Underwood - May Cause Love

From: Courtney

To: Kassi

Date: July 9, at 10:28 pm EST

Subject: How can I get past this?

Hi Kassi,

Im a college freshman and had an abortion three weeks ago. I was Googling places to tell my story, and there arent any. I read your newspaper article, which led me to your website. I dont have anyone else to talk to about it, mostly because Im scared of what they will say. My mother had an abortion many years ago, but she doesnt understand why Im struggling after mine. Im always depressed, and there is nothing I can do to stop it. I dont regret my abortion, but Im, like, what if I didnt have to do it? Its not religious guilt. Im an atheist. Im a strong person, but I feel like Im not strong enough to get past this. You said you got through it. You became stronger. I want to know how.

From: Kassi

To: Courtney

Date: July 10, at 11:11 am EST

Subject: Re: How can I get past this?

Dear Courtney,

I am so glad you emailed me.

In 2004, when I was nineteen years old and eight weeks pregnant, I searched the Internet for somebody who seemed reasonably normal and qualified to tell me that I could feel okay again after my abortion. I had read the statistic that approximately one in three American women will terminate a pregnancy in her lifetime, but I wasnt aware of a single person in my home state of Kentucky who ever had. When I searched the shelves of my college library for a memoir that might help, I found personal accounts of sex addiction, daddy issues, and scandalous European love affairs, but not abortion. So I get how trippy it is to be surrounded by a community thats both everywhere and nowhere. I remember brushing my teeth the night before my appointment, feeling nauseated and exhausted, thinking about the embryo gaining momentum inside of me, still wishing there was a woman I could talk to. I didnt find her, at least not back then, so I had to become her.

I talked about my abortion all the time. I told businessmen seated on the next barstool. Classmates, librarians, gas station attendants. I backpacked through Italy, Austria, Spain, and France and found people like you and me everywhere. I even kept in touch with my ex-boyfriend, the semi-father, though he and I lived thousands of miles apart by then.

On the third anniversary of my abortion, he sent me an email to let me know he had a girlfriend and that she was six months pregnant with their child. He named his daughter Jade, the same name Id suggested for the baby he and I didnt have. Dressed in a pencil skirt and high heels, I walked to the office bathroom and collapsed in a heap on the floor. I thought, F*ck. Him. I thought, I could have had the baby after all. I thought, Please quit crying and stand up before someone finds you here.

I was twenty-two. I finally had what I thought it took to raise a child: A College Degree. A Handle on My Drinking. House Plants. My ex and his girlfriend had become pregnant in a situation that bore a striking resemblance to ours: they didnt have bachelors degrees or sobriety or a home, butthis is what changed everything for methey had the baby anyway. So I had to ask myself the same question you asked me (perhaps rhetorically): what if I didnt have to terminate my pregnancy?

Over the next three years, I tried to ignore the question. I curled up in bed, eating canned salmon, rich in omega-3 fatty acids known to fight depression. My brain started attacking me. I thought about trying to meditate. I blared Access Hollywood instead. On paper, I had the life Id had in mind when I deferred motherhoodcomfortable salary, fancy business card, cross-country moves, dates with weirdosbut it hadnt delivered on the promise of fulfillment. The right side of my face bloomed with cystic acne, induced by secret rage. I routinely pulled over on the side of the road to double over with my head between my legs during spells of free-floating abortion panic. Nightmares of children invaded my sleep.

I told no one that I was suffering, even though I wasnt ashamed of my abortion. Lots of my friends had told me theyd terminated pregnancies in high school or college or even yesterday morning. I never hid mine, not for one day, but I did hide my thoughts and feelings about it.

Here was the good news: if Id had a free choice about whether to keep my accidental pregnancy, then I also had the agency to create what I needed now. A road map for recovery.

I read personal essays by people in our abortion club and noticed a unifying theme: most writers included A Disclaimer on My Status of Regret and A Final Word on Relief. Everyone was either relieved or regretful. These two emotions did not appear together in one account, let alone in one person. It seemed like a conspiracy in which millions of women were bound to an implicit social contract to match their emotion to a political persuasion. Pro-life advocates argued that nobody should have a choice because some people wished theyd continued their pregnancies. There is no shame in regret. Theres no shame in regretting an irreversible decision a person is forced to make during a time crunch imposed by the law and ramped up by ones own biology.

Pro-choice advocates quoted the old adage: most women feel relieved. Its true. Some people dont have even a mild aftershock after a termination. Maybe your mother is one of them. But to feel relieved, by definition, means you have only a temporary break in a generally tense or tedious situation. I relished my relief; it was exhilarating while it lasted.

I felt personally indebted to the warriors for reproductive justice. Because of them, I wasnt forced to give birth or to seek a back alley abortion. But the community I adored, in which I sought refuge and friendship, who I defended at cocktail parties in the Bible Belt, could not fully comprehend depression around abortion. A feminist priest laughed through her nose when I admitted I needed to heal. She sincerely thought I was joking. At a pro-choice panel, an activist suggested that the only people struggling after abortion were women who bought into religious shame. The audience broke into a spontaneous applause.

Depression feels like numbness, like nothingness, like your mind is not your own, but maybe a small part of why youre depressed is because youre onto something. The cultural lunacy around abortion is depressing.

But culture wasnt entirely to blame.

Life led me to the door of a tunnel after my abortion. Instead of facing down the dark, I sat at the opening and drank. I fell in lust with lots of guys on the wrong side of the tunnel. I meditated and traveled and got super busy. Sometimes I said, Tunnel? What tunnel? Sometimes I psychoanalyzed: This reminds me of a tunnel from childhood.