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

by Meera Shah

At that moment, I made so many assumptions about her and how she saw me. I assumed she was opposed to abortion, because of her race, her age, her southern drawl, and where we were located on the map. I assumed she would see me on the “other side.”

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.

I never, ever ask anyone why someone makes the decision they make, whether that is to continue a pregnancy, have an abortion, or pursue adoption. My job is not to encourage or discourage patients to have an abortion. I trust that people know what is best for them. In fact, I believe we need to move past this notion that a decision to have an abortion should be left to the “patient and their doctor.” I give my patients the most information I can provide and support them in whatever they decide. I don’t decide with or for them.

That said, I do not believe that anyone should have to tell their story. The burden of breaking down stigma should not only weigh on those who have had abortions. They should not have to teach us about who they are, what their lived experiences are like, and why they have come to their decision. While abortion storytelling can help, everyone plays a role in normalizing abortion.

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.

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.

Telling stories about abortion is an important part of a movement toward acceptance of the breadth and diversity of human experience.

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.

My father always believed that one should never have blind faith for religion, that faith should come after you’ve established a concrete understanding of the core principles that religion teaches.

My father’s family is Jain. Jainism is a religion that is older than Hinduism and holds three main tenets. The first two are nonviolence and non-possessiveness, or minimalism. 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.

We can simultaneously believe that there is a potential life growing in a uterus and trust the person carrying the pregnancy to do what is right for them in their own lives.

If the guiding principle in my life is non-absolutism, then my job as a physician is to acknowledge another person’s truth and recognize that our truths may not be synonymous. For this reason, I find it incredibly important to provide both prenatal care and abortion care in my practice. They should not be siloed. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

Forced sterilization is a very recent and dark part of US history.

Simply put, the zip code in which you live determines the type of health care coverage you receive.

Saying that abortion should be rare is dangerous and worsens stigma.

Because of the complexities in one’s life and the intersections of one’s identity, this idea of choice is more complicated than the term “pro-choice” can embody. For this reason, I have made the decision not to use it.

During the Women’s March in 2017, we chanted, “My body, my choice! Your body, your choice!” as we paraded down the Mall in Washington, DC. But since then, as I’ve spoken to my patients, my peers, and my colleagues about the “abortion experience,” I realize that this mantra oversimplifies the issue.

honor indigenous people, people with disabilities, people with addiction, incarcerated people, people who exchange sex for money or nonmonetary items. I also honor those who have had an abortion yet continue to protest against abortion outside of our health centers. Your stories matter.

In 2019, Google Ads announced a new policy that requires advertisers wanting to run ads using keywords related to abortion to first be certified as a place that provides abortion to distinguish them from places that do not.

Whole Woman’s Health challenged these laws, and in the 2016 landmark Supreme Court case Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the court ruled that restrictions that impose an undue burden on someone seeking abortion care are unjust.

“As a gay, brown-skinned immigrant, I know what it is like to live in this country as a second-class citizen. Now, I feel a responsibility to use my privilege as a man and as a physician, to help others and speak up when I see injustice.

You know what doesn’t require a waiting period, though? The Texas Rifle Association, just next door. The irony of this was not lost on Sara.

After sixteen years of providing compassionate abortion care in Austin and about two years after Sara’s story took place, Whole Woman’s Health Alliance was pushed out of its lease by a competing offer from tenants who have ties to an antiabortion group. This group is called Carrying to Term, and their mission is to encourage people to carry their pregnancy to term, no matter what. Carrying to Term plans to open a “crisis pregnancy center” that misleads people with false information about abortion care and doesn’t use medical standards of care. Thankfully, Whole Woman’s Health Alliance has already found a new location in Austin.

Hopefully, she thought, this would buy her some time to figure out what to do next. But instead of focusing on a solution to her problem, she placed all of her energy into avoiding her mother. It’s an all-too-common fact that fear of retribution commonly prevents young people from getting care.

The nonstandardization and inconsistencies in curricula are major deficits in the way we approach sexual and reproductive health education among young people.

Practically speaking, if this country had mandated sex education like most other developed countries, we would see a significant decrease in unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.

“Being raised in a West Indian household was very different than growing up in an African American household. My friends’ parents would hug and kiss them. Mine didn’t. I knew my mom loved me but she showed me in different ways. We had freshly cooked food seven days a week. And she was strict with us. She wanted to protect us. That was the difference,” said Rose.

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

Even if there is no or little sex education in schools, the very least that can be done is to ensure that young people know their rights.

If anyone at the church or in the Jamaican community found out about Rose’s pregnancy, it would reflect poorly on her entire family. But at the same time, abortion was considered a sin, and her mother did not hold back from making Rose feel guilty about being pregnant as well ending the pregnancy.

The percentage of second trimester abortions had by adolescents increased in states such as Texas, Mississippi, Massachusetts, and Missouri in part because adolescents suspect pregnancy later than adults and because mandatory consent laws delay access to abortion.

Years later, Rose would learn that prior to finding faith, her mother had had an abortion herself. Now Rose can see that perhaps her mother was projecting her own guilt onto her daughter. But instead of taking the stance of forgiveness, what her mother was really after was repentance. What could have been a moment of shared experience, a chance for Imani and Rose to connect, instead drove a wedge between them.

Black women are three to four times more likely to die from childbirth than white women.7

While Hawaii had passed the country’s first legalization of abortion, it required that that the person seeking an abortion show proof of residency in the state. New York did not have a residency requirement. In the first two years after decriminalization in New York, about 60 percent of the people having abortions there were not New York residents.

Eventually, the members of Jane, nonmedical professionals, started performing abortions themselves in their apartments in Chicago. Jane dismantled shortly after Roe in 1973 when the first legal abortion clinics opened.

Abortion was mainly, for people in the pre-Roe era, a struggle to find one and how do I know it’s safe and will I have the money to pay for it.” For a moment, I had to remember she was describing 1970, not 2020. It’s been forty-seven years since Roe and my patients are often still struggling with these very same things.

“The doctor flew across the table and gave me a hug. I realized then that Planned Parenthood isn’t pro-abortion, they’re just family planning.”

For many pregnant people, risking or sacrificing health in order to get or keep a job is their only option. As a society and even as health care providers, we need to stop reprimanding parents for not being able to seek prenatal care.

In 2016, a law was enacted by former Indiana governor Mike Pence that mandated limitations on disposal of fetal tissue under the biased language that “remains of aborted babies be treated with respect and dignity.”7 This would mean that for anyone who didn’t bury or cremate their remains, they’d be breaking the law. Simple biology tells us how misguided this is. For someone very early in their first trimester, ending a pregnancy amounts to a heavy period. Does this mean that people are expected to bury their pads and tampons? The law was then again upheld in March 2019.

Fetal tissue disposal laws, which are medically unnecessary and dictate to people how they are legally allowed to grieve their loss, sometimes even going against their faith traditions, can perpetuate the idea of “personhood,” which could lead to more antiabortion regulation.