“Id feel sorrow and grief but never regret.”
Initially, I thought I had COVID or just anxiety from helicopters flying over Brooklyn nonstop.
It wasnt until I spit out a glass of wine I was nursing that I finally knew.
The only other time that alcohol had tasted like poison was when I was pregnant six years before.
So, I took a pregnancy test.
Then another and another.
And then there was work.
But werent these selfish reasons to be in doubt?
Werent there people raising kids with much less?
Still unsure about what to do, I made an appointment with an OB-GYN.
Instead, I found a local place that I could walk to.
It was my first visit to a doctor since the pandemic began, and I was scared.
My belly was covered with cold, wet jelly and rubbed with a transducer.
I looked at the ultrasound screen even though I didnt really want to.
There it is, the doctor said.
I stared at this moving, living blob in my belly.
Congratulations, Mommy, she said.
You are already six weeks!
The doctor handed me a black-and-white image of my uterus.
We had hung a similar image of my daughter on our refrigerator with a magnet.
I folded this one up in my hand.
Youll need extensive bloodwork and weekly appointments, she told me, since you are a geriatric pregnancy.
What if I decide Im not sure if I want to have the child?
She looked away from me.
Well, then you have some options.
But I didnt want to burst her bubble and maybe she was right.
I told her I wanted my bloodwork done that day.
That my situation was actually quite common.
Since the beginning of time, women have made decisions like this.
I could not have this child.
When we were in bed later that night, I asked my husband if he was disappointed.
It is your choice, he said quietly, turning his face toward me.
He still looked like a boy, my husband, with his wiry frame and shaggy hair.
Ill support you no matter what.
But I knew he was already imagining a sweet little baby to dote on.
I was picturing it too.
Their soft puffy cheeks.
Their first beautiful smile.
My previous pregnancy was not easy.
My daughter was in distress.
There was meconium inside me and I had run a fever.
It was by the saving grace of my OB-GYN that I didnt need a C-section.
But I was very sick, and we were scared for my daughter.
I had to be given an an antibiotic while in labor.
No ones birth ever goes as they expect, but this experience was terrifying.
There was a point when we were told we might have to go home without her.
I remember the relief when we could leave the hospital with her in her car seat.
This time, they gave me some options.
I told them that I preferred the one with pills mifepristone and misoprostol.
I was told about the risks, but I didnt really think about them.
I just wanted it done and I knew that medication abortion was 95% effective if administered properly.
Usually the doctor comes to you.
The man sitting behind the desk was about 60 years old.
He told me to shut the door.
Now, how did we get here?
he asked after I was seated facing him.
You should really be more responsible, someone like you.
You should know better.
I recommend you come back after this for an IUD so this never happens again.
Responsible, I repeated.
I have a kid already.
I take the pill.
And anyway, I thought I was in perimenopause.
Not perimenopause, the doctor told me.
You are young and strong.
This can happen again, and you should probably be more responsible about these things.
The irony of being told this after being called a geriatric pregnancy wasnt lost on me.
Look, I said, you dont need to tell me this.
The word responsible weighed on me.
Of course I was responsible.
Of course I had weighed this decision carefully.
The doctor opened his desk drawer, removed a bottle and handed me some pills.
He explained carefully how to administer them.
But I want you to know the risks, he said.
Sometimes these dont work and you’re gonna wanna come back.
I went upstate with my family to administer the pills at a friends house.
I wanted to be with her a woman.
I felt ashamed looking at my husband.
I bled that night and passed clots.
No one ever wants to talk about the physicality of birth or eliminating one.
The horror movie of it all.
The next week, I had to return to that same awful office, double-masked and gloved.
I disrobed and wrapped myself in a hospital gown.
A third doctor a woman in her 50s came in and checked my uterus.
Her face didnt hold judgment like the others.
But the news was not good.
Im sorry to have to tell you this, she said after checking my uterus.
Theres still pieces of tissue in you.
We need to arrange for a D and C dilation and curettage surgery.
What do you mean?
There were clots, I said.
Im sorry, the doctor told me.
Unfortunately, we see this sometimes.
Thats why we recommend the procedure instead.
People dont realize the risk.
Later, when the Supreme Court overturned its Roe v. Wade decision, Id think of this.
Where would they go afterward?
Who would help them?
What would they do next?
The following week, my husband and my daughter accompanied me to the D and C in the city.
I told him to take her to the playground during the procedure.
A male doctor a different one administered the anesthesia.
We see this sometimes, he told me, with the pills.
Yes, I said.
I know that now.
You have a child already though, the doctor said.
So why [did] you do this?
What was he trying to accomplish?
It was too late anyhow.
I was put under.
When I woke up, I felt groggy and confused.
My daughter and husband were waiting for me.
I wonder if my daughter knew what happened.
I wonder if Ill ever tell her.
I wonder if shell ever worry she was unwanted.
I met one of those friends babies a month after Roe was overturned.
She was almost 2.
Id feel sorrow and grief, but never regret.This article originally appeared onHuffPost.
