are nuances.
As a woman of color, I grew up like with so much stigma around not being an unwed teenage mother. I knew it was wrong and should be avoided at all costs. Now that I'm older I wonder why I got so fixated on there being only one way –married—to have kids. Now I realize that what's important is the community you're in. So much of parenting happens within a community. The women that I've been surrounded with are so amazing and so strong and a lot of them have raised children by themselves.
~ Anna
©Roslyn Banish 2022 in Focus on Abortion. All rights reserved.