Everything happened in those five years after my abortion. I became myself. Not by chance, or because an abortion is some mysterious, empowering feminist bloode-magick rite of passage (as many, many—too many for a movement ostensibly comprising grown-ups—anti-choicers have accused me of believing), but simply because it was time. A whole bunch of changes—set into motion years, even decades, back—all came together at once, like the tumblers in a lock clicking into place: my body, my work, my voice, my confidence, my power, my determination to demand a life as potent, vibrant, public, and complex as any man’s. My abortion wasn’t intrinsically significant, but it was my first big grown-up decision—the first time I asserted, unequivocally, “I know the life that I want and this isn’t it”; the moment I stopped being a passenger in my own body and grabbed the rudder.
So, I peed on the thingy and those little pink lines showed up all, “LOL hope u have $600, u fertile betch,” and I sat down on my bed and I didn’t cry and I said, “Okay, so this is the part of my life when this happens.” I didn’t tell Mike; I’m not sure why. I have the faintest whiff of a memory that I thought he would be mad at me. Like getting pregnant was my fault—as though my clinginess, my desperate need to be loved, my insistence that we were a “real” couple and not two acquaintances who had grown kind of used to each other, had finally congealed into a hopeful, delusional little bundle and sunk its roots into my uterine wall. A physical manifestation of how pathetic I was. How could I have let that happen? It was so embarrassing. I couldn’t tell him. I always felt alone in the relationship anyway; it made sense that I would deal with this alone too.
It didn’t occur to me, at the time, that there was anything complicated about obtaining an abortion. This is a trapping of privilege: I grew up middle-class and white in Seattle, I had always had insurance, and, besides, abortion was legal. So, I did what I always did when I needed a common, legal, routine medical procedure—I made an appointment to see my doctor, the same doctor I’d had since I was twelve. She would get this whole implanted embryo mix-up sorted out.
The nurse called my name, showed me in, weighed me, tutted about it, took my blood pressure, looked surprised (fat people can have normal blood, NANCY), and told me to sit on the paper. I waited. My doctor came in. She’s older than me, with dark, tightly curled hair, motherly without being overly familiar. “I think I’m pregnant,” I said. “Do you want to be pregnant?” she said. “No,” I said. “Well, pee in this cup,” she said. I peed all over my hand again. “You’re pregnant,” she said. I nodded, feeling nothing.
I remember being real proud of my chill ’tude in that moment. I was the Fonz of getting abortions. “So, what’s the game plan, Doc?” I asked, popping the collar of my leather jacket like somebody who probably skateboarded here. “Why don’t you go ahead and slip me that RU-486 prescriptsch and I’ll just [moonwalks toward exam room door while playing the saxophone].”
She stared at me.
“What?” I said, one hundred combs clattering to the floor.
Turns out, THE DOCTOR IS NOT WHERE YOU GET AN ABORTION.
I’d been so sure I could get this taken care of today, handle it today, on my own, and move on with my life—go back to pretending like I had my shit together and my relationship was bearable, even good. Like I was a normal woman that normal men loved. When she told me I had to make an appointment at a different clinic, which probably didn’t have any openings for a couple of weeks, and started writing down phone numbers on a Post-it, I crumpled.
“That’s stupid,” I sobbed, my anxiety getting the better of me. “You’re a doctor. This is a doctor’s office. Do you not know how to do it?”
“I covered it in medical school, yes,” she said, looking concerned in an annoyingly kind way, “but we don’t do them here at this clinic.”
“Well, why did I even come here, then? Why didn’t they tell me on the phone that this appointment was pointless?”
“You want reception to tell everyone who calls in that we don’t do abortions here, no matter what they’re calling about?”
“YES,” I yelled.
She didn’t say anything. I heaved and cried a little bit more, then a little bit less, in the silence.
“Is there anything else I can do for you right now?” she asked, gently.
“No, I’m fine.” I accepted a tissue. “I’m sorry I got upset.”
“It’s okay. This is a stressful situation. I know.” She squeezed my shoulder.
I went home, curled up in bed, and called the clinic (which had some vague, mauve, nighttime soap name like “Avalon” or “Dynasty” or “Falcon Crest”), still wobbling on the edge of hysteria. Not for all the reasons the forced-birth fanatics would like you to think: not because my choice was morally torturous, or because I was ashamed, or because I couldn’t stop thinking about the tiny fingernails of our “baby,” but because life is fucking hard, man. I wanted someone to love me so much. I did want a baby, eventually. But what I really wanted was a family. Mike wasn’t my family. Everything was wrong. I was alone and I was sad and it was just hard.
The woman on the phone told me they could fit me in the following week, and it would be $400 after insurance. It was the beginning of the month, so I had just paid rent. I had about $100 left in my bank account. Payday was in two weeks.
“Can you bill me?” I asked.
“No, we require full payment the day of procedure,” she said, brusque from routine but not unkind.
I felt like a stripped wire. My head buzzed and my eyes welled.
“But… I don’t have that.”
“We can push back the appointment if you need more time to get your funds together,” she offered.
“But,” I said, finally breaking, “’I can’t be pregnant anymore. I need to not be pregnant. I’m not supposed to be pregnant.”
I didn’t want to wait two more weeks. I didn’t want to think about this every day. I didn’t want to feel my body change. I didn’t want to carry and feed this artifact of my inherent unlovability—this physical proof that any permanent connection to me must be an accident. Men made wanted babies with beautiful women. Men made mistakes with fat chicks. I sobbed so hard I think she was terrified. I sobbed so hard she went to get her boss.
The head of the clinic picked up the phone. She talked to me in a calm, competent voice—like an important businesswoman who is also your mom, which is probably fairly accurate. She talked to me until I started breathing again. She didn’t have to. She must have been so busy, and I was wasting her time with my tantrum. Babies having babies.
“We never do this,” she sighed, “because typically, once the procedure is done, people don’t come back. But if you promise me you’ll pay your bill—if you really promise—you can come in next week and we can bill you after the procedure.”
I promised, I promised, I promised so hard. Yes, oh my god, yes. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you! (And I did pay—as soon as my next paycheck came in. They were so surprised, they sent me a thank-you card.)
I like to think the woman who ran the clinic would have done that for anyone—that there’s a quiet web of women like her (like us, I flatter myself), stretching from pole to pole, ready to give other women a hand. She helped me even though she didn’t have to, and I am forever grateful. But I also wonder what made me sound, to her ears, like someone worth trusting, someone it was safe to take a chance on. I certainly wasn’t the neediest person calling her clinic. The fact is, I was getting that abortion no matter what. All I had to do was wait two weeks, or have an awkward conversation I did not want to have with my supportive, liberal, well-to-do mother. Privilege means that it’s easy for white women to do each other favors. Privilege means that those of us who need it the least often get the most help.