Jenny’s Story

Dear Amy,

I’ve spent the day trying to articulate my thoughts around the latest threats to reproductive healthcare access and I keep coming back to the miserable six weeks I spent pregnant in high school. It’s a story I never hesitate to share whenever the topic comes up, but I’ve never written about it. In light of the possibility of the overturning of Roe v Wade, I feel compelled to do so. It feels like the only thing I know how to do.

Thirty-two years later the helplessness and darkness of those weeks are visceral. Being dead seemed like a viable option, one which I pondered constantly. Also high on the list of things that felt like options were throwing myself down a set of stairs, ingesting bleach, or starving the embryo from my body. The $200 I needed to get an abortion; the time off of school; the locating of a clinic or getting myself there; all of these relatively simple things seemed insurmountable to my teenage self.

What wrenched me out of this dark abyss were supportive friends and trusted adults. I eventually told my dad who, with his characteristic kindness, asked me what I wanted to do. When I told him I wanted to have an abortion, he found a clinic, made an appointment, paid the money, and drove me to my safe, legal medical procedure.

When we pulled into the parking lot, a crowd of people stood in the litter-strewn grass, wielding signs like weapons with bloodied babies and fiery slogans. By law, they had to remain at a distance (this was in the aftermath of anti-abortion tactics like clinic bombings, arson, and murder), but there was no distancing their loud and condemning voices. “Your baby has a heartbeat” “Don’t kill your baby!” “Abortion is Murder!”

Luckily, my dad has a loud voice, too. “Go to hell!” he yelled back before ushering me quickly through the heavy front door of the clinic.

I have thought about these terrible weeks every time a newly restrictive law further dismantles access to abortion; I imagine a girl like me, stewing in that terror and shame where death or self-harm seem like options. I imagine all of the teens less resourced than me, the ones without trusted adults in their lives, without money; the ones who live in states without abortion providers.

Every person who is pregnant and doesn’t want to be, deserves access to an abortion regardless of why they are in their situation. The story of how I got pregnant is one for another time and place, but suffice it to say, my pregnancy would not have fallen under the “except in cases of…” rhetoric. What I do want to shout out loud is that if cis men had to bear, in their bodies, the consequences of irresponsible decisions around sex the way those of us with uteruses do, they’d be giving out abortions for free at the corner store.