The Life Abortion Gave Me
On endings and beginnings
Last night, the moment that reproductive rights activists have been warning us about actually happened: The Supreme Court failed to stop a Texas law banning abortion after six weeks, signaling that the end of Roe may be near. The law, which also allows individuals to sue anyone that “abets” an abortion, is clearly unconstitutional—so the Court’s refusal to block it acts as a glowing ‘welcome’ sign for legislators eager to overturn abortion rights completely.
Like so many others, I’m furious, sad, and very, very scared. I’m doing my best to support feminists on the ground in Texas—the activists who know best what their state needs. (You can find abortion funds to help and people to follow on this thread.)
But I also wanted to take a moment to share what abortion has meant to me, personally.
Most people talk about abortion as if something is ending. Even the language that pro-choicers use—saying that we ‘ended’ a pregnancy or using the word ‘termination’—reflects that mindset. It’s not that those words aren’t accurate, exactly—but they’re also not complete. Because for me, and for so many others, abortion was the start of something.
When I had an abortion at 28 years-old, I was in the middle of writing my first book and a few months away from meeting the man I would marry. The life and family I have now simply would not exist without that abortion. I would not have started a relationship with Andrew, and I would not have had my incredibly loved daughter, Layla. A world without them both would be a much dimmer life, and it’s one I prefer not to imagine.
That abortion didn’t just allow me to create my family, it has had ripple effects. All abortions do.
Because of my abortion, I wrote books and gave speeches; I did work that helped other women. After being pregnant with Layla and getting ill with HELLP syndrome, I wrote about the hardships of being a mom to a preemie—something I know made a difference in the lives of parents going through the same thing.
Without my abortion, none of that—all that was difficult and all that I’m proud of and grateful for—would have happened.
Without abortion, I wouldn’t have the friends I have now, or the career, or even my very life. Because when I got pregnant again after Layla was born, the chances of my getting sick—and dying, this time—were significant. And so I had a second abortion, one that broke my heart but ensured my daughter grew up with a mother.
Those who rail against abortion like to divide women into two groups: those who have abortions and those who have children. Most often, though, we’re both.
Anti-choicers like to pose hypotheticals about the remarkable baby a woman could have if she just didn’t get an abortion: What if they cured cancer? None ask if that woman herself might change the world. They never consider that we could be the remarkable ones, if only given the chance.
The lives and experiences abortions create, though, don’t have to be extraordinary to matter. I think less about the books I’ve written because of my abortion, and more about how without it, Layla’s best friend never would have met her. Or how the dogs lucky enough to be walked on my block wouldn’t have a lanky blonde girl running up to give them pets and compliments. I think about my husband, and how he would have moved back to California had we never met, and how sad that would be for New York.
The truth is that all abortions create something. Paths forward, lives lived, connections made. Some are hard, some are beautiful—but all are chosen. And that’s what we can’t afford to lose.
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I took the so-called “morning after” pill after a broken condom incident just before packing up and moving across the Atlantic to begin a new life, which would have been disastrously impacted by an unwanted pregnancy. I didn’t know if I was pregnant but I was so grateful to my gynecologist for handing me the prescription every year at my checkup, “just in case.” It was a Saturday in France when I filled that Rx: there was no way to get a prescription if I didn’t have one that weekend, and I never felt prouder of my gynecologist for saying, “it almost never happens at the right moment, so just hold onto this till next year.” She left the date infilled for me. I wasn’t even sexually active at the time. Just in case, indeed.
It felt like one of the most responsible decisions I’d ever made in my life, not the opposite, which is what the anti-choicers would have people believe. I still thank my lucky stars thirty years later, whenever I think about it.
Finally have a moment to drop a comment in here to express my gratitude to you, Jessica, for writing this. When will women be valued enough for society to recognize our potential to live fully and freely post-abortion and create a ripple effect of beauty and life that would not have been possible were it not for our right to choose that abortion? It's infuriating, yes, but fucking heartbreaking and I'm just tired. I haven't even been at this that long. I'm 42 and I started really engaging in activism after Sandy Hook in the gun violence prevention arena. I, like so many, took Roe for granted. Assuming it was settled law and ignorant of Hyde and the struggle for low income women, women of color, women in red states to access the same rights I enjoyed in the various blue places I've always lived. I called myself a "single issue voter" in line with many affiliated with Moms Demand Action and was adamant that I would vote for any candidate - regardless of party and stance on other issues - if they held common sense views on gun laws and gun violence prevention. But, now I'm a single issue voter on reproductive rights and justice. How could I not be after watching Trump obnoxiously cower over Hillary on the debate stage, reading about the Federalist Society's long and, quite frankly, brilliant plan to saturate the courts and to put conservatives on the SC bench to overturn Roe, and then to experience the Kavanaugh debacle and the Coney Barrett coup, and the spate of laws intended to chip away at Roe and render it, essentially, overturned, and now this in Texas, that does just that, but does so even more cruelly than one could even fathom by empowering civilians to snitch, coming to be under cover of the shadow docket, crickets from a court at 11:59 pm just because they could, only to issue an unsigned majority opinion a day after???? Gaslighting, triggering, taunting, torturing women across the country with their purposeful cruelty. Shocking, but not surprising. We knew it was coming, but I don't think we imagined it would be this bad. As soon as the news broke, there were two people whose reaction I awaited most - Jessica Valenti and Rebecca Traister. Traister was a guest Dalia Lithwick's emergency podcast episode to unpack the Texas law (along w/ prof Michelle Goodwin, a must hear ep) and you, of course, wrote this and so eloquently put into words what so many of us know and feel and what gets such inadequate attention in this whole conversation. The untapped potential, the resulting life and freedom and choices and experiences and love and careers and on and on that come about when we make a choice that enables and empower us to seek all that. We are so worth that. Thank you.