I Was Shamed Into Lying About My Abortion
By: Jenny Lee Corvo
Tags: Shame, Lies, Human Parts, Pregnancy, Abortion

Photo by Volkan Olmez on Unsplash

But I’m ready to tell the truth in hopes it can help others do the same.

Stories are the glue that holds us all together. To hide your story is to be dishonest about the human experience. This dishonesty prevents not just you, but everyone around you from learning and growing. How can we expect to understand one another, to sympathize, and to expand our perceptions if we shrink our voices in shame or fear?

I consider myself a storyteller. I’ve stood on stages sharing my stories, and starting last year, I began publishing my stories for the entire world to see. But, there are stories that I’ve kept hidden away. I can’t continue to call myself a proponent of change, a cheerleader of the open mind, and an activist for progress if I keep my voice silent. Until today, my abortion story has been my miscarriage story. Out of shame and fear, I have lied about the results of my pregnancy in 2010. But I’ve realized how hypocritical my lie has been. Here’s the truth.

The circumstances surrounding my pregnancy were far from ideal.

My pregnancy wasn’t wanted, expected, or healthy. Every aspect of my life, including my romantic relationship, finances, job, housing, and mental health, was at its lowest point. The theatre company I worked for lost its funding in the recession. Unemployment, the only Federal resource I could get at the time, gave me $500 a month, which didn’t cover my expenses. So, I spent my weeks determining what was more important — food, electricity and water, or shelter. Often, I survived on bulk boxes of frozen corndogs just so I could avoid going homeless. The only rent I could afford was for a shared home infested with termites and covered in mold. The recession meant that no one was hiring, so eventually I made the decision to go back to school and budget my life off a federal student loan that I hoped I’d be able to pay back some day (9 years later, I’m still paying it back).

GTI (a nickname for anonymity) and I had the most intense, passionate, and chaotic relationship two people can have. We lived our lives with our chests ripped open, hearts exposed, soaking up all the pleasure and pain we could find. With no money and no ability to see a future, we were each other’s tether to reality. But that chain was fragile and rusted. Our relationship, despite the intense love we felt for one another, was unstable and tumultuous. A reflection of his bi-polar disorder and my PTSD, we swung back and forth between extremes. The year prior, he attempted suicide in my presence and was institutionalized for two weeks. Months after my pregnancy, I also landed in the psychiatric hospital for suicidal ideation. We were not good for each other, but we were all each other had.

I had unprotected sex that resulted in an unexpected pregnancy.

We sometimes had unprotected sex. I sacrificed healthy eating, transportation, and reasonable shelter just so I wouldn’t be homeless. Condoms didn’t always fit into the budget. Birth control was out of the question because legislation at the time prevented me from having health insurance, and I was unaware of any free resources available in the state of North Carolina. Abstinence shouldn’t even be a part of the conversation, so I won’t address why I, as an adult woman chose to have sex with someone I loved. To avoid pregnancy, we enacted the “pull-out” method. But, in April of 2010 I heard the dreaded word, “oops.” I rushed to the bathroom and did everything I could, but it was too late.

Weeks passed by, and I had forgotten about the incident. As I mentioned, I had returned to school to further my education, but also to survive. Between transportation logistics, my poor mental health, the chaos of my relationship, poverty, and the stress that comes with college, being pregnant wasn’t even on my radar. At some point, I realized that I had not menstruated in a while. Like most stressed out women in their 20s, my period was irregular, so being late didn’t ring any alarm bells until I was already weeks into my pregnancy.

With sore, enlarged breasts, nausea in the morning, and a sense of smell that felt like the worst superpower ever, I started to put the pieces together. Unable to afford a pregnancy test, I visited the health clinic at my college. The moment I found out about my pregnancy is fuzzy because as soon as the nurse said, “I don’t know what you wanted the result to be…,” I passed out. When I came to, the nurse was standing over me. She repeated the results, “It’s positive.” I burst into uncontrollable tears as my mind flooded with what pregnancy and motherhood would be like for me. I didn’t see anything happy or positive, but instead saw a child raised in utter poverty by two people who couldn’t care for themselves, much less another human. Raising a child to me meant voluntarily ruining someone’s life. What kind of monster would I be to willingly bring a child into my situation?

That night, I made dinner for GTI and then told him the news. He immediately threw up, cried and asked why I had fed him first. I told him I wanted him to have something nice before everything got awful. And it did get awful. Knowing we were under a time crunch, we spent the next few weeks trying to figure out what to do. We discussed every possibility imaginable and made plans for each. Ultimately, we decided to terminate the pregnancy.

Leading up to my decision to have an abortion, I considered all options.

This decision was the hardest decision I have ever had to make. It wasn’t spontaneous, and it didn’t come without exhausting every other option on the table. We visited Planned Parenthood to become educated about our choices. In that counseling session, we discussed continuing the pregnancy and having a child together, having a couple pay for my medical expenses and then adopting out the baby, and our options for medically or surgically terminating the pregnancy. While it was a great resource to have, we left the office feeling overwhelmed and hopeless. There was no good option. Nothing felt right, but we knew that indecision was still a decision.

Following through with the pregnancy and having a child was the last option on our list. I can’t speak for his reasoning, but for me, it felt abusive to bring a child into that relationship. I knew that GTI and I were not going to stop fighting. Those fights were verbally violent, and I couldn’t bare the thought of the emotional abuse the child would suffer. In hindsight, I see that this wisdom is out of place, but intuition told me that healing from PTSD is a process I couldn’t afford at the time. Children and babies are expensive, and I just didn’t see how I would ever heal if I had to raise a child. And the worst thing I could imagine was never healing my mental health and then causing a child suffering because of it. Of course, there were obvious financial and circumstantial reasons to avoid having a baby as well. There simply weren’t any signs pointing us towards being parents.

That left us with the decision to continue the pregnancy and adopt out or terminate. At first, we began the process of adoption. We took money that was going to go to food and put it towards an OB/GYN appointment to make sure the pregnancy was healthy. At six weeks into my pregnancy, all looked well. I started filling out forms to get applications for potential adoptive parents and spent a lot of time in the bookstore reading about pregnancy and childbirth. There was something surprisingly empowering about being pregnant. I discovered maternal parts of myself that I had never known before and with them came a sense of primal strength.

Adoption isn’t the dreamy alternative it’s made out to be.

The adoptive parents’ applications started to arrive in the mail by the dozens. I poured over each one, fascinated by the design and marketing. Some applications were simple, heartfelt letters, while others were entire books filled with pictures and stories. Each family shared why they desperately wanted a child and what they were willing to do to have one, and it quickly became an impossible decision. Moving from, “I am not capable of raising a child” to “I must now choose exactly how I want a child to be raised” was an awkward transition.

I reached out to a professor at school, who had started to feel like a mentor. Something inside her switched when I told her I was pregnant and confused. A single woman in her 40s, she stopped looking at me like a mentee and started to see me as her opportunity to be a mother. She thought her chance had come and gone, but to her, I was a gift from the gods of fate. It became an uncomfortable situation because I knew that I would disappoint her. GTI had also mentioned my pregnancy to his boss at the perfume store in the mall. He expressed that he and his partner wanted to become parents and that adopting to them might be the best option for everyone.

Adoption stories are often told from the view of the adoptive parents, not the mother giving birth to the child. It’s a sensitive topic, and because the stories seem to have happy endings, the beginnings are long forgotten. I was surprised to discover what the adoption process is really like on the birth mother’s side. We romanticize adoption as an excellent abortion alternative, but reality is much dimmer. My body was no longer my own. I had put it up for sale. When potential adoptive parents looked at me, they saw my body as the answer to their problems, and they were willing to pay any price. But the entire process lacked humanity. Behind the pretty brochures was the reality that my mistake was going to be their salvation, and in the process, I’d be submitting myself to a traumatic experience I wasn’t sure I could handle. I saw the future — eager parents-in-wait monitoring every decision I make while I grow and become attached to a life inside of me, only to then give that life to someone else. It didn’t feel like something I could emotionally handle after all.

I began to have complications with my pregnancy.

Then my pregnancy took a turn for the worst. Nine weeks in, I developed hyperemesis gravidarum, also known as the worst morning-day-and-night sickness imaginable. In the hospital I got an ultrasound for the first time and saw the growing fetus inside me. It was a surreal experience, but not the sappy emotional variety shown on television. Looking at the blurry peanut on the monitor, I didn’t see a baby or human life, but a funny-shaped mass that, given enough time, could potentially develop into life. I didn’t know it at the time, but this ultrasound would help me cope with the abortion I’d eventually choose.

As a young impoverished woman at a public hospital, I wasn’t shown a lot of respect by the medical staff. Retrieving my medical records years later, I discovered that a doctor evaluated my hormone levels, which were far too high. He noted that it was likely I was carrying multiples and would miscarry soon. It was shocking to read these words years after the trauma. I was sent home with a prescription for anti-nausea medication and instructions for keeping myself hydrated. No one mentioned the possibility that my pregnancy wasn’t healthy. I assumed I was overdramatizing my sickness. I thought, “maybe throwing up a dozen times a day is normal.” It wasn’t, and had that doctor spoken out loud what he wrote in those notes, it would have made the decision I was about to make much easier.

The pregnancy continued, unbeknownst to all my closest friends and family. The nausea and vomiting was so unbearable I ended quitting school and staying in bed all day with a bucket beside me. I couldn’t eat. The medication sedated me so much I could barely function at all. It was miserable, and I felt like I was dying. Eventually, GTI and I made the difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy. We took the money we were going to use for rent, crossed our fingers we wouldn’t get evicted and then scheduled an appointment at a local clinic.

My traumatic abortion story.

During my 10th week of pregnancy, I arrived at the abortion clinic with no clue in my mind what the day in front of me held. I had researched abortions and what to expect from the procedure, but there was so much misinformation out there I couldn’t decipher the truth. What actually happened was nothing like I had read about. I arrived at the clinic early in the morning, around 7:00 am. Already, the clinic was full of women — every race and age. Eventually, I was escorted to the back of the building where I was given a hospital gown and some paperwork. After changing into the gown and filling out the paperwork, I sat down in another waiting room completely full of women waiting for their abortion.

I listened to the stories the women were sharing with each other. Many women were mothers who expressed how they couldn’t handle taking care of another child. Some women talked about their physical symptoms, and a few discussed the sexual assault and rape that led them there. I remained quiet, staring at the TV playing Avatar, taking in the variety of stories around me. A few women tried to start a conversation with me, but I was overcome with shame and fear and unable to speak.

After waiting for three hours in the back waiting room, an abrasive nurse told us all to line up for our medication. I thought my experience would be private and intimate. Planned Parenthood told me I’d meet with a counselor, get an ultrasound, and then go to the procedure room. Instead, I shared my experience with nearly 40 other women in a cold waiting room with only a hospital gown to cover our naked bodies. There was no counselor, no ultrasound, and no privacy. Each woman in the line was given a cup filled with pills and was told, “Swallow the pills or leave. Your choice.” When it was my turn, I asked what the pills were. The nurse clearly annoyed answered, “You have to take them.” I told her that I had concerns, and she told me I could leave. To the dismay of everyone behind me, I persisted in my questioning. It was a good thing I did because in that cup was Penicillin, Methotrexate, Valium, and Tylenol. I am highly allergic to Penicillin, but no one asked me my allergies. I had not consented to be given sedation and was very clear in my paperwork that I did not want to be sedated under any circumstances. I was told Methotrexate would terminate my pregnancy, and I was required to take it. After a lengthy debate, I took the Methotrexate only and sat down.

Within minutes, my stomach started cramping and I started bleeding onto the chair I was sitting on. Concerned, I asked a nurse for help and she told me to get some paper towels to sit on. I looked around at the other women to see if anyone else was bleeding. They weren’t. This was my first clue that something might be wrong with my pregnancy. When it was time for the procedure, I was escorted into a very small room, big enough only for an exam table and the suction machine. At this point I was incredibly nervous. Several people entered the room including the doctor and at least three assistants. I told the doctor about a heart condition I’ve suffered from since childhood. He brushed it off and nodded at an assistant who forced a mask onto my face. I fell over, which caused my gown to fall completely off. Naked and exposed, my legs were placed on stirrups as the doctor inserted the suction into me. I could not speak or move during the procedure; my face, lips, and tongue had gone completely numb; and I wanted to scream for help, but kept going in and out of consciousness. During the moments of consciousness, I could hear the machine buzzing and could feel a strange cramping and pressure in my abdomen. When the procedure was over, I was still too out of it to speak.

A male assistant put my gown back on me and carried me to what I can only describe as a lounge, full of comfortable massage chairs, dim lights, and soft music. This was the only room visitors could be in, which explains why it was a stark contrast to the other rooms I visited. In the chair, they once again tried to give me Penicillin. I was conscious enough to tell them no. After being given some juice and Goldfish, like a Kindergartner being bribed with snacks, I was allowed to go home. I don’t remember much about the rest of the day or the following days, but I do remember feeling in shock.

My abortion nearly led to my death.

During the weeks following, I was finally able to secure a job. I had to take a drug test, and on the bus ride, I felt very strange. My heart was racing; I was sweating profusely; and my stomach was severely cramping. The walk from the bus stop to my house was long, and I barely made it without passing out. Once inside, I crawled up the stairs and went to the bathroom. Pulling my pants down, I noticed a shocking amount of blood. Sitting on the toilet, I undressed completely, deciding that I needed to take a bath to wash the blood off. Then I heard a noise that took a few minutes to process. It sounded like a fountain of water was pouring out of me. Looking down between my legs, I saw a river of blood gushing out of me and overflowing the toilet. I stood up and ran into my roommate’s room. I must have looked straight out of a horror film, covered in blood, naked, pale and shivering. She was on the phone, but immediately hung up and dialed 911. I went to the bathroom, struggled to dress myself and then laid on the ground waiting for the ambulance. When the paramedics arrived, they were immediately concerned by the sight of the blood. One of the EMTs took my blood pressure, said something urgent to another EMT and then a few others left and came back with a gurney. I was in hypovolemic shock as a result of the excessive blood loss. They strapped me in, and I was driven to the hospital.

Once at the hospital, I was naked, alone, and cold again, covered only by a hospital gown, lying in a pool of my own blood. GTI soon arrived and was able to help me communicate to the doctors about my abortion. The first doctor I saw said, “Well, looks like you should have thought more about your decision.” He refused to treat me, and I never saw him again. Eventually, I was treated by another doctor who quickly admitted me to the hospital and induced labor. I was still pregnant and had hemorrhaged out roughly 30–40% of the blood in my body. My hemoglobin count was 6. According to the doctor, the purpose of the induction was to “complete the termination.”

That evening was the most horrific evening of my life. After the trauma my body had already gone through, I laid awake all night alternating between contractions and delivering the remnants of my incomplete abortion. GTI was present in the room, but despite my agonizing screams and pleas for help, he slept. I don’t say this to blame him or throw him under the bus. He too was young, traumatized, and mentally ill. I only say this to express how alone I was during this entire experience. It was difficult enough to face, but facing it alone made it so much worse.

In the morning, the doctor arrived to check on the results of the induction. After the abortion, the bleeding, the induction, and the delivery, I was somehow still pregnant. I was rushed into surgery and given an emergency Dilation & Evacuation and Dilation & Cauterization to stop the bleeding. My recovery included bed rest, iron pills, and abstinence for several months. The abstinence was easy because not long after the experience, GTI broke up with me. During my follow-up visit with the OB who performed my surgery, I learned that there were still remnants of conception inside of me. The doctor confirmed that I was indeed pregnant with multiples and that is was possible I was pregnant with as many as four fetuses.

Why I lied about my abortion for so long.

Eventually, I physically recovered from the abortion, but it took years to fully recover from the trauma of the entire experience. This story is the first time I’ve ever admitted that I had an abortion. I’ve lied to my family and friends for years, telling them that I had a miscarriage. This lie was easy to tell because I fooled myself into believing that I was saving everyone else’s feelings by hiding the truth from them. There’s not a single person in my family who is pro-choice. They are all religiously convicted and passionately believe that any woman who has an abortion is a murderer. We’ve disagreed on many ideologies throughout the years, and I’ve always been the progressive black sheep. I can handle being the outcast for my choices, but up until this point, I haven’t been able to handle being considered a murderer in their eyes. Not only because it hurts me, but because it will hurt them.

I hope my story can inspire change.

I realize there appears to be many villains in this story, but I truly believe the real enemy is the system and its legislation. Some might see my story as a warning against abortion, but I urge those who do to consider an alternate perspective. I believe my story is a warning against what can happen when we criminalize abortion and take away equal access to healthcare. At the time of my pregnancy, I was uninsurable because of a pre-existing condition and did not meet the requirements for federal assistance in North Carolina, which required a woman to have children to qualify. My mental illness was left untreated; I had no access to birth control; and when I became pregnant, I had to put my livelihood on the line for one single appointment. Imagine what would have happened if I had decided to put my child up for adoption only to learn I was pregnant with quadruplets. It’s possible I would have ended up giving birth and my children would have ended up in the foster care system.

The speculations of what could have happened are nearly pointless. The real point is that what did happen shouldn’t happen in a first world country. No person should have to endure the level of poverty I endured. No woman should be felt like her body is not her own. No one should have to find the strength to make the hardest decision of their life only to face unrelenting adversity and inhumane treatment. Three years after my abortion, enough women had made complaints to the health department that the clinic I had my abortion at was temporarily shut down. It was discovered that the clinical was illegally administering Methotrexate, a cancer drug, and the drug I was forced to take. And it was also determined that the clinic’s doctor was not following standard procedure after abortions to ensure their completion. What happened to me was a direct result of an incomplete abortion caused by a negligent physician.

Though I believe the doctor should have followed appropriate procedures, he is also a victim of the system. At the time, he was the only doctor providing abortions to impoverished women within hundreds of miles. This meant that he saw hundreds of women every day. In North Carolina at the time, abortion could only be performed at a clinic before a certain number of weeks. Some women don’t even know they are pregnant until 8 weeks in, leaving them very little time to make an informed decision. Given the limited access to abortion clinics, the stigma surrounding the procedure, and the incredible pressure placed on impoverished women in this country, it is not surprising that I had the experience I did.

My hope is that my story serves as an inspiration and a lesson. I hope that women who have had an abortion and feel ashamed can be inspired to stand up for themselves and speak their truth. When reading my story aloud, I momentarily forgot who the woman in the story was, and in that moment, I felt so much sympathy and pain for her. Coming back to the realization that woman was me, I saw how I was shaming and judging myself more than I ever would another woman. If you’re doing this to yourself, I hope you can find the strength to stop. If you can find sympathy for me, you can find sympathy for you.

I also hope my story serves as a lesson in what happens when legislation limits access to abortion. Many women will always see abortion as the most humane and compassionate choice they can make. It doesn’t matter how many laws you make, how many disgusting signs you show them as they enter the clinic, or how loud you scream at them, you will never change their mind. Knowing this, you must face the fact that legislating against abortion harms women. Banning abortion eliminates access to abortion, which means women will take unsafe measures to end their pregnancy.