Funeral for an Abortion

I'm just going to get into it here. Reader discretion is advised. There's a few new posts that are lighter and fluffier (about cancer and discrimination but a lighthearted perspective nonetheless), so you might just want to scroll past this one. Especially if you haven't had your breakfast yet.

I think having an abortion is a really sad event, and I worry that many people don't want to acknowledge that because of the guilt, politics and secrecy that surround the issue as a whole. Aborting an embryo is a choice made, but it's not a choice a woman makes to cause her own misfortune, rather it's a choice to take the least offensive path. Having made that choice doesn't forfeit a woman's right to feelings of anger, grief, or sadness nor does it forfeit a right to sympathy and comforting.

Politically, fear of adding fuel to the anti-abortion movement's fire might deter women from acknowledging any negative reactions to the experience. A woman who feels relief is a heartless killer, but if she feels loss and regret, she's a traitor to the pro-choice movement. This no win situation can be easily overcome with our limitless compassion. To some, abortion is a removal of a few cells, like removing a tumor that can destroy your life; so of course it's a relief. To others, abortion is a loss, so why shouldn't it feel like one. There's plenty of room for myriad reactions to the experience which shouldn't make it any less of a viable option for women everywhere.

Embarrassment is another roadblock to coping. Having an abortion means people might judge you as a fuck-up. Haven't you heard of birth control? Of course you have, and maybe it didn't work, or maybe it wasn't in properly, or you missed a pill, or you forgot this time, or whatever. It doesn't matter. As I wrote in a previous post, having sex shouldn't be a punishable act. Getting caught up in the moment shouldn't be seen as a crime. An unwanted pregnancy is a difficult situation to work through, and judgment and condemnation don't help. And, like Audre Lorde says, "Your silence will not protect you....We can sit in our corners mute forever,...and we will still be no less afraid." Let's not do that, please.

I had an abortion and wrote about it in a journal immediately afterward. Then, months later, I cultivated a ritual to help me cope with my loss. I'll share these here for anyone interested. I found the ritual really helpful. If you know of anyone who could use help getting to the other side of this, please pass it on. If this is totally creeping you out, then don't read any further. You've been warned.

An abortion is just a ten minute procedure, less time than it takes to conceive (hopefully), but it can have lasting repercussions if not acknowledged sufficiently. For some people, trying to pretend it didn't happen or just getting on with life can come back to bite them in the butt years later when their sub-conscious decides it's time to deal.

I'm sharing my abortion experience because not many do. I've read countless birthing stories, and stories of loved ones dying, but haven't yet happened across an abortion story. Ending an unwanted pregnancy is an unfortunate event, but not a crime (here and now) or anything to be ashamed of. When I went to my appointment, I had no idea what I'd be in for. Some forewarning would have been nice. I've told this story publicly and performed the ritual for small audiences a few times. I hate secrets; they weigh down on you, and you end up dragging them along for years not even realizing how heavy they've become until you start letting them go. Then, oh my god, how good it feels to get them all out of there, and let them float away.

***
Straight from my journals...

It is November 9th, 1990. Walking down the street, my boyfriend of eight years resists my hand, so I use it to clutch myself, to contain the nausea enhance by a necessary empty stomach. We are shivering, partly from nervousness, but mainly because we've been instructed to leave our coats in the car. No coats or purses in the clinic. Ahead there is a picket line to cross. Five or six men and women with signs chant slogans. As I lead the way through their swinging arms and legs and make it to the cement steps of the clinic, a middle-aged woman touches my arm gently and pleads with me, "Don't do it, honey. Please. Just turn around." The contact is welcome; the message is not. I wouldn't be here at the doorway if I hadn't thought this thing through. Does she think I'm stupid? I'm trapped in a bad situation with few choices, but it's clear to me this is the best one I've got.

Entering the building, he and I, we find ourselves in a small foyer empty but for an intercom, a mall slot in the wall, and a video camera watching our every move. I push the button on the intercom. A tray is pushed out of the slot, and we are instructed to put our I.D. on the tray. A buzzer sounds, and we are released from the cries of judgment and the whir of traffic outside. There's a certain level of excitement to the barricade at the door. I'm in the big city for an afternoon, and this is like a speakeasy or a spy mission, except it's not.

The waiting room is bright and sunny, full of plants and living room furniture. Several people are reading, lounging on the couches. It could be a book club meeting, but no one speaks. At the far end of the room there are several closed doors and a set of stairs leading upwards. He takes a seat while I exchange $200 cash for a pile of forms to complete. Sitting beside him, I begin to check the box beside "common law" on the first page when he interjects, "Wrong. You're single."
I answer question after question, many repeated in different words. The nurse interrupts me to take a blood test. In a dimly lit, tiny room she describes what will happen to me and asks if I am relaxed and okay with the procedure. "If you're relaxed you won't need anesthetic , and you'll recover much faster." I insist I am just fine, no worries in the world. The nurse pricks my finger more than once, slightly annoyed that she can get nothing through my think skin. Finally a tiny red drop appears. It will have to do.

I return to my forms but am soon interrupted again. Through a different door I am ordered to remove all my clothes, except my sock, and wait on the table in a standard issue gown. The doctor comes in to do an ultrasound. He greets me without making eye contact. The gel is ice-cold on my skin. Wearing rubber gloves to rub the machine's wand on my belly, he gets an image on the monitor, which is facing the table, and I see the fetus clearly. "Nine weeks." He hands me some tissues and leaves me to clean up.

The nurse does not return me to the forms. It doesn't seem to matter that they were left incomplete; perhaps the reams of paper were just a tool to distract me. Instead I am escorted up the stairs. My boyfriend may not come with me, and I don't see him again for hours. Half-way up the stairs the odors hit me, and my heart starts beating audibly. At the top, lazy-boy chairs line one wall of this waiting/recovery room. Several women are reclining beneath blankets with closed or groggy eyes. The silence is terrifying. I sit on the edge of a chair to wait my turn. Sitting with all those recovering women, no one tells me what it's like. No one warns me or suggests how to cope through it. No comrades in arms here; we are each invisible to one another. I'm trembling. I'm given Tylenol to choke down.

I am taken over the final threshold into a room crowded with equipment, two nurses, the doctor, and a heavy stench of blood. I am helped up on the table. Feet in stirrups, bottom never close enough to the end of the table, I try to convince myself I'm just getting a routine pap smear. I told them I was relaxed, so now I have to be, somehow. It's just a ten minutes procedure, just ten minutes of my life. Standing above me, looking down at me, the three of them don their masks to begin.

The doctor shines a light between my legs which hits me in the eyes whenever I try to see what he's doing. He begins to dilate the cervical opening, and the pain shoots up my spinal cord and down my legs. I writhe and kick as my whole body screams, "Violation!". The doctor starts yelling at the nurses who use their entire body weight to hold me down. He begins to scrape my uterine walls with a gritty, scratching noise, but the suction machine drowns out my gasps. Hyperventilating, I fight with a nurse who continues to try to keep an oxygen mask on my face. I begin to vomit, but he's almost done, so he continues while the nurses keep my lower end still as my stomach convulses.

A shaken, defeated version of my former self is helped from the table to my assigned lazy-boy. I lie very still for hours before they let me leave. Checking myself for bleeding first, as required, I'm stunned there is no blood. I pull myself together to descend the stairs. He has pulled the car around, and as we walk out the back door I realize that, for the first time in weeks, I don't feel nauseous.

***
That was 16 years ago, and I hope nobody performs abortions without anesthetic anymore. In the back of my head I can hear protesters say, "I hope they do." The anti-abortion types that want women to suffer don't make any sense to me. It's not pro-life to hope someone, anyone, experiences pain. It's not pro-life to trap a woman into depending on a dead-beat boyfriend for years. What kind of life is that for anybody?

And for years now, in Ontario, we don't have to pay cash anymore. It's covered by Medicare. Jealous much?

I worry that some anti-abortion nut will use my words out of context to justify their fight, but I'm not worried enough to stop. Abortion, even in the best clinics, isn't a cake walk. It's a hard thing to go through. It takes a courage that should be rewarded, not condemned. You survived another crappy bit of this life, yah. We can acknowledge that it's hard, but maintain it as a necessary option.

For me, the abortion act needed to be acknowledged and mourned in some manner. I'm not a "new-agey," touchy-feeling kind of person at all, and ritual work doesn't have to be like that. Put your skepticism on hold for a minute. Here's how I came out the other side of the event (again from my journals):

***
Someone who should have been born is gone. (Anne Sexton, "The Abortion")

It is June 6th, 1991, my due date, but I'm no longer due. Walking into the maple forest behind the house I lived in as a child, my backpack is weighing heavily on my shoulders. Finding a small clearing in this sacred space of mine I tidy up somebody's empty beer cans before unpacking. First comes the perennial and the candles, gingerly balanced together at the top of the pack in a slightly squashed peach basket, handle removed. Next comes the Cool Whip tub which has made a nest for itself in the bed sheets that must be struggled out of the pack. Finally my folding shovel escapes as I shake out the last of the sheets.

I arrange the three candles and light them, though the morning sun is already dappling through young leaves. I untape the Cool Whip tub and dip a finger in the water contained there, then cross myself. A warm breeze steals the drop of moisture from my forehead. Opening the shovel to its full length, I begin to dig. The ground is moist but packed under my bare feet. I hit tree roots long before I expect to - I only hope to dig down three feet or so - and the digging becomes an arduous struggle. Now I'm on my knees digging with my hands determined to make a place for myself without harming any roots. The candles are rearranged and rearranged again each time they get in the way of my work. Negotiating with the earth and trees, I resign myself to taking some of the sheets back with me, to be thrown out instead.

I pick up an edge of the worn linens we conceived on and start to rip. With each tear I shout out attacks on him, myself, and the world. I'm angry at him for his unrealistic promises! I'm angry at him for agreeing that it's a good idea, then insisting he never said that, he never wanted me to do it! I'm angry he refused to share the burden of this decision, but left it all with me! I'm angry at myself for not having the foresight to get everything in writing! I'm angry at myself for putting school ahead of a life, for putting me first! I'm angry at life for putting me in this situation, for not presenting other options! I leave some of the shreds in the pit I've made.

More supplies come from my back pocket. I use my pocket-knife to stab and shred the diaphragm that was useless to me. The wire edge of the gadget won't break despite my efforts a bending it back and forth. I relent and allow it to remain intact, a perfect circle nestled amid the strips of cloth in the hole. Leftover jelly squeezed on top completes a satisfying mess.

I roll up the rest of the sheet remnants and wrapped into a bundle I cradle in the crook of my arm. Instinctively rocking, I tell the bundle how so very sorry I am for cutting its life so short. I confess that no matter who may have encourage me in this direction, the final choice was mine alone. I chose to do this. I wanted its life to end. I promise the unborn child sincerely that I will love and care for it if it can return to me in a different state or at a different time. I hold it dearly and tell it how I've longed ot hold it, to smell it, to call it by name, Emily maybe or Joshua. I tell it that I miss never being able to have seen it, to know what he and I look like combined. I nuzzle the bundle to my cheek and kiss its soft, warm forehead. I don't know who you are, but I miss you. The dense forest of trees envelops me, the only audience to my tears, some dripping off my jaw and others bringing moisture to the word "good-bye" uttered softly to my almost-first little love.

I gently lay the tiny bundle into the peach basket. Releasing the basket in the hole in the earth, I hear the words, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" escape my mouth. I give myself some time before using my hands to cover the tiny casket with dirt. As I bury it, I bury my anger with it telling the trees that I forgive him. He was just doing what he needed to do to cope with this hideous situation. I forgive myself as well. I did what I needed to do, and I don't regret my decision. From my front pocket I dig out a black hair ribbon which I will wear until the grief leaves the forefront of my being.

The shovel fills in the rest of the hole, save for a dent for the perennial. As I plant the flower I talk of finishing school, of being able to finance myself instead of depending on him for allowance money, of the children I will have in future when the time is right, once I'm on solid ground, once I am solid ground, when I'm better able to support and nourish their growth.

I use the tub of water to wash the dirt from my hands and the tear stains from my face, then pour it on my trillium. This forest is full of trilliums. Next year I probably won't be able to recognize this one form the others. They will all take on a special nuance. Blooming only every seven years, even if this one isn't in bloom, others will be. It is a perfect triad, lily white, yet it grows wild without intent, against all odds, so long as no one rips it prematurely from its home in the ground.

***
What I value in the rite above is that this forest funeral speaks to me. The actions and symbols are in my bones; they resonate within me. Cultivating a rite involves mixing symbols, actions, and words that have a personal intensity to them. Rituals are effective because this mix of activities and ideas somehow gets to a deeper part of the brain than just words alone. One theory is that physical exertion puts people in a mind space that's more open to suggestion. Therapy can help in addition to ritual, but I find that talking alone doesn't affect me to the same degree as in conjunction with ritual.

I dealt with each stage of the grieving process one at a time with actions that could bring it to a head: To handle numbing, write it all down. To encourage rage and anger, break stuff, shred bedsheets, smash eggs, burn something. I think destruction within safe boundaries is highly underrated; it can help fuel the fires of strong feelings allowing these reactions to eventually burn themselves out. Making the event real encourages those feelings of guilt, shame and remorse; this is aided with a creation of a symbol of a baby to apologize to, perhaps out of clay, blankets, or even a teddy bear in child's clothes. Grief and despair come when we feel comforted. How often have you been able to fight back tears just fine until someone put an arm around you and burst your dam? Comfort yourself by holding, rocking, or singing to the baby symbol. Confession and apology are useful tools to resolve guilt. Forgiveness and acceptance come with a release of the baby symbol in a meaningful way, in a casket to be buried, or maybe on a raft to be floated away. Finally, to feel renewal, find a way to celebrate life by planting a tree, blowing bubbles, flying a kite. Choose something form the rite to keep to remember it by.

At each stage I asked myself questions to further get to the core of the feelings: What are all the reasons I decided to abort? What did my partner, my friends, and myself do to make me angry around this? Can I apologize to the unborn? Can I confess the decision, the act? What will I miss not ever having now because of the abortion? How will I forgive myself and others? What will it take to accept this situation? How can I say good-bye to this almost baby? How have I grown out of all this? and finally, What can I do now that I couldn't if I had continued this pregnancy?

I emphasize that a ritual like this needs to be personal and timely. Burial is not only something I understand as funeral, the idea of death nurturing new life biologically, that cyclical nature of life and death, is comforting to me. If a woman feels that all is well and fine, then a funeral at this time may be merely a surface treatment . A funeral can be done later, ever years later, when memories can be evoked from their safe hiding place in the psyche.

Rituals do not only affect the participants and observers, small steps towards healing can have a radical impact on the rest of society if the affect they have on the individuals involved ripples outward endlessly. Rituals provide a safe place to rage and wail while performing symbolic activities that can bring some closure to a devastating experience. Abortion is a hard route, but it doesn't have to be a shameful one. The bereavement grief due to this loss may be made easier without guilt and secrecy blocking the way.