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

by Meera Shah

Outside the bedroom, it turned out that Theo wasn’t that great of a guy, though. And oftentimes, he wasn’t all that great of a guy inside the bedroom, either.

LMFAO! Brilliant

And he kept doing it, he kept advancing and advancing. And I kept telling him to stop, and I just became so overwhelmed because he physically dominated me: I felt so helpless that I just let him do it. His size made me afraid of not doing what he wanted.” She realized afterward that she had never consented, and that what had happened was rape.

Consent has become a topic of recent attention in the media, and it’s an important aspect of safe and positive sex. But what has been challenging about consent is how exactly to define it and how exactly to navigate it with a partner. What’s worse is that consent is rarely discussed in high school and middle school curriculums, if any sex ed is even provided at all.

they need more education on how to say no or how to recognize when a partner is giving consent.

Often, without clear definitions, people in nonconsensual situations are left feeling confused by and conflicted about how they felt and what happened with a partner.

Planned Parenthood created an acronym model called FRIES to help clarify consent: Freely given. Doing something sexual with someone is a decision that should be made without pressure, force, manipulation, or while under the influence of substances. Reversible. Anyone can change their mind about what they want to do, at any time—even if you’ve done it before or are in the middle of having sex. Informed. Be honest. For example, if someone says they’ll use a condom and then they don’t, that’s not consent. Enthusiastic. If someone is coerced, isn’t excited, or isn’t really into it, ...

While the legal definitions of sexual assault and rape may vary by geographics, the truth about consent is that the individual gets to say what happens to their body. And nobody can be blamed for how they feel.

The stigma attached to abortion is very real in many parts of the world, and the Indian culture can be particularly opposed to abortion, especially when it is the result of premarital sex. Maya and I agreed that in our culture, sex and love are strongly linked to marriage.

My own parents, after all, only knew each other for two weeks before deciding to get married. They decided that they paired well on matters of education, family, and culture. Love, as my mother explained it, comes after marriage. Anyone who falls in love before marriage is said to have had a “love marriage.”

The doctor, an older Indian man probably nearing eighty years, told me that what keeps him doing this work is believing “that every single woman should have a choice!”

“I compartmentalize my friends a lot. My Indian community is one thing. My coworkers are one thing. My school friends are a different group of people. I felt like I always had to do that growing up—one thing couldn’t mix with the other.”

She said that in college, she had always been very open about her sexuality, especially when talking with other Indian friends. She wanted them to know that they didn’t need to be ashamed of having sex. She knew this meant that others labeled her as “easy” or even a “slut” but it didn’t matter, she was resolved to not let the words of others affect her. “We should have the freedom to do what we want with our own bodies, and that includes sexual freedom and exploration. No one should be ashamed of it,” she remembered saying.

“There was a really strong emphasis on social justice and what these days we call tikkun olam [healing the world]—making the world a better place.”

Emily explained, however, that the real question should be when does personhood begin? Judaism has a word for this, nefesh in Hebrew, which means “someone who is a full-fledged being.” Many sources, including the creation story in which God breathed life into Adam in order to make him a person, support the idea that the status of person-hood begins at the “first breath.”

I don’t think we are being as loud and as outspoken about this as we could. We could say, we are also people of faith, we also have an understanding and a relationship with something greater than ourselves. We don’t necessarily agree with how this law is being interpreted for the sake of religion.”

the same way that having a bat mitzvah marks the passage of time from one phase to another, 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.

Lonely faces staring just ahead of them. Others with a look of peaceful relief. Each carried their own story about what brought them there, and what they’d take with them when they walked out.

Where halal is everything that’s “permissible” as determined by the Quran, haram is the opposite—the “forbidden.” Pork? Alcohol? Sex before marriage? All haram.

It all came back to Jane’s golden rule, after all: if she wanted to make a change, she’d need to do it herself.

“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.

I wanted to have a little bit more time so that I went into this relationship as an adult and not a kid.”

Our patients guide our practice. If it’s best for the patient and supported by science, we do everything we can to make it a priority. Shared decision-making and informed decisions take precedence. We never want to be making decisions for patients, but be mindful of their emotions and the way that they’re feeling.

He said that there is no scientific evidence to support when the fetus feels pain and that the fetus doesn’t contemplate pain in the same way that we contemplate pain. What we know about fetal pain, and pain in general, is that it is subjective and requires a level of consciousness and psychological understanding that something is unpleasant.

Anybody who has lost a child knows that’s not how it is. You become changed by it. It changes your life in ways that are good, as you become acutely aware of the important things in life, but it also changes your life in ways that are bad.”

In the end, we are all human and have the ability to feel the most complex emotions. And that puts us all on the same playing field.