I Had an Abortion in 1983. I was 20 years old. I was a junior in college. I had the right to choose and determine my future. I had human rights.

It is May 2, 2022 and I will remember exactly where I was when it was leaked that abortion rights will most likely be overturned. Five people will decide the bodily rights of women in America. Reproductive Rights in America will be decided by the government. Women know what is best for their body. Women know what is best for their families.

November, 2021

This cannot be procrastinated any longer. I turn to the screen.I see my reflection looking back at me before the computer comes to life.

It’s time. I am doing it. My fingers are flying. I’m going to take all the introductions and conclusions out of my mind and put them to paper. A month ago I wrote: 

# I Had an Abortion 

on a poster for the October 2nd Reproductive Rights March. It was the first time the words ever flowed from finger through the ink of a pen. I carried those words, on the sign, next to:

# I Had a Miscarriage

# Infertility

I felt empowered. I felt liberated. But still I wasn’t ready to write the story a few weeks ago. I had said the words before. I told a select few. That was practice for today. I twirled the words around to a college friend last week. I corrected her memories. 

It is time. The accountability moment is now. The words are bubbling and ready to burst out. I suppose it has taken this long to cut open the story I told myself at the time. And perform the autopsy to find the truth. There are as many versions to this story as there are decades since that night. 

When I got dressed that night I had no plans to do anything but walk down the street and grab a beer at the bar at the end of street.  As I walked out the door of my sorority house, I was not looking to go to a fraternity house later that night.  When I walked out into that February night, I was not planning to have sex and end up pregnant with a guy I vaguely knew for a couple years.  Saw in a class maybe once a semester.  He was a friend of a friend of a friend of mine.  

There are so many things that are simply missing from this story almost forty years later. Did he walk up to me or did I walk up to him at the bar? Did he buy me a beer and assume there would be payback? Did I buy him a beer because I still felt bad about turning him down for a date freshman year? (I doubt it) Who’s idea was it to leave? What was the invite? What were his expectations? (I doubt I had any – I am betting I was just happy with the attention).

I do remember I had just lost some weight and was feeling good after New Years resolutions. The funny little details we remember and the bigger details we drop off. I know I didn’t agree to “get out of here, go back to his room, and have sex”. 

A vivid memory is a friend of both of ours standing on the sidewalk, swinging a baseball bat, and saying to me “Don’t go up there with Him”.  

How I would replay that moment in my mind over and over again in those moments of our lives that we wonder what if I had made a different decision.  

• Stayed at the bar.
• Listened to the warning.
• Not gone out at all that night.  
• Oh the multiple What Ifs.
• Why did the friend warn me? 
• Had He declared his intentions to his peers?  

I was open to getting to know him better, maybe kissing and making out. Connection. Maybe the start of something. Not having sex. I did not have birth control. I was not sexually active.  I wasn’t a virgin. That was the year before. That is another story. Another tale without a happy ending.  

• Was I drunk?
• Did I consent?
• Did I agree when I knew the direction it was going?
• Did I struggle to find my voice?
• I thought I used it.
• I know he was much bigger and heavier than I thought he would be.
• I was stuck. 
• I know I didn’t scream. 
• I didn’t make a fuss. 
• That would have drawn other unwelcome attention and drama.

It would have been said that…I went into that room…even if my eyes were not wide open. 

It wasn’t what I had planned for the night. I assumed he must have had a condom. Wasn’t that his responsibility? At this time and place, no one discussed contraception in my orbit. Good girls didn’t use birth control, because good girls didn’t have sex. I have taught my sister, and then my daughter differently from my learned experiences.   

• It was not romantic.
• It all moved way too fast. 
• It was not lengthy.
• (Is there a used condom?)  
• It all happened so fast…. and it would completely change my life.  
• It would impact my self image.
• Only now can I come to terms with it being part of the thread that wove me. 
• What had I gotten myself into?
• Did I have to date him now?
• He liked me once before, did he still like me? 

In reflection….As I stuffed my shame and embarrassment and inexperience and guilt into a narrative

In those after moments…

• Did I wonder where it would go – others slept with guys on the first date. 
• Would I have to try being with him for a bit to justify all of this?
• But this wasn’t a date.  
• It was hook up at a bar.  
• Was I that kind of girl?
• Was I trying it on to see if that persona fit?
• Was it a dare?
• All these years later I still am not sure how we decided to leave that bar together.

The odd things I remember…A phone rang in his room soon after. I could hear the caller and He was asked who He was with. He lied. At the moment, I thought he was protecting my virtue. Protecting my reputation. Or so I thought in my confusion. I do remember just wanting to get out of there after that call. Did he sneak me out? I don’t remember walking a couple doors down the street.  

I don’t remember anything much until …The next night walking into the lobby of my sorority house and seeing him standing there. I ridiculously, and incorrectly, thought he came to see me. My cheeks are red with shame when I discover he is picking up my sorority sister for a…

A Date!?!?

She is an underclassman and friend who has been set up on a blind date with Him. I’m pretty sure I muttered under my breath that he was an asshole. Maybe I was too embarrassed and mortified to say it out loud. I don’t remember. It certainly puts the lie on the phone into question.  

That was Valentine’s Day 1983. In early March I havent started my period. My breasts are starting to ache. I have never been late. This is long before one can purchase a Home Pregnancy Test. 

On St. Patricks’ Day, I am at party and see a friend, and whisper to her:“I think I am pregnant”. She looks me square in the eye and tells me “We will take care of this”. I believed her.  I had temporary relief.  

• Did I tell her because I knew she had had an abortion.  
• Did I tell her because I knew she would get me through this?
• Did I tell her because I knew she would not judge me?  
• Did I care if I was judged?

I will spend years judging myself and finding ways to justify and unravel the events of that winter night and days that would follow. She called in the expertise of another friend of ours. She took me to Planned Parenthood to confirm.

• I don’t remember who drove. 
• I don’t remember how we got there. 
• I don’t remember walking in.
• I obviously took a urine test.  But I don’t recall any self-talk. 
• I doubt I said a wish.  
• I knew.  
• I remember the nurse walking into a room – but I don’t remember the room. 
• Did she invite me back?
• Was I already sitting in an office?
• Was my friend with me?

I vaguely recall her saying, “You are pregnant, do you know what you want to do?” Was there a movie moment when the music stops and the camera zooms in on my face? There was zero hesitation. I was going to have an abortion.

#I Had an Abortion before Easter that year.  

Funny how I remember all the holidays those two months, but so many other details are muddled. 

• I was a passenger.  
• My friend took me to a government building to get paperwork for a free abortion.
• I was a student. I had no income. 
• They asked me if I knew the father, I said yes, and had no hesitation saying his name out loud.  

I didn’t tell him at the time that I was pregnant. That the one night stand, the one half hour stand, led to this series of unfortunate events.  

Years later, I ran into him at a bar and asked Him, “Remember that night in college” and he got a sly grin on his face and then I whispered, “I got pregnant that night and had an abortion”.  There was a bit of satisfaction as he dropped the beer from meeting his mouth as that smile was wiped from his face.”  I turned and walked away and never looked back.  

She picked a clinic near her home an hour away.  I would recover overnight away from my college room. I took a night off from a rehearsal.  We were to perform that Saturday night. I had an abortion on a Tuesday.  That day fit the very tight schedule. I took books for a Finance test. I would fail my first class at the end of that semester.  

I remember the whiteness of the room. It was not a private room.  It had a curtain around it.  I remember counting backward. I remember waking up and immediately feeling the cramping.  Both of my friends drove me away. I don’t remember getting in the car.  

I woke from my nap. There was a pack of birth control pills in a bag next to me.  A parting gift from the clinic I guess. Or maybe that was a month later at a follow up visit. They took me out for drinks that night at a restaurant on the water. I remember being pensive and serene. Interesting that I pick those descriptors.  

Isn’t it odd that I remember that strange and dreamlike moment of calm. It was probably the anesthesia. It’s one of the clearest memories of that entire experience. I twirled a stir stick and I was calm and I was quiet and I simply sat there as everyone else around me chatted and asked for a refill. I was changed.   

I told myself that he had forced himself on me. (Good defense for the guilt ridden Catholic girl who isn’t supposed to have sex before marriage). He was on top and pinned me down and I couldn’t avoid it. If I had yelled, I would have been the girl that agreed to go upstairs.

Hadn’t I sent the message that I was open to anything and everything. (I would be that slutty sorority girl who was easy) I broke the rule, I went to a fraternity alone, so what did I expect? Or maybe…that was message enough. His green light. I told my future husband I had been date raped. I think I believed it at the time.  (And who would marry a Catholic girl who had an abortion?) I was violated.I was taken advantage of. 

At the very least, I was worthy of being told he was dating a sorority sister soon after. But what if he hadn’t gone on that date. What if we had connected and discussed the event? Given it clarity – defined it – made us both accountable to our part in it?

This is long before society would introduce the concept of Consent. 

• I would teach my boys that No means No! 
• I would teach my daughter that she can change her mind at any time!
• No one can consent when they are drunk.  

It was too easy to erase my humiliation and embarrassment by erasing Him from my mind. To simply handle it myself and then self-destruct over the years to come. I would blame myself for it when I had recurrent miscarriages. I would finally tell my mother in the parking lot getting the news that the IVF failed. I would declare myself being punished.  

To end the shame I will join others who are telling their stories. To lessen the stigma. It is easier to come out of the secret shadow. I am shining a light. I am writing the truth. 

• I got drunk.
• I walked on my own two feet to a fraternity house.
• I had no contraception and had unprotected sex.
• I got pregnant.

I’m stronger now.

I have developed more courage.

I have learned to set better boundaries.  

• I should have made him accountable. 
• I should have made it his problem too.
• But then I couldn’t create a tangled messy secret. 
• Everyone would have known.
• The stigma would have been worse. 

My tight circle – the other abortion warrior women – held me up.

They got me through it.  

But a hidden wound…would fester and poison my self esteem.

• I’ve learned that secrets do more damage.
• Hiding is dark and lonely and destructive.

• Did those no longer friends make it too easy for me?
• Would I have gone to my parents?
• Would I been given better post abortion care and counseling?
• I stayed in the darkness too long…
• Would I have found the light sooner? because…

I had an abortion.