I had an Abortion and I have No Regrets: A Love Story

I often thank myself for it, but it was an easy choice.

It was not a ‘difficult decision’, as is often said about a woman's experience with unwanted pregnancies.

'Difficult decision' is just a white lie to pay moral lip service, so that a woman can avoid a very real social stigma. The undertones are that a woman should have shame if the decision to not have the baby is obvious to her. She shouldn't. That's why I will say my choice to abort was easy and I'm proud it was.

Is it brave to share such a thing, or stupid? I don’t know.

Whatever. Slap my ass and call me a murderer. I’ve always wanted to be a murderer.

This has been inspired by @msgivings post on the topic, Abortion:My Body My Choice and all the responses and debate. It is something so many feel strongly about. It's affected me personally too; and I feel very, very strongly in favor of a woman’s right to choose.

It was an easy choice because it was my only choice. I would have sooner killed myself than gone through pregnancy and childbirth. Some may (self-righteously) claim that I actually did have choice, that adopting out the child would be a choice —in my mind that was no option, that was death.

I would have killed myself rather than go through pregnancy.

Only the naive think such sentiments are exaggerations. I could not, and still can’t, imagine myself bearing children. I just have an aversion to it that feels as strong as the need to drink water. Should being a woman mean pregnancy should ‘come naturally’ to me?

Pregnancy doesn’t instantly get rid of a woman’s bad habits and risk-taking tendencies. I didn’t get a free ticket to “Be a Better Person Overnight: All the Motivation You need for 18 Years.” The women that change because they are pregnant, they are who they are, we have nothing to do with each other! Maybe they truly desire and value bringing a child into the world. Not me. That’s just me.

I hope you can accept that; I don’t need you to accept me.

Now that the years have passed I see the situation with as much clarity as is possible to look at something with clarity at.

When I was 20 years-old I lived in Alberta, Canada. Met a Quebecois man out there who really charmed me with his sexy accent and complete lack of command of the English language.

It was beautiful and pure.

It was love at first sight.

Love that transcended words; primitive and impossibly erotic.

The first time we met he just called me “Bebe” and nodded to make it look as if he understood anything I said. We’ll call him “Jean-Claude” —not just to be an ass by referring to him with a really French sounding name, but because he had a V-shaped body just like Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Damn

Six months after his release from prison, he left Quebec for Alberta because his only brother lived out there, and was doing well. Jean-Claude and I lived in the unfinished basement of his brothers nice suburban house. Together we slept on the mattress layed on top the cold floor. We kept eachother warm as hot coals. It was stupid bliss. You'd think we both believed we could survive on our love instead of food.

How we met? Oh, at a bar! Of course it was a dive . I talked to (at?) him for way too long before I realized he didn’t speak a lick of English (which only highly aroused me.)

He had told me: “I speak French”

And not : “I don’t speak English”

Somehow we communicated really well. It was almost supernatural. That elusive romantic chemistry was within my grasp. It was mine and I would not let it get away. But I wasn't even close to having anything to lose, as he wasn’t shy. He leaned in and kissed me on the neck. I still remember the sensation of how his thin, perfectly masculine lips felt just below where my jaw line meets my ear and a bit down and to the left. Ahhh yeah.

He had raw, animalistic sex appeal.

I knew it must be so, as he was not well dressed by any standard. The man lacked pretense. He had on this deep orange shirt with long-sleeves rolled up his arms just enough to show the black and white 'jailhouse' tattoos; the largest one on his forearm was a demonic face reminiscent of my own artwork and only more evidence it was total, life-defying love.

Across the chest his shirt read: “Lake of the Woods.” It looked so worn like it was his only shirt, like he himself stepped straight out of the woods. Wild and free: un coyote, as I later learned his brother nicknamed him.

We shared that Totem.

The way his scent mixed with his cologne was darkly sensual; he smelled spicy, like pine cones and mystery deep in the boreal forest. For all those reasons, and no logic to spoil the romantic mood, I decided to go home with this non-English speaking man I just met, who I knew absolutely fuck all about —only that he had until very recently been in a Quebec max security prison for years. Why not go home with him? Does meeting a man at the bar get anymore exciting than this? Besides, as he said, he lived “just ten minute” away.

Of course, after driving for thirty minutes, still not at his place. Turns out he lived in the furthest far Calgary suburb. Since I’m a fool, I found it charming that he didn’t want to tell me and risk that I not go home with him.

A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do for love, right? If he can, he will? I can only speak for myself that I had no problem with that then or ever.

Oh fuck, he was such a lover that it was Tragic. Not only physically but emotionally, his essence. He had me convinced that the stereotypes of French men are truer than true!

J'adore les hommes Québécois.

et les filles Québécoise aussi, pourquoi pas?!

Ok, sorry to get Romance novel on you there. Jean-Claude and I were fiercely in love. Truly inseparable

Anyway, that’s the man I let get me pregnant. He was my first and maybe only love.
“Let get me pregnant”. Ha. It doesn’t happen like that. It sounds so nonchalante, as if I didn’t care.

Was it impulsive?

Yes!

Irresponsible?

Sure!

Well fuck, I was 20 years-old and I thought it would never happen to me.

I was young and resilient and that’s what my life was simply about then; I lived as if my entire purpose was to be young, resilient and rack up life experience-for-experience’s sake like Tolkien’s Smaug collected gold and gemstones.

What use does a dragon have for all that gold?

How can a 20 year-old gain life experience quickly? No patience to gain it with age? Just fuck yourself over!

There was no job waiting for me when I decided to move two provinces over to Calgary. Eventually got one but I didn’t have any skills or knowledge to make much more than minimum wage. My hobbies were bar-hopping and drinking. As I would just do what poor people do to have fun...and also to feed a habit I’d been nursing for five years already.

Hell, I was young and didn’t realize it was not just yet the real hard habit that it was gonna be some odd years of my life later. If I knew then what a new now about habits, right?

Between then and now I have acquired a Masters in Hindsight. Actually, could just as well call me a Doctor of Hindsight. My expertise is available if you ever want some retrograde advice by the time it’s too late!

But there truly is no teacher like experience. To the point, now to the point...which is the abortion itself or?

My lovey-dovey bliss with Jean-Claude was rudely interrupted when I began to notice I was missing out on something important:

"Where the fuck is my period?!"

She didn’t show. That never happened to me before. There was just a little red blob in the toilet one day...that scared the fuck out of me, but I filed that at the back of my mind in the "Worry Later" folder.

It was good hour and a half long commute from the suburb I lived in to the downtown mall where I worked. It became a hard task to endure. Simply sitting on the train. There were days I started to feel so intensely sick, that just the small vibrations from the track felt comparable to a boat on rocky waves. I could barely keep my eyes open. I could barely stop myself from vomitting. For days I would show up to work and complain about feeling ill.

I was in gross denial that I had become pregnant. I worked with a girl who’d been through it before, she had a kid, she fuckin' knew the score. I kept telling her how I felt sick and tired and she kept saying to me:

“You’re pregnant”

“...you’re pregnant”

“No, I must just have the ‘flu or something. It’s not possible. I’ve only been having condomless sex with my boyfriend for many moons now! And I’ve missed my last moon time”

“You’re pregnant!”

“YOU’RE PREGNANT!!! Go buy a pregnancy test.”

I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to know.

Maybe it would miscarry if I performed a ritual sacrifice of a lamb to the gods; I was willing to do that, but I didn’t want to know the truth.

I hoped that the blob that happened in place of my regular period was actually a miscarried fetus.

Regardless, the time always comes to acknowledge Reality

It was hard to say out loud that I was pregnant. It made it too real.

The way I approached telling my boyfriend was to just show him the stick I pissed on. He didn’t understand the English directions but knew from the context what was going on, obviously.

It was like a silent movie. No one was saying anything.

To bring the point home I pointed out the French part that said those two lines there mean:

“Enceinte?!” he sighs,

“tab-ARR’nak” he curses,

and “tabernacle” me as he grabbed my last six pack of Lucky Lagers on his way out the door.

“He left me ...Now?”

I had no money left for beer and now was double upset as I wanted to drink my troubles away but couldn’t.

That motherfucker! Beer thief! Trou du cul! Câlisse!!!

Wow! Apparently it was cet hommes grand problem even more than mine! We didn’t even talk about it. I didn’t say:

“Hey, I’m going to keep this baby and you’re going to be un Pere now! Maintenant! Your life is going to be permanently changed, and nothing you can say can change that! Happy!?”

Jean-Claude is gone all night. I spent the evening listening to music and doodling in my sketchbook. At around 2:00 am I hear the doorbell ring, which is weird. I see it’s because Jean-Claude’s too drunk to use the key. He just stays in the doorway, barely standing and his mouth hanging open with some drool dribbling down.

Always the charmer.

I see he’s still wearing his loose torn work shirt...but he’s not wearing any pants, just his ugly boxer shorts and a pair of neon blue slip-on shoes I know aren’t even his. His head is wobbling in complete circles and he mumbles something before stumbling into the house with one leg crossing the other until he falls on the couch and passes the fuck out.

The next morning I found out that while in his drunken glory he mistook the neighbours house for ours and knocked on their door wearing no pants and drooling, just as he had done at our door. We had never even met the neighbours yet.

That ridiculous drunken incident actually cheered me up. Only for a bit, as I my problem came with constant physical reminders.

I became sick. I became completely single-minded.

I had no other choice but to take full responsibility; was someone else going to take this pregnancy and experience it on my behalf?

At that time I only had one mission in life: to get un-pregnant. So I went to the clinic in the neighbourhood and they gave me their official test.

The stick did not lie —what a reliable product! I was 100% pregnant. Congratulations, your denial period is officially over! The prize: emotional pain to accompany the physical discomfort

The doctor who took my pregnancy test told me she stopped performing abortions because she was Catholic. She asked if I had any religious beliefs.

I couldn’t answer.

She asked if I was alright.

I couldn’t speak.

I couldn’t stop crying; not because I found it hard to choose abortion, but because I was scared of the unknown, and all the controversy and stigma surrounding abortion was confusing. I was overwhelmed, as I was only 20. The type of thoughts that went through my head:

"Would my family still love me?”
"Would my parents disown me?”
“Will a man still marry me one day?”

“Will a man still marry me one day?”

I mean what the fuck is that?

Where the fuck do thoughts like that come from?

Where from but socially implanted through traditions of social control which have long since worn out their usefulness to anybody!

It always came naturally to me to question everything, but having to go through with something that controversial and yet so extremely personal, allowed me to grow as a person, to become more grounded in my own reality.

It’s nothing I’d care to go through again, of course not. Mostly because, as I will continue in “Part 2” of this topic,

it’s a really shitty process.