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

by Meera Shah

“Extending reproductive justice to include gender inclusivity is at its core why women’s health was created as a field. They both hold the idea of creating spaces for people who have been historically disenfranchised by the medical community.”

What kind of mother would she be if she ended the pregnancy? What kind of mother would she be if she didn’t?

While abortion is “the termination of a pregnancy,” this is not how abortion is often talked about in our culture, so the stigma and black-and-white debates around abortion don’t speak to the nuances of people’s experiences, beliefs, and families. Mary doesn’t feel that she had an abortion or that she was ending her pregnancy. She felt that she was preventing her child from having a life of pain.

As a woman, Mary said, you’re often faced with a simple, paradoxical question: Is my maximum potential in working, or is it in being a mom?

“That my son and daughter were sent to me to teach me how to be a good mother. I’m grateful for the two babies I lost, because it prepared me for how much love I’d have for my other kids. When you lose one, you just love the next one so much.”

“Abortions aren’t just about getting rid of a baby,” Gwen told me, now almost two years removed from the experience. “It’s about providing the best option that you can for a family.

Kham’s story proves that these restrictions don’t prevent abortion—they do everything to make abortion care inaccessible.

While people should not be forced to self-manage their abortion because of an inability to access care in a medical setting, if they choose to manage at home, they should not be criminalized for it.

While men have the privilege of being able to see and experience reproductive health and autonomy through a different lens, we also perpetuate that privilege by not making men part of the conversation, which is unfair to them as well as women and those with a uterus.

“There isn’t a woman in history who had a baby without sperm. So it’s not a ‘women’s health’ issue, it’s a ‘health issue.’ You just handed all the hard stuff to the woman and now you’re going to double down on it by making her feel ashamed and bad about it?”

A partner’s role in an abortion is sometimes not clear to them. Are they allowed to say what they want? Or is it always up to the one carrying the pregnancy? Is the partner supposed to just relinquish all decision-making power?

“In the United States, responsibility for preventing pregnancy in heterosexual relationships disproportionately falls on women,” who then carry the weight of its physical, financial, and emotional obligations.

Without reproductive freedom, economic freedom is not possible.

By siloing reproductive health as a “women’s” health issue, we feed into the myth that it’s just cis women making decisions about sex and reproduction, independent of any outside factors. In real life, there is often consensual input from partners, plus culture, family, income, stability, and faith to consider, not to mention career aspirations.

Women carry a biological burden of fertility that men will never have, and so women should have more reproductive autonomy.

Men really are stakeholders and beneficiaries when it comes to their partner’s reproductive decisions, and they should be out there marching because abortion access is “their issue” too.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines reproductive coercion as “behavior intended to maintain power and control in a relationship related to reproductive health” and it “includes explicit attempts to impregnate a partner against her will, control outcomes of a pregnancy, coerce a partner to have unprotected sex, and interfere with contraceptive methods.”

If anything, having the abortion was a gift: It forced her to put her own needs, her own happiness, and her own desires above that of the men in her life—including her own dad.

there is a kind of before and after to an abortion, too. You are one situation walking into the health center, and a different kind of situation after. No better, no worse—just different.

Each carried their own story about what brought them there, and what they’d take with them when they walked out.

Discussing doctrines and their various interpretations is valuable. But remembering that there is a secular perspective and real-life context to any religion is important. Noor explained this to me the best.

“We dated for a very long time before we got married, because I was very young. I needed to find my ‘me’ as a person before I became a ‘we.’” She said that it was important to her that she didn’t simply go from her parents’ house to her husband’s house.

“This wasn’t something that I could work harder to change. All my life I had been able to just put more effort into something and make it right. But there was nothing I could do here.

We expect people to know exactly when they got pregnant, how far along they are, and how they are going to handle the pregnancy—this isn’t fair. This way of thinking doesn’t take into account finances, emotions, ambivalence, support, coercion, abuse, culture, religion, and the countless other things that shape people’s experiences.