In 2013, I was eighteen turning nineteen when I married my ex-husband and planned for a pregnancy. The one thing I was sure of growing up was my desire to be a mother. We were fortunate – I became pregnant almost immediately. We celebrated those two pink lines and I dreamed of baby names, tiny shoes and the life I had always wanted.
Then, week six came. I barely had time to celebrate this exciting moment in my life before it was turned upside down. While many women experience nausea and some degree of “morning sickness”, I developed what some people have referred to as “morning sickness on steroids”. Throwing up over thirty times a day and unable to keep food or water down, my husband took me to the San Diego Women’s Hospital. I was provided with intravenous fluids, medical-grade nausea medication and a diagnosis: Hyperemesis Gravidarum. Broken down, hyperemesis means excessive vomiting and gravidarum means death. A majority of women throw up so much from this condition they end up dying. Those who do not die typically cannot work, have a PICC line to provide the nutrients they cannot keep down, are hospitalized for most of the pregnancy, suffer organ and muscle mass loss or other severe consequences such as a torn esophagus.
I went back to my small town in New York, faced with a tumultuous split from my husband, unsure of what to do. The nausea medication worked for maybe a week before I was back to throwing up constantly. I became weak and my thrown up bile turned black. Five weeks after I first became sick, I was on the verge of psychosis from constant starvation and dehydration. A doctor at the hospital in my town informed me my organs were beginning to shut down and I needed to seek an abortion or I would die. There was no possibility of me making it to a viable point in my pregnancy, I was facing death by the end of my first trimester.
When I think of abortion, I do not think of the women who have abortions to better their lives, to put themselves in a more stable situation, to avoid unwanted motherhood. These women should be allowed to choose for themselves – all women should be. No, when I think of abortion, when I think of the “baby killer” rhetoric, the inherent shame – I think of women like me. I think of women saved by an option they didn’t want to have. I think of the babies I should have with me and the ages they would be at this exact moment in time. In all moments in time. I think of the family and communities who shamed me, the conversations that make a horrible experience even more unbearable. Lastly, I think of two words – I’m sorry. I’m sorry I let my babies down. I’m sorry I physically do not have the ability to be a mother. I’m sorry.