The experience was an all-consuming pain

When a woman contemplates abortion, all of the traumas in her life ricochet inside of the life growing inside of her body -Iyanla Vanzant Not long after the assault, Marques and I started dat- ing. A couple of weeks later, I felt so dizzy in the morn- ings that one day, I fell on the couch. I was throwing up every morning, but my mother still made me go to school. On the weekends, I stayed in my room and only came out to eat or use the bathroom. I had stopped doing my homework, and my grades slipped during the second half of my sophomore year in high school. Sascha has changed since the first half of the semester, my teacher wrote on my progress report. One day, my aunt Tanisha bought me a preg- nancy test. I took it and it was positive. Seeing those two lines appear on a pregnancy test was admittedly one of the most life-changing moments a woman could have. “You promise you won’t say anything to my mom, right?” I asked, as Aunt Tanisha was leaving. “I promise,” she said. “But you need to tell her.” But I didn’t tell my mom or anyone else and became isolated by the secret. At fifteen years old, I didn’t know anything about taking care of a baby, and I was downright scared. At the time, my mother was pregnant with my little brother, Jonathan. If she could tell that I was pregnant too, she didn’t let me know it. Our relationship was awkward at best, and I was afraid to tell her because I didn’t know how she’d react, When my mom gave birth, I went to the hos- pital to visit her. Aunt Tanisha was there holding Jonathan, and when I got settled, she handed him to me. “You’re gonna have one of those soon,” she said, smiling My heart sank. I didn’t know why I trusted her to keep my secret. My mother had just given birth. She didn’t need to hear that her baby was having a baby. That night, my mother called me. “Are you pregnant?” she asked. I was a ball of nervous energy, and my heart felt like it was going to explode. “Yes,” I said. “Like hell you are! Do you know what this will do to this family?” The heaviness of her voice engulfed me. “You wait until I get home! My stupidity meant that I had to put my future on hold. While I thought my mother was a big- time hypocrite for yelling at me, I realized that even though she was sixteen when she had me, I didn’t think she expected that I’d follow in her footsteps. I know my mother heard my heartbroken wails, but she had been so disappointed in me that she couldn’t bring herself to comfort me. I could only compare her emotions to the initial shock of her finding out that someone close had died. In essence, that was what happened. My innocence had died, and it was difficult for my mother to understand that the girl who had to be reminded to clean her room—the one who panicked when she got on the wrong bus and who couldn’t cook-was the same girl who was going to be a mother. I couldn’t tell my mother that I was beginning to resent what was growing inside me. I was the only one out of my immediate friends who wasn’t a virgin anymore, and it was awkward. What would this baby look like? Would he or she have a charm- ing or goofy smile? Would he or she have my lips? A couple of days after my mother came home from the hospital, she, my other aunt, Janice, Marques, and I went to Planned Parenthood on Montague Street in Brooklyn. I couldn’t think straight that morning and fidgeted all the way to the clinic The only thing that broke the silence during the car ride was the sound of Ja Rule’s song “Put It on Me” playing on the radio, The silence of the waiting room was unnerving and made my blood as cold as the autumn air that crept through an open window. It gnawed at my insides. While waiting for a nurse to call my name, replayed all the moments that led to that moment. My mother’s husband saying that the house smelled like sex and catching Marques hanging from the bar in the front closet that afternoon. Our parents were scolding us in my mother’s living room. My mother was stating that she wanted to burn her bed. After some time, the nurse called me into an office. I filled out paperwork and gave a urine sam- ple that verified my pregnancy. I met with a coun- selor who explained the termination procedure. I did the math and figured I was about six months at that point. A couple of days after my mother came home from the hospital, she, my other aunt, Janice, Marques, and I went to Planned Parenthood on Montague Street in Brooklyn. I couldn’t think straight that morning and fidgeted all the way to the clinic The only thing that broke the silence during the car ride was the sound of Ja Rule’s song “Put It on Me” playing on the radio, The silence of the waiting room was unnerving and made my blood as cold as the autumn air that crept through an open window. It gnawed at my insides. While waiting for a nurse to call my name, replayed all the moments that led to that moment. My mother’s husband saying that the house smelled like sex and catching Marques hanging from the bar in the front closet that afternoon. Our parents were scolding us in my mother’s living room. My mother was stating that she wanted to burn her bed. After some time, the nurse called me into an office. I filled out paperwork and gave a urine sam- ple that verified my pregnancy. I met with a coun- selor who explained the termination procedure. I did the math and figured I was about six months at that point. “Now if you feel uncomfortable, you don’t have to go through with it,” she said. “T’ll be back in a minute.? When the counselor closed the door, my mother said, “You’d better do it and don’t act like something is wrong with you! Her voice was so cold I think I was more afraid of my mother than getting the abortion. When the counselor came back, she asked if I’d decided what to do. When I nodded, she reached into a bin next to her desk and handed me a hospital gown. Instead of staying with me through the procedure, my mother went back home to her husband and my brother. My aunt and Marques stayed behind in the waiting room. In the examination room, I lay on the table in an uncomfortable position. There was a hammer- ing noise. I cried out in fear. My mother should have been comforting me instead of the counselor. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay,” the coun- selor said. The nurse injected something into my IV line, and within seconds, I was knocked out. This was a traumatic moment in my life when I needed emotional support from my mom. I needed to know that I was loved, protected, and valued by my mother in my father’s absence, even if I had done something bad. I needed someone to talk to, someone who could help me navigate the terrain of my racing mind. I just wanted my mother to hold me in her arms and forgive me for the pain I caused both of us, but she couldn’t see past her anger and disappointment. Instead, she abandoned me just like my father had, and it hurt I resented my mother for leaving me at the clinic to fight all those feelings alone, but as a mature adult, I don’t feel it was intentional. Maybe she was ashamed of her inability and lack of desire to com- fort me. Maybe she was ashamed that her teenage daughter was pregnant. Maybe she thought my pregnancy was her fault. Would it have made a dif- ference if my stepfather had come into my life in my toddler years rather than when I was seven years old? I woke up on a brown recliner in the recovery room with seven other girls my age. Each of us was dressed in a pink paper dress and had a blanket over our legs. None of us tried to hide our tears-the situation was just too real. Our hearts were broken, We had aborted our babies so that everyone else could be happy. Perhaps these girls’ fathers wouldn’t love them the same, or their boyfriends threatened to leave. It may be called the recovery room, but other than the obvious, what were we expected to recover from? The repercussions of an abortion—the what ifs and the guilt-stay with a girl or a woman long after the procedure is over. Having an abortion is not empowering to all women; some are left emo- tionally broken, full of regret and guilt. The seven girls and I connected in that room.: We’d just endured the pain of future lives sucked from our wombs through plastic tubes and emptied into an oversized pickle jar covered with the same pink paper that was crumpled around our bodies felt for those girls, but I especially felt for the life that Id just removed from the safety of its first home as easily as I could remove a splinter. Abortion is a life-changing decision, but I know now that terminating the pregnancy was the respon- sible thing for me to do. My mother was trying to protect me from all that she’d had to endure as a teen mom. The decision my mother made for me was vital to my freedom, but with that freedom came the obligation to experience the sorrows, guilt, and regret of the abortion, the what ifs. Sometimes, it’s just too painful to be free. When I got home later that day, my mother didn’t ask me how I felt. Her silent treatment hung thick and heavy in the ait, like a quilt. Wherever I moved in the house, the silence followed, until my stepfather, George, cut the tension that night during dinner: “I saw Marques and his old girlfriend on Clifton Avenue,” he said. My food felt like sandpaper going down my throat. My breath came in short, painful gasps that left me dizzy and nauseated. There was a hollow feel- ing in my stomach that nothing could fill. I had just aborted our baby, and not even five minutes after my aunt had dropped Marques off, he betrayed me. I wanted to go in my room and pull the covers over my head and pass away into the darkness. The pain of going through the abortion alone was overwhelming, and I knew I could never do it again. The experience was an all-consuming pain; it suffocates you from the inside out until you’re just a shell of the person you used to be. Time may dull the emotional pain and the trauma, but it’ll never fully leave you.