You're the Only One I've Told: The Stories Behind Abortion

by Meera Shah

I have never been pregnant. I do not know what it feels like to be pregnant. But I will say this: I have cared for thousands of people who wanted to be pregnant as well as those who didn’t. And I have seen firsthand how having the ability to make a decision about their own body can have a profound impact on a person’s life. My patients have taught me more than I could have ever imagined about the right to freedom.

Some find it hard to believe, but one in four women in America has an abortion in her lifetime (the study presented the data with reference to “women”).9 That means someone you know or someone you love has had one—even if they don’t talk about it. Most people don’t believe me when I tell them this statistic, but I emphasize that if people talked about abortion more, they would definitely believe it. Abortion is very common. Not understanding how common it is has contributed to the belief that it is shameful and rare.

Many people also do not realize that abortion is incredibly safe, whether you have an abortion procedure in a doctor’s office or a health center or you have an abortion with medication at home. Abortion has a safety rating of 99 percent, as supported by a study released in 2018 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. In fact, an abortion is safer than carrying a pregnancy to term.

more than six in ten of the women who have an abortion have had one or more children. My waiting rooms are filled with children.

Abortion will always be accessible for affluent people, white people—even conservative ones—and those publicly fighting against abortion access.

Politicians have taken access away from people of color, low-income people, people who cannot afford to lose work, and those who face consequences including parental retaliation and abuse. They have manipulated the complex emotions people have about life and personhood while fearing bodily autonomy to make abortion a polarizing tool to gain and hold onto political power.

The level at which these politicians are trying to fulfill their own agenda at the cost of people’s lives is truly troubling.

What upsets me even more is that many of my patients trust that the government has their best interest at heart.

A program that has historically received bipartisan support, Title X has prevented unintended pregnancies and saved millions of dollars in unnecessary health care expenses. Now, the government wants to prevent any organization that provides or counsels about abortion care from receiving Title X funding. The irony in this move is not lost.

But what if people choose not to use modern methods of contraception (for example, an IUD versus withdrawal), do we say that they are more likely to live in poverty? Or that if they do choose to use a method of contraception, will we be able to cure poverty? Absolutely not. This way of thinking is actually dangerous. Abortion and contraception won’t cure poverty. We have to address the critical issues of raising minimum wage, ensuring childcare, guaranteeing family leave, and addressing racism and implicit bias that continue to thwart economic opportunities.

Abortion is inevitably linked to race, class, and poverty. For patients who must pay out of pocket for their abortion, cost can be a significant barrier. A first-trimester abortion procedure costs on average $508, with the cost increasing as gestational age increases. A medication abortion costs on average $535.18 This may not seem like a lot for such life-affirming care, but when you’re low income, living in a state without Medicaid coverage for abortion, a person of color, and have little emergency savings, $500 is a huge deal.

Three quarters of those receiving abortion care live in poverty.

In fact, seven out of ten Americans support abortion access in all or most cases.

And we must listen to those most affected by the issue: low-income

people, racial and ethnic minorities, the under-and uninsured, people living in rural areas, young people, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people, to list a few of the groups of people most affected by restrictions on access to abortion care.

A political science professor at Boise State University discovered that the stronger the parent’s political belief, the more likely the child is going to inherit that belief.

prevention programs and continually promotes abstinence-only education, policies that have long been proven ineffective by years of research.

A 2016 report by the New York City Department of Health found that Black college-educated women are more likely to suffer from severe complications during pregnancy and childbirth than uneducated white women.

Over three-quarters of people who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome end the pregnancy.

2013 study found that a significant number of low-income women delayed paying rent, utility bills, and even purchasing food in order to pay for their abortion care.

Furthermore, they found that among the people who were denied abortions, 90 percent chose to raise the child rather than chose adoption.5 The same researchers at UCSF compared children born after their mothers were denied abortions to the next children born to women who received abortions. They found that children born to a parent who was denied an abortion were more likely to live in households in which there wasn’t enough money to pay for basic living expenses. Women, as discussed in the study, are also more likely to experience poor bonding with the child—feeling trapped as a mother, resenting their child, or longing for the time before they had the baby. 6

Being forced to read a script of misinformation written by law-makers is unethical.

There is no other medical procedure that requires a doctor to read a propaganda-based script that has been written by politicians. It challenges the trust that doctors must establish with their patients.

There is also evidence to show that people are more certain about their abortion than they are about any other medical procedure they may undergo.

It makes sense that the person carrying the pregnancy should have the ability to decide and access services to either carry the pregnancy to term or to end the pregnancy.

Deciding on a method, dealing with side effects, stressing about a missed dose, taking emergency contraception, picking up refills on time—these are burdens society has placed on those who can carry a pregnancy. And if this idea is reinforced in the exam room, how will men ever feel like they play a role in or share responsibility for unintended pregnancy?

She started attending HOPE meetings, which is a grief and bereavement support group.

exist, and they still do, in large numbers. In fact, there are about four thousand fake health centers compared to the 780 real providers of abortion care.5

That means that for every one health center that provides abortion care, there are five fake clinics.

reports that fake health center staff workers who “look medical” and “draw women in with misleading references to abortion care and then feed them anti-choice propaganda.”7

From my experience, I find that for those who do not want to parent, adoption is rarely chosen. And when I see a patient who has chosen adoption, it’s sometimes because they find out that they are pregnant much later in the pregnancy, like in the third trimester.