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

by Meera Shah

“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” —AUDRE LORDE

In the South, sometimes it seems like everyone is reflexively apologetic.

As a doctor who provides abortion care and who specializes in sexual and reproductive health, I would often pause when asked what I do, especially when I traveled outside of my New York City home. I’m acutely aware of how abortion is perceived in different parts of the country.

I see abortions every day through my own lens, but what is it truly like for my patients? I wanted to know what it had been like for her.

I’ve always believed that the simple act of sharing stories is one of the most effective ways to influence, teach, and inspire change. Storytelling creates emotional connections between people. By sharing the nuances of culture, history, and values, people and ideas are united through their stories. Even if an individual can’t identify with another’s exact experience, there is usually some component of the story, even as small as the fleeting, universal emotions of fear or happiness, that can be shared and appreciated.

The movement toward abortion access is founded on stories: stories about people shaping their futures who want to pursue educations and careers, who are able to determine when they are ready and able to be a parent and how many children they can care for. These stories can be compelling—they can help reduce stigma and normalize abortion experiences. However, sometimes the stories with the greatest potential to have an impact on people’s thinking are hidden or kept secret.

Should someone be called brave for doing what they felt was best for them? I don’t think so. But we can say that someone is brave to choose themselves when often societal and familial actors actively try to take away their reproductive autonomy. When someone chooses the health care they need despite the backlash they may face, yes, that’s brave. People should be treated with the same dignity and respect regardless of what decisions they make for themselves about pregnancy and parenting.

If someone is capable of getting pregnant, they are capable of an unintended pregnancy, which may or may not lead to abortion. Pregnancy intention doesn’t always exist in a binary. People don’t always think about a pregnancy as unintended or intended. It may be planned, unintended, or somewhere along a continuum of ambivalence.

There is no such thing as a good abortion or bad abortion or someone who is worthy of an abortion or someone who is not. These stories show that people who have abortions are human beings with varied life experiences, just like everyone else. The decision to have an abortion doesn’t always stem from trauma or turmoil either; sometimes it’s easy and simple. One is not unique because they had an abortion. An abortion does not define someone; it is one event in a person’s life.

But once we shared our truths, it was as if an invisible wall had come down and we were able to connect. I’d judged her based on my own biases and fear, and I had been wrong. As soon as I felt brave enough to identify myself openly, a bridge was built and she walked over to me and shared her secret with me.

He taught me that religion is at the core of so many people’s sense of self and that one way to understand others is to try to understand their faith.

Medicine can tell us when pregnancy begins and when a fetus is likely to be viable outside of the womb, but the concept of life is more abstract and varies depending on an individual’s belief.

but I do have an understanding and appreciation for both faiths and how they teach compassion for others.

The third principle, my favorite and the one that guides my work, is non-absolutism (anekantvada). This is the idea that a viewpoint cannot be 100 percent true; therefore, every viewpoint has to have at least some truth to it. This principle inherently encourages dialogue and harmony with other ideas, beliefs, and perspectives.

Providing solely prenatal care can send a message: I will help you if you continue the pregnancy, but I won’t if you don’t continue the pregnancy.

Often it is hard to separate our own lived experiences from those we are caring for, no matter how hard we try.

I reminded these residents that just because someone continues their pregnancy does not mean that it’s not fraught with trauma, poverty, abuse, missed educational or career opportunities, violence, or food scarcity.

Denying someone an abortion to make a statement about morality is ignoring the root cause of the issue.

You don’t need to have an abortion to be impacted by the issue or to understand how important it is. Believe it or not, everyone knows and loves someone who has had an abortion.

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.

Counseling should never be mandated with scripts; it’s unethical to provide patients with anything but the truth about their care, and counseling should be tailored to the needs of the individual patient.

When I perform abortions, I want to make sure my patients know that I see them as a whole person.

Politicians are exploiting a health care issue that’s foundational to reproductive, social, and economic freedom for millions of people. 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 obsession with banning abortion and restricting access to it has become a political tool that disregards people’s health, as well as the realities of science.

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

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.

First of all, any approach to talking about abortion that focuses on minimizing its occurrence, assuming abortion rates should inherently be low, only adds further stigma.

The term “reproductive justice” was coined in 1994 by twelve Black women and defined as the human right to have children, to not have children, and to parent the children they have in a safe and sustainable environment. In 2007, this theory was expanded by these same women to include the right to sexual pleasure.

Three quarters of those receiving abortion care live in poverty.

The justice framework reminds us that patients are more than just the procedure.

health movements were centering abortion care, the reproductive justice framework was “clear that the stories of Black women and reproductive health went beyond abortion. We were actually intentionally centering Black women’s full reproductive and sexual lives because we were frustrated with the reproductive health and reproductive rights movements’ continued narrow focus on abortion and not the full spectrum of reproductive and sexual health. While we believed that Black women needed access to abortion, we also understood that abortion was not the primary focus of Black women around their reproductive health.”

Toni Bond pointed out that while the reproductive justice movement needs to make space for all identities, we also “need to have a conversation as a larger movement about what it means to discontinue using the identifier of woman. Black women have historically been denied the status of both human and woman. So what does it mean to no longer identify Black women as ‘women’?

And that my only job as a physician is to counsel my patients on all their options, and it was for them to decide what’s best for them.

What this shows is that when we humanize the issue, we’re more likely to support it.

What politicians don’t realize is that abortion won’t end just because they restrict it. Abortions will continue, and they will be forced to occur outside of the medical system.

What we have to remember, though, is that Roe is really the floor, not the ceiling, of access.

We must pay close attention to those who are the most affected by abortion restrictions, and not forget that race and ethnicity have become significant indicators of access.

Sometimes, the only way to create change for the future is by telling our stories from the past—and the present.

These stories will reinforce the belief that an individual has the right to choose to end a pregnancy, but my hope is that the stories also go beyond that. I want to remind the reader that an individual also has the moral ability to make that decision. That the abortion occurs in the context of one’s life, culture, family, religion, and more is very apparent to me.

What I know is that abortion does not occur in isolation. There is always a story. And these stories have become more complex as they are battered by political interference.

It’s the stories that fuel me to keep doing this work, and I hope that the stories affect the reader as much as they have affected me. My patients don’t come to me with a political agenda, they come to me seeking health care. And I want to lift the realities of their experiences.

Forced ultrasounds and medically false information do not discourage patients—they just cause distress.

“I hated having to come back. Knowing that there was no medical reason for me having to do that, I felt very controlled. I felt disrespected and like I wasn’t able to make my own decisions about my body.”

This is unfortunately the context for so many instances of initial sexual contact—budding desires let loose without the proper context or support for them to be fostered safely.

Comprehensive sex education has been shown to reduce teen pregnancy without increasing rates of sexual intercourse or sexually transmitted infections.

When young people don’t have access to accurate information about sex and their bodies, they turn to the internet, to porn, to their peers, and, less often, parents or health care providers.

The reality is that parental consent does not always translate to parental support.

We breeze past the gray areas and the complexities of emotions one may feel and in the process, we may lose supporters of reproductive health access.

Language is a real barrier to care for gender expansive people. Changing your language to make it more inclusive and checking your assumptions in the way you ask questions to take a patient’s history can make a huge difference.

Sexual and reproductive health is often an entrance to health care,” he said. Young people will often only go to the doctor for their sexual and reproductive health needs. And if the space to receive this care doesn’t feel safe, then gender expansive people oftentimes just won’t go