Before I even get started here, I want to stress how important it is to have a choice. After my sexual assault, I was in the ER having some weird symptoms (unrelated, blessedly). I'll never forget waiting for the results of the pregnancy test that night. If I had found out that I was pregnant by my rapist at 17 years old, I absolutely would have made the choice to terminate that pregnancy. If that choice were not legally available, and I was forced to carry the product of my assault to full term, I would have killed myself...while I was pregnant. I was in a very dark place over that entire experience, and at times I was acutely suicidal. If I didn't have a choice to terminate a pregnancy, had that test come back positive, I would have been dead by suicide within weeks.
If you thought I was being brave in sharing the story of my sexual assault, you haven't seen anything yet...To be perfectly honest, this part of my past is quite painful, but in light of recent legislation I feel compelled to share what a multidimensional process it is in making this choice. I'm uncomfortable even getting started. Only those closest to me know that this happened. It impacted relationships, because there were strong feelings about what I should and should not have done within my innermost circle. I've had this used against me during an argument, thrown in my face by one of the closest people to me.
It was 2005. I had just moved to Long Beach from LA, and was living in a house with 2 dudes. I was living paycheck to paycheck. I was dating someone new. I started taking birth control once it was clear I was in a monogamous relationship. I've had migraines my entire life, so I didn't stay on birth control when I wasn't seriously dating someone. Birth control pills can significantly increase migraines and are actually contraindicated in people who get migraines with an aura, a category which I fall into.
I did not work in health care. I had not studied anything health care related. I worked in the film industry. I was a layperson when it came to medications, what makes medications not work as well, and the ins and outs of the different strengths of birth control pills. I was on the lowest estrogen pill to minimize the risk of migraines. I was also taking an antibiotic for something...I don't recall. Bronchitis or a sinus infection...the usual stuff.
Here's where the health care system failed me. I was not informed that certain antibiotics make birth control pills less effective. Nor was I informed that the lower estrogen birth control pills were more likely to fail under these circumstances. The low estrogen pills also made my periods really light, like 2 or 3 days usually. I thought all birth control pills were created equal, and had no reason to believe otherwise. I had been sexually active for 10 years without any mishaps.
I had been dating this guy for 4 months. I'd gained quite a bit of weight, but had recently quit smoking. There's another thing I don't usually disclose...that I used to smoke!! I quit smoking using Wellbutrin, which I was also taking at the time all of this happened. I attributed the weight gain to quitting smoking, and to being in a new relationship where we were going out for nice dinners, and drinking lots of wine. The only clue, retrospectively, is that I started wanting roma tomatoes all the time. Not just any old tomato, roma tomatoes. I would buy them every day after work and eat like 4 or 5 a night.
It was mid October when I missed a period. I took a pregnancy test and the 2 lines appeared instantly. FUCK!!! How could this happen?? I didn't really know this guy that I was dating well enough to co-parent with him. I felt like my body was being invaded. I wanted this situation taken care of ASAP. I made an appointment with my OB.
Here's the ironic part...Planned Parenthood gets a lot of shit about providing abortions. I went to Planned Parenthood for all my annual exams and to fill my birth control prescriptions starting when I was 15 years old. At this point, I was 25 and had pretty good health insurance and an OB in a bourgeois office in Beverly Hills. It was in this fancy office that I planned to have the procedure, AND it was covered by my insurance.
I had been drinking a lot of wine during the early phases of my new and exciting relationship, and I was taking Wellbutrin. Neither of those things bode well for a healthy pregnancy. I scheduled my procedure right after Halloween. I remember handing out candy in my neighborhood, feeling this weird mix of emotions. All these children out Trick-or-Treating, and here I was pregnant and not wanting to be.
I worked with all men at that time in my life, and they were all very supportive. Some shared their own experiences with me. One in particular, and if he's reading this, you know who you are. Shared some very intimate details about his life that paralleled mine. I'm eternally grateful to him for making me feel less alone. I was conflicted. I really cared for the guy I was dating, and I was in kind of a good place professionally...but I didn't have a college degree, and wasn't sure that working in film locations was going to be my career. The biggest internal conflict was that my life was almost, but not quite, an OK situation to have a baby. It took almost 2 weeks before my OB could schedule me in for the procedure. All I wanted was to get it over with and move on with my life.
Ok, now here's the real kicker. When I went in the morning of the procedure, my OB discovered that I was not 8 weeks, but 10 weeks pregnant. Those fucking low estrogen pills? Well, my "period" the first month was actually implantation spotting and not really a period. Those fucking antibiotics? They caused my finicky low estrogen birth control to fail. So, technically my first missed period was my second. My OB almost had to reschedule the procedure, which made me feel a suicidal panic. This had to end NOW!!! I was sent home, with some sticks shoved in my cervix in order to dilate it, which was the most excruciatingly painful thing I've ever experienced. I spent all day vomiting from the pain. Then, I went back for the procedure after 8 hours of dilating. The receptionist treated me like trash. I was in a waiting room filled with affluent expectant mothers, because this was a Beverly Hills private practice and not some sketchy Planned Parenthood in the Valley.
I found myself thinking about the what ifs. Around the time I would have had the baby. I pondered what my life would have looked like. I never felt that I made the wrong choice, but it was a sad choice. A choice I never wanted to have to make. A situation where I thought I was doing everything right to prevent this from occurring in the first place. I've used condoms exclusively ever since. Why? Because I know when one of those things fails!
The guy and I broke up after we had been dating for about a year, right around the time I got laid off from my job. That would have been some good times with an infant. I moved to North Carolina, and that same dude lured me back to California with promises of getting back together. We dated a few months and he broke up with me again. Fucker. I decided to go back to school for nursing, made a solid group of friends, and started building my life. Part of my reasoning in choosing to have an abortion was so that I could advance myself academically and professionally. I felt that I had to live up to my end of the bargain, and I did.
The pace of life picked up, and that guy? The one that I had to make a horrible choice with? The one that I dated and broke up and dated and broke up with? He's my husband now. Cue the mind fuck....
When I found out I was pregnant with our son, I was racked with guilt. How was I supposed to know that I'd actually end up marrying the guy who knocked me up right when we started dating? I tortured myself throughout my entire pregnancy. How could I end one pregnancy, and then be so thrilled about the other with the same person? Why did I feel so invaded by my first pregnancy, and so immediately in love with my second? I had a high risk pregnancy and I used my abortion to mentally torment myself...every potential complication had to be my fault. Pregnancy hormones are a bitch. It also wasn't something that's super socially acceptable to talk about, so I suffered alone.
As I reflect back on the whole thing, I did not want to have a child with a man I hardly knew. If he had faded into the anonymous background of all my other ex-boyfriends, I would have been relieved that I wasn't tied to him for the rest of our natural lives. I certainly feel thankful that I never had kids with any of my other exes. *shudders* All of my mental anguish came later, because that guy did not fade into anonymity. In reality, we would not have made it if we had a child in our 20's. I would not have grown into the person that I am today. I was in no way fit to be a mother at that time in my life. My son has the best possible version of me, because I made some hard choices...one of those hard choices was terminating an unwanted pregnancy. Not just unplanned, unwanted. I wanted to have my shit together if I ever decided to have a child, which I did...almost exactly 10 years later.
What are the takeaways from this? We really need to do a better job educating women about pregnancy prevention. I did not realize that my low estrogen pills had a higher potential to fail, and I had NO idea that taking antibiotics would alter the effectiveness of my pills. A perfect storm. It wasn't a choice I ever wanted to make. Had I been better educated about my birth control, this may not have happened in the first place. At the end of the day, the choice was available. If it weren't, I likely would have sought out an illegal procedure.
I'm sharing this really uncomfortable, complex, conflicted part of my life because it is important to know why I made the choice that I did, and how important it was to have that choice available. I also want people to realize that it's not black and white. There were shades of gray in my decision (almost the right guy...almost old enough...). I'm reliving this painful experience because this shit happens, even when you think you're doing all the right things.
