What The Hell America!

In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the longstanding precedents of Roe v. Wade, representing the largest blow to women’s constitutional rights in history. A series from Ms., Our Abortion Stories chronicles readers’ experiences of abortion pre- and post-Roe. Abortions are sought by a wide range of people for many different reasons. There is no single story. Telling stories of then and now shows how critical abortion has been and continues to be for women and girls.

The fall of Roe will continue to strain abortion access nationwide. We cannot, we must not lose the right to safe and accessible abortion or access to birth control.

Share your abortion story by emailing myabortionstory@msmagazine.com. 

Editor’s note: These stories have been excerpted and lightly edited for clarity. They contain descriptions of pregnancy loss. 

I finally knew why I couldn’t please her. I was that pregnancy. I was simply the wrong child at the wrong time, so nothing I did could ever be quite right.

Virginia Tyler, artist, writer and professor at a historically Black university

I kneel in our front garden with my mother. She points to a bunch of yellow snapdragons. “See,” she says, “Your finger is so little it can fit into its mouth.”

She squeezes one open. I reach toward it with my hand and poke one of my fingers deep into the flower. I feel a moment of wonder and happiness. Beside her, kneeling together in dreary, drippy Cleveland, Ohio.

“I can’t do that,” she says. I pull my finger out. I did something that she couldn’t do. Had I been bad? How young was I to be able to fit my finger into a snapdragon? Two? Three? Before any of my siblings were born? I still hold that memory of her in my 2-year-old’s mind. This rare sunny moment is my earliest memory of my mother. It must have been 1960 or ’61.

I was 30 the last time Mom told me I could do something she couldn’t do. It was 1990, the year before she died. She and my sisters Laurie and Cindy and I were sitting at the kitchen table late on a September afternoon. Both sisters were newly married, and Mom declared how “lucky” we young women were. “You can each get an abortion whenever you want,” she said. “In the early years of my marriage, I couldn’t. I would have aborted my first pregnancy if I could have.”

I had heard her say this once before, when I was a 14-year-old in high school. I hadn’t felt angry the way my friend Julie had when her mother told her the same thing. I felt relieved. I finally knew why I couldn’t please her. I was that pregnancy. I was simply the wrong child at the wrong time, so nothing I did could ever be quite right.

Mom’s life had been going according to her plan before she got pregnant. She was working full time in 1958, supporting herself and her husband while he was in school training to be an obstetrician-gynecologist. She was a key-punch operator, an occupation later called a “human computer,” using her sharp mind and math skills to make good money. She kept the household running entirely on her own, not borrowing a cent from her parents or her husband’s parents.

Once she got pregnant, all that fell apart. Abruptly unemployed, helpless and dependent, she had to resort to borrowing from his parents. The apartment was too small for a couple with a baby. They needed a crib, a bassinet, diapers—so many baby things, she couldn’t list them all. She was on the verge of panic, overwhelmed.

Her husband, our father, noticed none of her concerns. He and his parents had already decided it was time to start a family. His mother and father would spend all the money necessary to bring their only son’s child into the world, their first grandchild. Their daughter-in-law’s employment had never made sense to them; she was meant to be a wife and mother, and now was the time to start.

A daughter of the working class, her self-sufficiency was precious to her. Many years later, she would have a second career, but the loss of her first would leave a mark. She equated losing her job with failure, just as her father had during the Great Depression. As a teenager, she watched him lose his small business and scramble for a job as a janitor just to have work. She loved her dad, understood him—and knew exactly what he felt a job meant.

Mom scolded herself for stumbling into this pregnancy. Her own frugal habits had led her to use too little spermicide on her diaphragm, and why had she settled for that as the only birth control she and her husband used—why hadn’t she pushed him to use a condom as well? (Would he have even considered it?) Or spent a few dollars on an extra tube of nasty goo to kill his sperm? She could have handled things better: She was a grown woman, 25, after all. She had been “the smart girl” when the two of them were in college. Now she was out of control, facing years of mind-numbing motherhood, just like her mother, who had been forced to stop school at sixth grade. Her college scholarship, high grades and long hours of study had made no difference at all.

If she could have put off the baby for two more years, she could have saved up a nest egg and created her family the way she wanted. Instead, she was trapped with a baby too soon. She fell into a deep depression, and her husband and family could not understand why. As a new mother, she was fulfilling her promise as a woman. She should be happy. Knowing this story of her marriage, her words to my sisters and me on that day in my 13th year made sense.

Her marriage, her unwanted pregnancy—that’s how the gulf between my mother and me began. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t mine. We found a way to love each other—as awkwardly as possible, but she and I never confided in each other the way she and my sisters could. Then one day, near the end of her life, I got my chance for a measure of closeness. Mom was in a hospital bed because her breast cancer had metastasized to her bones and made them weak. On this day, as soon as the nurses left and it was just Mom and me in the room, her urge for independence kicked in.

“This is ridiculous,” she said. “Ginny, help me sit up.” I had a 30-year-old’s strength—the family Amazon, a sculptor with more muscle than my sisters or brother, so it should have been easy for me to lift this petite woman, all 5 feet 1 inch, 120 pounds of her. But now, with the pounds of plaster the nurses had used to make a body cast for her ribs, she was like a sack of cement.

I wrapped my arms around her, tried to lift—and could not move her at all. At this unaccustomed close range, Mom and I stared at each other stunned by the reality that I could not pick her up, but also by something else. It took us a moment to realize that in my failure to lift her, I was embracing her. It surprised us both. Why had we never done this before?

A few years after my birth, Mom had told Dad that she wished they could have planned their family. He listened to her, and he agreed. It was the ’60s, an era with new contraceptives—the pill, the IUD and other innovations. Dad decided to steer his career into maternal health and became the first director of family planning evaluation for the Center for Disease Control. Mom raised their kids and afterwards became the financial director of Planned Parenthood of Atlanta.

Both my Mom and Dad are gone now. Both chose to be pioneers in family planning in response to their years without it. I am grateful to them for making that choice.

Readers might assume I would be pro-life because of this personal history. In fact, I vote pro-choice.

Baby, our baby who was so wanted, was measuring 13 days behind. … Eleven days of torture, while I waited to find out what was inside my body.

Rachel Heaton

10/21/2024

Recently, I was pregnant.

Until I was not.

Or was I?

They couldn’t tell me.

Baby, our baby who was so wanted, was measuring 13 days behind. This was concerning to my OB, and there wasn’t a heartbeat detected. But maybe it was early, they say.

It wasn’t, I was sure. My husband and I had been trying to get pregnant for eight months. I was meticulously tracking ovulation through an at-home lab. I know the date of conception, the date of ovulation, and the date of the first positive test. 

I was told to come back in a week. The soonest they could get me in was 11 days later.

Eleven days of torture, while I waited to find out what was inside my body. Knowing at any moment I could miscarry. 

Just walking down the street, which happened to a loved one. 

Just eating dinner, which happened to a best friend. 

At the doctor’s office. 

On a plane. 

Watching a movie. 

In their sleep. 

On and on, I thought of all the scenarios in which the women in my life have lost their future babies. And their hope.

And I waited.

Meanwhile, I got sick. Same as my last pregnancy, I had hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), moderate to severe. Despite three prescriptions, I could not consume enough food or fluids. I immediately started losing weight, missing work, not taking care of my toddler, myself or my house. I was bed bound 20 hours a day. So I just laid there.

Waiting. Eleven days passed. When we got into the room my NP MFM, a woman I deeply trust, brought in an MD. My heart fell. They started with an abdominal ultrasound. But it was too small. So we moved to a transvaginal. I knew immediately the baby was too small. Sometimes, it really sucks to be medically literate. They took some measurements.

I saw a heartbeat. It grew!

“Not enough,” they said. “The likelihood this pregnancy ends in a miscarriage is great.”

Baby is still 11 days behind.

“We should do another ultrasound in a week.“

But I am so sick, how is that possible? It’s not fair!

“If you do not want to wait for the ultrasound, we can terminate now. Nobody would blame you.”

We talk about me being very sick, malnourished, chronically dehydrated.

The MD leaves and my husband and I spend the next hour talking to my OB—about how to manage the HG. I am prescribed two more medications to manage the nausea. About next steps. What do I do if I miscarry between now and next week? When do I need to go to the hospital? If we terminate, if I need to escape the HG, what is the best option? What are the pills like? What is a D&C like? What is pain management like?

And I am sent home.

To wait.

To think about what to do.

Seven more days. To find out what is happening inside my body. What is poisoning my body. Starving my body. Starving my life of joy and laughter.

Recently, I was pregnant.

Am I still?

Knowing. Knowing in my bones.

My baby will not be.

Not this one. Not this blueprint of one egg and one sperm.

So I wait.

And I don’t know anything. Not about my body.

What I do know?

However I choose to proceed.

It’s my choice.

*

Date: 10/28/2024

I’ve waited seven days.

I’ve tried to process. Tried, but I’m too tired, too confused, and on too many nausea meds to think clearly. There have been no signs of loss. No cramps and no bleeding. No let up in my nausea. I am in a stand still, being held hostage by my own body. Being bed bound and having nothing to do but think. 

The hardest part of this week was other people’s hope. I knew my body, I had a mother’s intuition. I knew the day I got a positive test that something was wrong with this pregnancy. But other people had hope for me? I wanted grief, I didn’t want hope. Every day I got a little more hope. 

My last few hours of hope. Will this pregnancy end in fear and heartbreak? Will my next pregnancy begin in fear, and end in heartbreak? Or in a rainbow baby?

If there is growth, how do I choose to proceed?

If there is no growth, but a heartbeat, how do I choose to proceed?

If there is loss how do I choose to proceed?

I keep part of my breath, holding it. Waiting.

Just a few more hours of hope.

Then, I choose.

I choose, like the friend who wanted to finish college.

Like the friend who had a toxic boyfriend.

Like the friend who chose to not be sick.

Like the friend who only wanted one child.

I choose, like the friend who was advised of fetal abnormalities.

Like the friend who was living in a foreign country.

Like the friend raped at a party.

Like the teenager that chose to be my mother.

I choose.

I have the privilege to live in a state where I am safe. A state where I have the freedom to choose how I move forward. A state where my physician had the freedom to offer a D&C. 

If I chose.

I am angry.

Are you?