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The Darkest Day of My Life
Eight years ago, when I was sixteen, I became pregnant by my best friend's brother. I wasn't even thinking about abortion, but on the "advice" of friends ("It'll ruin your life!") and pressures of family and my doctor, I caved in, feeling there was no other way out of my situation.
I had the abortion at 17 weeks at an Atlanta clinic. It was terrible and traumatic. It was the darkest day of my life. No one had told me I would feel this way: guilty, sad, full of despair. Abortion had always been described as a simple, empowering, "liberating" experience by pro-choice feminists; a proper and respectable thing to do.
I didn't feel any of those things. I had let strangers tear out a part of me for money. I felt like garbage. The thing is, I was never counseled on the procedure, risks, or any other options available to me. No one asked me if abortion was what I wanted. To this day, I don't even know the doctor's name who performed the abortion!
This is the extent of the ignorance I was kept in. I have often wondered why people who supposedly cared about me kept me as ignorant as possible. I was sixteen, scared and vulnerable, and they took full advantage of my naivete.
"Pro-choice" implies there is more than one option, but the only option pro-choicers defend is abortion. Because abortion is often portrayed as the preferred choice, society pressures a girl or woman into a decision that is more theirs than hers. This is the heartache - a great majority of the time the "choice" isn't hers.
Thank you, Feminists for Life, for helping women see that pro-life is pro-choice, in that giving life is giving choices. There is no choice in the destruction of life.
Rachel
Reprinted from The American Feminist, Fall, 1995 E-mail this page to a friend
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