Slut Had It Coming

August 12, 2010

Posting this submission anonymously, as requested:

I am writing this in bed, while my beloved eight year old son, who passed out during the baseball game, sleeps beside me. His six year old brother is asleep in his bed across the hall. I love them more than I could ever articulate. I am who I am, because of them. I devote every day to being a better person so as to be an example to them. They are Alpha and Omega and I would do anything to see that they have everything they need and deserve.

Even have an abortion.

My husband, whom I’ve been with for more than a decade, is the veritable poster boy for the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” philosophy the Right loves to advocate for. Working three and four jobs through college, he slept only four hours a night for years and years. After earning his teaching degree he immediately went to work in the inner city, hoping to make more of an impact there than in our middle class suburbian world.

We lead a regular life. We coach sports, and own a tiny little home, and plant tomatoes, and volunteer for the PTO. We would have always led this life until our much loved home state of New Jersey elected a violently anti-education Republican Governor who promptly ripped a billion dollars from the state’s education budget. After years of service in the most dangerous city in the county, my husband was laid off unceremoniously.

And here we sit, scraping by on unemployment benefits, no health care, no jobs in sight. I can live with that. I’ve lived with worse. Until it dawned on me that I wasn’t feeling so hot. Sick and tired. I watched my whole world shift when I realized I was pregnant.

My husband and I have been using the same birth control for seven years, without fail. Now, at the worst possible time, we forced to make a choice entirely dictated by things out of our control. Money, health care, jobs. Things we couldn’t live without.

We had always planned to have another child. But how, in good conscience, could we choose that now? How could we tell our sons that food would be even more scarce, that even our frugality was too much. That there would no longer be money for soccer, or sneakers, or anything else. We couldn’t do that and expect to sleep at night.

The choice was heartbreaking. I confided in few, and regretted nearly all. No one seemed all that interested in writing me a check for my husband’s lost salary or coughing up health benefits. Apparently one day the sky may drop rainbows, puppies, and paychecks. But I’ve lived too long to believe that anymore. I begged and borrowed the money to terminate a pregnancy I would have preferred to keep. I bawled through most of the three hours in the clinic. I signed the papers with heavy sighs, and a heavy heart. Everyone has a limit. My family is at theirs.

At the clinic, they offer these paper hearts that patients can write on. Many patients chose to write notes to unborn babies. I wasn’t there. I won’t ever be. Instead I wrote this: Victim of NJ’s Education Cuts. Democrats might be the ones who are Pro-Choice, but republicans are the ones causing the abortions. I spend a lot of time trying to be tolerant of everyone. But I’m not so sure I will ever forgive them for this.

In the weeks following, I felt very alone. This blog was one of the few places I could read and feel understood. Before the termination, a person I trusted recommended a local counseling center. I declined making an appointment because I was struggling to leave my house at that point, much less make appointments. After the abortion, I looked into it further and realized it was a pregnancy crisis center, full of bullshit and lies and misinformation. I can’t remember the last time I felt so betrayed by anyone. I am so grateful to have not wandered in there.

I applaud what you do here. I am grateful to have people who see the gray between the black and white. Thank you for listening. I feel better having someplace to share, and yet can’t think of anywhere that is safe.

Those hearts women write on, at the clinic in Jersey. There is a book that holds hundreds of them on a shelf. I flipped through it just outside the operating room, while I was debating ducking out the back door. It read “If you’ve made it this far, you’re going to be alright”. I’m going to keep on believing that.

I’m almost back to being myself again, slowly rising from the fog of depression. I’m back to being a wife, and mom, and PTO member. It’s not easy and not without sadness. I have a follow up appointment tomorrow and am counting on not going to pieces. I do not believe I am blameless or that the pregnancy was a ball of cells. I just believe that my living, breathing, smiling sons trump the other. I’ve made it this far. I’ll be alright.

Thank you for giving me permission to post this. I’m so sorry for your loss, and I hope sharing your story helps. It certainly helps the rest of us who have faced or will face similar decisions someday, and it helps combat anti-choicers’ ideas of who “the kind of women who have abortions” actually are.

And I just wanted to add: You ARE blameless in this. You’ve made a hard decision out of love for your sons and your family; there’s no blame in that. If, one day, one of your boys comes to you and said, “Mom, I had to make a difficult choice between two things I didn’t want to do, and though I don’t like it, I did the thing I thought was best,” you’re going to react with love, and compassion, and empathy—blame’s going to be the furthest thing from your mind. Extend that same understanding to yourself. You deserve it.

Be well, and, when you’re ready, be happy. Good luck.

8:35am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZXftPyuBbFc

(Notes: 263)