I've suffered immense physical and emotional trauma from this experience
I had a surgical abortion 3 weeks ago. I was 14 weeks pregnant. That may make me sound like a monster, but the reason that it was that late is that I wanted to continue the pregnancy and fought like hell to do so against my boyfriend and his parents. But I am 21, taking 19 credits both semesters at school to graduate on time and I am alone. He is from England and is finishing up school 5½ hours away only to return to England in December. I was exhausted.
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I told them that I didn't want to have the abortion but I went anyway because I felt like I didn't have any other options. He broke up with me once I told him that I was going to have an abortion like he wanted because I was too tired to go on.
I went to have the abortion alone. During the time, I sat in Planned Parenthood for 3½ hours, was drugged with anti-anxieties until everything seemed like a dream. They funneled women in and out of that room.
I went into the room with the doctor and the two nurses and was so sedated that I didn't know what was going on. The doctor didn't tell me what he was doing and all I remember is the pain. It didn't seem like too long into the procedure and I told the doctor to "please stop". I didn't want to go through with it. He didn't and now my baby is gone forever.
After the procedure was finished, everyone disappeared and I was lying on the table. I threw up repeatedly and only one nurse came back for me. I had flashbacks of the procedure for a few weeks.
Almost three weeks after the procedure I began hemorrhaging and had to go to the ER where they subsequently sent me into emergency surgery because I was bleeding out from the abortionist leaving "tissue" (parts of my baby) inside of me and the amount of tissue left was to the extent where my body couldn't get rid of it "naturally".
Nothing is natural about abortion. Nothing normal has occurred since that experience. I had the surgery almost a week ago. I'm still bleeding. I still feel the pain. They told me that the abortion would be a quick, 15-minute procedure and that I would return to my normal life following the procedure. That was a lie.
They lied several times to me, and probably countless other women. I went to the initial appointment with my ex-boyfriend when I was at 9 weeks because he made me. When they performed the ultrasound, the nurse told me that they didn't typically look for a heartbeat because it wasn't fully formed at that point.
The next day, I was hospitalized for a kidney infection and the OB did a live ultrasound and I saw the heartbeat with my own eyes. It was definitely there and there is no way that it magically developed in less than 24 hours.
They then advertised Ativan as a pain management medication. Ativan is used only for anxiety. I had no pain management during the abortion operation. They were negligent in not scheduling follow-up care and I walked around for two weeks while my condition worsened without my knowing.
I did call them several times and although they did respond to my calls, they did not recommend a follow-up. I worry that other women who have gone to the same Planned Parenthood that I did may have experienced the same thing.
Most women go directly to the ER when things like that happen instead of returning to Planned Parenthood. Because of this, PP's statistics are greatly skewed. Moreover, following my emergency procedure last week, I called the PP that I had gone to and explained everything. The manager apologized and told me that what happened to me only occurred in very extreme/rare cases. I asked her for a statistic and she said, I quote, "only 1 in 1500 women" will experience the hemorrhaging that I had.
Despite all of that misinformation, the thing that actually infuriates me is the fact that I told that doctor to stop and he did not. I just watched the movie "Blue Valentine," and in the scene where Michelle Williams' character goes to have an abortion, a. the abortionist tells her exactly what he is doing to her body while he is doing it, I did not have that and b. when she tells him to stop he respectfully does so and leaves the room.
I have suffered immense physical and emotional trauma from this experience and will have to deal with this for the rest of my life. Although I want to be "pro-choice" and support a woman's "right" to select what to do with her body, I find it very difficult to do so now because I am convinced that abortion doesn't make us equal to men but that it only gives men yet another tool to use to control/manipulate women and their decisions.
Maybe I am just weak. I don't know. I hope with every fiber of my being that another woman that is in the situation that I was in will read this story and be stronger than I could have been. The regret and pain stay with you for your lifetime, the only thing that you can do is learn how to live with it. That is what I am trying to do now.
You can find similar stories using these links:
- surgical abortion stories
- stories of abortion at 14 weeks
- Planned Parenthood abortion stories
- US abortion stories