If you are "pro-choice" you may already understand if you are "pro-life" get yourself a cup of tea and PAY ATTENTION AND READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE JESUS HAS A TEST FOR YOU AT THE END!
When I was 21 I was in a relationship that was at the time a serious relationship. I was living with the guy (who shall remain nameless for several reasons) And his mother. She insisted that we have separate rooms until we were married. Being young and stupid we'd have sex any time she wasn't home. We had been together since I was 20 but the relationship was far from stable and it bordered on being abusive. I fell pregnant and things went a bit weird. I had wanted children some day but I wanted to wait until I was physically and mentally capable of having a child and I was part of the way through doing my HSC at tafe. I became really sick with morning sickness and I could not attend most of my classes so that quickly went down the toilet. When it was confirmed that I was indeed pregnant the boyfriend insisted that I have an abortion. He also did not want me to get an ultrasound because he thought that as soon as I heard the heartbeat that I wouldn't want to go through with it. The doctor actually insisted that I have the ultrasound because they needed to know how far along I was and that there were no other possible complications. The boyfriend got really creepy about things at this time and I was very scared that if I didn't go through with the abortion that he would have done something to me to stop me from having the baby anyway.
So the ultrasound was done to confirm that I was 6 weeks pregnant and I was referred to a clinic to have a vacuum evacuation done a few weeks later. I was given all the information on what was going to happen and what I needed to do to prepare and what I should expect afterwards. My boyfriend insisted on actually being present at the procedure. Even the clinic staff baulked at the idea of it but he said that he'd watched someone blow their brains out before and he could handle it. Thankfully I knew I was not in a position to care for a child at the time nor would it have been a good idea to have brought a child into the world under the circumstances I was in. The house we lived in was like something out of hoarders and my friends (the ones who still had anything to do with me during that relationship) were surprised I hadn't died of some sort of disease from the conditions in the house. Especially since the kitchen had a mountain of rabbit shit in the corner but that is a completely different story which I'm not going to get into now. I think the staff of the clinic were slightly un-nerved by him wanting to be present but they allowed it. According to him they were apparently rough with the procedure. He later told me that the nurse thought I had clinical depression when we were having relationship issues. I was never told anything like that by the staff at the clinic but that was also one of his little mind games that he would play. He would make me feel like I was being unreasonable when in reality he was just bullshitting me to make me feel bad.
Eventually I left the relationship and was seeing someone else and somewhere in the overlap between actually leaving and seeing another person I got pregnant again. During this time I was living with some friends who were good enough to put me up for a few months. The now ex-boyfriend blamed the whole relationship breakdown on insisting on the abortion which was not the case. He made friends with the people I was living with and was stalking me for a good year or so after I left him. With the stress of all of the stalking and a bout of food poisoning I had a miscarriage before I had realised I was pregnant and it coincided with when my periods were so I had no idea till the next month when the crimson tide didn't come in that I had even been pregnant.
Several trips to the doctor with fluctuating hormone levels confused my doctor greatly and when I had the ultrasound to figure out what was going on the sonographer uttered the words "transvaginal ultrasound". The sonographer was extremely polite about the situation and was fine if I didn't want to have it done because of the invasiveness of the procedure. I opted to have it done because I was over being a damned pin cushion for the 12 blood tests I had during the times back and forth between the ups and downs of the hormone levels. It seemed that the fetus had died off at about 3-4 weeks but the sac kept growing hence the odd hormone levels. My doctor referred me to the local hospitals clinic to have a procedure call a drain and clean done which was similar to the former procedure. I was about a week or 2 off having blood poisoning from it and often the "drain and clean" procedure is the procedure they would use to perform an "abortion" before it was legalised and was often done when the fetus posed a medical threat to the mother.
Jump ahead a few years I've worked for a while on a career that had quite a glass ceiling for a woman and i had met a man that I could tolerate having around since we had many things in common and similar interests and all of that. We had been together for a while and I had become pregnant with the child we were trying for. All the blood tests checked out and the first ultrasound everything was normal but we had missed the window for the Nuchal translucency scan at 12 weeks due to epic waiting times at the hospital's obstetrics clinic and the fact privately it would have cost us $300 and i wasn't considered a high risk for chromosomal disorders. At about 18 weeks i got really bad swelling in my legs which my GP thought may have been pre-eclampsia but it was far too soon for me to be having the symptoms at just 18 weeks so she gave me a letter to take to emergency at the local hospital and called them to let them know we were coming.
They were all very quiet when they were doing the ultrasounds and told me that there was a problem with the babies spine and that they were waiting for the specialist doctor to determine exactly what was going on. I had a blood test that showed I was having issues with my liver from the large fluid sac that went from the babies head all the way down her spine. The next day I had an amniocentesis test which I still have the scar from. (Lesson learnt don't let student doctors do this!) The babies heart was failing and I was starting to mimic the symptoms the baby had and I was told that not only would she not survive full term but that if I continued on it was likely I would go into heart failure when the baby would finally go into heart failure. They had another doctor look over all the tests and they also agreed that proceeding with this would be possibly fatal for both myself and my daughter.
They gave us some time to make a choice to carry on or to terminate the pregnancy. We chose the latter. Even if our daughter had been born she would have had endless hours of pain and suffering and the condition would have made her mind a prisoner in a useless body.
The procedure was pretty much an induced labour since she was past the 12 week mark where the other forms of pregnancy termination are not possible. The night before they were to induce me I felt her die inside me and it was like the entire world had stopped. The next day they put the pessaries in to bring on the labour.
Not much had happened for most of the day and I had friends and family come see me and we talked and made dead baby jokes because thats how I roll. When things are bad we make jokes so it's not as painful but it's a placebo the pain of this is always there. After a while my water broke and my friends and family apart from the Fiancée left. They did not want to be present and I don't blame them because it is a very confronting thing to know that the birth that is about to take place is not a joyus one and there is no life at the end.
I felt an urge to go potty and the next thing I know there is a pink and purple tiny person in the pan they put in the toilet to measure the fluid I was losing and to make sure if it happened there (which it did) that she wouldn't end up in the toilet. The nurses got me to get back on the bed and accidentally snapped the cord which was white and about maybe 5mm thick. She was 16cm long and weighed 380g. One of the nurses stabbed me in the leg with a needle of stuff to make me deliver the placenta which was about 4 times the size of the baby. They took her away and tried to find some clothes or something to cover her. an hour or so later they came back with her in a little colourful box wrapped up in what they had found which was way too big. They let us talk to her and say goodbye then we had to make arrangements for her funeral as the hospital would only cremate her after the coroner had finished what they had to do.
Before anyone jumps on me about having the coroner do an autopsy because they think that this was some sort of murder I insisted on it and I believe it is also a standard practice for birth defects and requires the parents to consent. My reasons for wanting the autopsy is so that if they found something that could help prevent another woman having to go through this and because I wanted to, no needed to know what went wrong and if I was ever going to be able to have a normal healthy child.
The autopsy report showed that most of her birth defects came from the fact that her skeletal muscles had not developed at all and as she was growing the lack of muscle growth had been preventing her body from growing the way it should have been. They believe it is something to do with a broken part of the DNA that both myself and my husband have and have told me that I have a 1 in 4 chance of having another deformed baby. Sadly though this condition has no name it is more common than you would think.
Nine months or so after we lost our daughter I found out I was pregnant again and I was terrified that all of this was going to happen again. Thankfully the hospital took good care of me and I had an ultrasound every few weeks so that we could all make sure the baby was fine. At 18 weeks he mooned us and wiggled his wang at us. He was known from then on as the BELLYNINJA from all the kicking and moving about he did. At about 31 weeks I had myself a small stroke or two from the stress of family crap surrounding my wedding and pretty much a petty shitfit between certain family members which again is a different story for another time. So I spent the last 8 weeks of my pregnancy on blood thinners I had to inject myself with daily. I was induced at 39 weeks and had a healthy baby boy who at the end of next month will be 3!
If you are "pro-life" and think abortion is murder look into my son's eyes and tell him his mother is a murderer because she wanted to have a child when she was physically and mentally capable of caring for a child or because she chose not to continue a potentially fatal pregnancy. Thats him! Now this is the test from Jesus . Would you deny his right to live to save the fetuses that I aborted before him?
Think carefully before you vote to take away someone elses rights. This story could have been anyone you know. This story is true and is not as uncommon as you would believe. Don't judge people for having an abortion people don't do it for the hell of it and it's never a decision that is taken lightly nor is it an easy one to live with. Women who have abortions are not evil whores who murder babies. We are people the same as you.
*Edit* The procedure I had done in my second pregnancy is actually a Dilate and Curettage
