Pro Life V Pro Choice

In case you underestimated just how much thought I've given the pro-life/pro-choice argument, you ought to know when I got pregnant at 19 I dipped pro-choice real quick. Based on a loose observation of my friends, it seems 3 out of 5 of us have. For some of us it happened with our boyfriends, for some of us it was a result of rape but none of us is "that girl" everyone thinks is the one that has abortions. We are all middle class girls with solid backgrounds and good reputations who were not provided the right tools to prevent this happening.
If you were a friend, or have ever asked, this is something you're likely to know about me, because one of the bones upon which my life is framed is the idea that if I can do it then I ought to be able to talk about it.

When I decided to have an abortion I was numb to the repercussions, and I mistook that for a certainty that some women suffer, but I HAD to do it so I would be ok. Before I would ever talk to a woman considering an abortion about the agony of giving up your child, I would tell her "Listen to me now, if you're allowing the idea that you wont react like other women to influence your decision, don't. This thing hurts like a motherfucker, for some of us it's before, others right when we walk out of that office, and others don't get that broadside till 50 years after the fact. Know this shit hurts like a motherfucker and it will turn your life upside down and drain you off all the substance you are made of and it won't be ok. Not for a long time.

The years after my abortion were a dark period when my dreams were overrun with blood. I floated just under the surface of life unable to look myself in the eye or think about what I'd done without recoiling in shame. My days ran together as litanies of "I'm sorry", and I was frozen by my inability to undo this terrible thing I'd done. I wouldnt allow myself to grieve - I didn't deserve it, and there were too many times I had to be rescued from that battle, pressed into exhausted tears in dirty bathroom stalls all over the city.

It was a dark time when the agony of my choice was pressing the life from me, and if I could have died from the refusal to live, I would have.

One morning as I sat on my third floor balcony looking at another day moving purposefully by me, I recognized I was a cop out. I was sitting on my balcony weeping about what a terrible person as was, refusing to move forward while people everywhere were pulling themselves away from unspeakable tragedies. I was a pussy looking for any excuse to stop living and my child deserved a better fate than a stolen life carrying the blame for my failure to live. I could end my life, or choose to live it in honour of the choice I'd made. I realised that life was about making mistakes, and the important lessons were to be found in how you moved on from them. I had not failed at life because I had an abortion, I had failed at life because I allowed that to make me stop living, and that epiphany shamed me into accepting responsibility for my life.

If I were faced with a woman who's had an abortion I would tell her "It gets better". You never forget, and perhaps you shouldn't. I cannot forget, I will not. I carry my child every day with me in my secret places, and I live to honour the life that had to be sacrificed in order for me to find my way through mine. And fuck it... every choice, every lesson was bought at a high price so it has to be worth it.