When I discovered that I was pregnant, my immediate concern was how I could stop being pregnant as soon as possible. I had consistently denounced the prospect of motherhood – or at least of myself as mother – since I was a child. As a twenty-six-year-old student who had recently broken up with and tentatively resumed ongoing relations with a currently overseas boyfriend, I was not in a comfortable position to change my perspective on the matter.
Despite their awareness of my position, my close friends and family each reacted with an assumed certainty of my emotional turmoil produced by the supposedly life-altering and heartbreaking decision regarding whether to progress with or terminate the pregnancy. The mere implication that decision-making was required was alien to me. The decision had been made long ago and reiterated on numerous occasions. At the prompting of friends, I nonetheless examined the possibilities associated with each course of action so that I could make an ethically informed and autonomous decision.
Terminating the pregnancy was not life-altering, it was life-affirming – an expression of my commitment to the path that I am already treading. Following an extended period of feeling adrift and directionless in the wake of a major relocation, contemplating the disruption of a pregnancy carried to term enabled me to recognise the roots I have developed and aspirations I have fostered within this new life.
Were I a mother in one year from now, I would be sacrificing the continuity of my social work studies, my capacity to work, my freedom to pursue my hobbies and interests without regard for a dependent human life for whom I would be responsible. To reject pregnancy was to accept myself, though I acknowledge the opposite may be true for others.
I sought medical advice and was again met with the narrative of ‘a difficult decision’. Though I was equipped with determination for termination, I was plagued by others’ insistence that this was supposed to be an emotional event associated with loss, regret, and despair. It gave me the opportunity to realise the value of a professional who listens to the person they are supporting before assuming their experience, a practice that is often cited in my social work studies.
I took the medication that would cause my uterus to contract and expel the pregnancy tissue, and waited to feel horrified by the process that would ensue. I cramped, I went to the bathroom, I observed bloody clots leave my body, and I felt relief. Following two weeks of nausea and fatigue, then days of anticipation of the pain that may be associated with termination, I was empty and okay.
I don’t know if I’m empty in a more profound sense, in that I didn’t experience any significant emotional distress when ending the potential life that I had harboured for seven weeks. I don’t know if the ease with which I progressed through this supposedly harrowing process speaks to an absence of the makeup that should comprise the human character. As is my wont, I quietly transgressed the social norm with a written confession the only evidence of my deviation.
View Kid 