4. Why Do People Have Abortions Later in Pregnancy?

Written By Garnet Henderson

Later abortion is on the ballot in Colorado, where voters are being asked to decide on a 22-week abortion ban. It has also come up during the presidential campaign. What’s at stake? Hear from people who’ve had later abortions in their own words.

Note: this episode includes discussion of pregnancy loss.

Guests:

Other links from the episode:

Special thanks to We Testify and Patient Forward. Music by Lily Sloane, logo by Kate Ryan.

[Full transcript below photos]

Garnet Henderson [00:00:00] Welcome to ACCESS, a podcast about abortion. I'm your host, Garnet Henderson. 

[intro music plays]

Garnet Henderson [00:00:38] Today, we're starting with the story of Christina Taylor. Christina is originally from Texas. She's a second generation Mexican-American and she has three kids, with another on the way. After they had their first two kids, Christina and her husband decided to move from Texas to Colorado. They liked Colorado and thought it was beautiful. But they were also concerned about the increasingly restrictive environment in Texas, particularly when it comes to reproductive choice. 

Christina Taylor [00:01:12] I knew that I would want to have more kids and I knew that I would like to be pregnant again. And I just don't. I didn't feel safe being pregnant in a state that had restrictions to my rights as a pregnant person. 

Garnet Henderson [00:01:27] That concern turns out to have been very prescient, because shortly after the move to Colorado, Christina got pregnant again. She says that her first two pregnancies were pretty easy and healthy, so she didn't have any reason to believe that something could be wrong. But then, at 20 weeks, she went in for her anatomy scan. This is an ultrasound that usually happens between 18 and 22 weeks of pregnancy to look for any fetal anomalies. It's also when a lot of people find out the sex of their baby. So that's all Christina and her family were expecting. 

Christina Taylor [00:02:03] The ultrasound tech was very quiet. You know, even though I've had two before, I remember having ultrasounds, I mean, to a layman, it just looks like a bunch of blobs, you know? So I didn't notice that there was no amniotic fluid. Then when the woman came back in the room, she had this panicked look on her face, even though she was trying to hide it. And I could just see in her eyes like, oh, that something's wrong. So the doctor came in the room a little bit later and told us. So we see no amniotic fluid. And so when there's no amniotic fluid, they look for kidneys. And they found no kidneys. And anybody who knows basic anatomy, especially related to pregnancy, knows how important that is to gestation. And it was a straightforward of a diagnosis as you get as far as the these sort of fatal things go. And then he told us. So basically, your baby is unable to live. Either, he will likely pass inside you during the remainder of your pregnancy or upon birth at full term, if he makes it to full term. And that to me was. It's kind of a horrific idea. I had two small kids at the time, you know, and I am a stay at home mom. It's kind of what I do. And I could not imagine trying to take care of my two young kids, not even in school yet, just knowing that, OK, I'm just waiting for my baby to die at any moment. And it's just that emotional toll that I could, I know that I could not take and my kids cannot take. 

Garnet Henderson [00:04:08] Christina chose to have an induction abortion at just over 21 weeks in a hospital close to home. And she says that as traumatic as it was to lose a wanted child, she feels lucky. She had insurance that covered her abortion and a really supportive medical team. 

Christina Taylor [00:04:29] I get angry when I think about it now because I know that it is something that people want to take away. This right that we had to do was best for us. I don't even feel like I can be sad about this as much as I would like to, because this is something that is a a privilege that not everybody has. You know, I'm fortunate to be able to have done it this quickly and had the support of medical professionals everywhere along the way. And it was just, it was such a blessing to be able to go through something so traumatic as easily as possible, you know? 

Garnet Henderson [00:05:15] Cristina also had the time she needed to grieve and make decisions, because Colorado is one of only seven states in the country, plus Washington, D.C., that has no gestational age limit on abortion. So there was no ticking clock hanging over Christina's head. No deadline. But that could change. On the ballot this year in Colorado is a proposition, Proposition 115, that would ban abortion at 22 weeks, with exceptions to be granted only if the pregnant person's life is in danger. And Christina's abortion did happen just before 22 weeks, but only because her medical team pulled strings to get her the tests and appointments she needed as quickly as possible. If a law like Proposition 115 had been in effect, she would have been racing against time. 

Christina Taylor [00:06:11] We would have had 14 days. Every medical provider that we saw along the way would have known that. And if there was anybody who had any sort of ideas about whether or not a woman should be, should have a later abortion. I mean, anybody along the way can delay something just a couple days. I mean, it it really frightens me. 

Garnet Henderson [00:06:32] Later abortion is deeply misunderstood, even among people who consider themselves supportive of abortion rights. If you've heard any stories about later abortion, they probably sounded a lot like Christina's. A wanted pregnancy and a fatal diagnosis. And this is a common reason that people have abortions later in pregnancy. But there are a lot of other reasons, too. And we're gonna learn about some of them today. 

Christina Taylor [00:06:59] I can only speak to my experience personally, but that doesn't mean that, like, I feel like my experience of having a fatal fetal diagnosis is any more justified than anyone else's need for a later abortion because everyone's different. 

Garnet Henderson [00:07:20] Right now, polling indicates that Prop 115 is in a dead heat. 42 percent of voters say they'll vote yes, 45 percent say they'll vote no, and 13 percent remain undecided. Colorado voters have rejected other abortion bans in recent years, but this proposition has been presented as a compromise, a reasonable limit on abortion. And many people are likely to see it that way. According to the Pew Research Center, 61 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. This is a pretty consistent number across a lot of different polls. But other data show that support for legal abortion drops the farther along you get in pregnancy. A 2013 Gallup poll, for example, found that six in 10 Americans support legal abortion in the first trimester. In the second trimester, that number drops to 28 percent. And in the third trimester, it drops to just 13 percent. 43 states place gestational limits on abortion, most of them somewhere between 20 and 24 weeks. So that's toward the end, or at the end of the second trimester. But another thing we know is that most people just don't know that much about abortion. And this is especially true when it comes to later abortion, because people who have abortions later in pregnancy aren't just stigmatized, they're demonized. Look no further than our current president, who has repeatedly made misleading statements about later abortion, painting people who have abortions and the doctors who help them as villains. And this doesn't just lead to stigma. It incites violence. 

Dr. Warren Hern [00:09:15] I mean, there are many physicians who have stopped performing abortions because the threat of violence against them by the anti-abortion fanatics. The threats work. People don't want to lose their lives to do this. There are many, many things for a physician to do that are interesting and important and valuable and help other people without getting killed by the anti-abortion fanatics. 

Garnet Henderson [00:09:36] That's Dr. Warren Hern. He's a physician and an epidemiologist, and he's witnessed a lot of the history of abortion access in the U.S. In the late 1960s, he worked in Washington, D.C., helping run a federal family planning program for the poor. At that time, abortion was illegal. 

Dr. Warren Hern [00:09:55] One of the things that we kept running into was that poor women were dying from unsafe abortion at much higher rates. Nine to 10 times higher rates than than white women who had money and could not afford the safe illegal abortion. The death rate for abortion for black women was nine times as high as it was for white women. 

Garnet Henderson [00:10:16] These racial and economic disparities really stuck with Dr. Hern. He wasn't necessarily planning to practice medicine. He thought he'd go into an academic career in public health and epidemiology. And he did do that, actually. But he's also run an abortion clinic for the last 45 years. 

Dr. Warren Hern [00:10:35] I felt that performing abortions was the most important thing I could do in medicine, because I'd seen so many situations and talked to so many women who came in who were desperate and who had had terrible experiences with unsafe, illegal abortion. 

Garnet Henderson [00:10:51] Dr. Hern helped open Colorado's first nonprofit abortion clinic in 1973. That's the year Roe vs. Wade was decided. Two years later, he opened his own practice, Boulder Abortion Clinic. He's the author of a textbook and numerous articles on abortion practice, and he's one of the only physicians in the country who is open about performing abortions in the third trimester of pregnancy. This has made him a target. There have been multiple attempts on his life. 

Dr. Warren Hern [00:11:22] Five of my medical colleagues have been assassinated, including my friend Dr. George Tiller in Wichita. And I'm on any number of anti-abortion hit lists. And now we have this ballot initiative, 115, which the sponsors have announced has the purpose of closing my private medical practice, Boulder Abortion Clinic. And so I don't like being the focus of this, but here we are. The real objective is to limit women's access to safe health care. And that's the that's the main point. 

Garnet Henderson [00:11:54] Dr. Hern doesn't only perform later abortions, but he is a specialist in the kind of complex care people need when they have abortions later in pregnancy, especially if they are dealing with a fetal fetal diagnosis. This means that people travel from all over the country, and even from outside the U.S. to see him. The Brigid Alliance, an organization that provides financial and practical support to people who need to travel for abortion care, told me that since January 2019, they've helped 237 people travel to Colorado to have abortions. These people came from 41 different states as well as Canada. So there's a lot at stake here. If Prop 115 passes, its effects will reverberate far outside Colorado. 

Dr. Warren Hern [00:12:46] They've picked the most vulnerable people, the women who are having terrible problems later in their pregnancy and they have to decide to end the pregnancy. Many of the patients who come to my office have desired pregnancy. They don't want to have an abortion, they want to have a baby. But their lives are an acute danger from the pregnancy or they have the catastrophic fetal abnormality or genetic disorder. We have situations where we have very, very young, just barely adolescent girls, 11, 12, 13 years old who've been raped or victims of incest or in sex trafficking, or are whose pregnancy very far advanced before anybody knew they were. Women who didn't get a diagnosis early in the pregnancy of the fetal anomaly. Many of the problems with fetal abnormalities are not found until well after 22 weeks, when it's too late in many states for women to get abortions, and certainly would be excluded from getting an abortion by this law. So this is a cruel law. This is a cruel proposition. And many people claim to be pro-choice and support a woman's right to choose up to a certain point, then decide that it's not OK after that. And so that's very discriminatory and very punitive for women. Abortion is a fundamental part of women's health care in the 21st century, and  it should remain so. People who don't like abortions, you shouldn't have one, but they need to leave other people alone. 

Garnet Henderson [00:14:16] One important thing to understand is that there's no hard line at which point an abortion becomes a later abortion. Even the concept of trimesters, this idea that there are these three definite stages of pregnancy, is much more fuzzy than most people realize. No two pregnancies progress in an identical fashion. The circumstances of every pregnancy and every abortion are different. And you might notice that I'm not using the phrase "late-term abortion." That's because this isn't a medical term. It's a political one, without a clear meaning. And it's mainly used to stigmatize later abortion. So let's review some numbers. The vast majority of abortions in the US, over 88 percent, do happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Just over 10 percent happen between 13 and 20 weeks, and only 1.3 percent happen at 21 weeks or later. But just for some context, that one point three percent still represents over 11,000 people each year. Later abortions are more expensive. They're also more difficult to access because fewer providers perform them. In the first trimester of pregnancy, the average cost of an abortion is around $500. After that, abortions tend to get more expensive with each passing week. After about 16 weeks, an abortion could cost anywhere from $750 to over $15,000, depending on where you live and what kind of procedure you have. And remember, lots of people who have later abortions have to travel. For example, the Brigid Alliance told me that for those 237 people that they've helped get to Colorado, costs associated with things like transportation, lodging, childcare, and food ranged from $115 to $2,900, with an average of $775 per person. And that's not including the procedure. Many fetal anomalies can't be diagnosed until the second trimester or beyond. Complications of pregnancy can also develop and become life threatening at any time. But there are other important factors here. One study from the Guttmacher Institute found that people obtaining second trimester abortions were more likely to be Black, to have less than a high school degree, to require financial assistance to pay for their procedure, to live 25 or more miles from the facility, and to have late recognition of pregnancy. Another study from Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, part of a larger project called the Turnaway Study, found that people who had abortions at 20 weeks or later didn't find out they were pregnant until they were an average of 12 weeks along. This is more common than you might think. There are a number of different medical conditions and other factors that can lead to late recognition of pregnancy. It's especially common in younger people and people who have periods that are already irregular. In the Turnaway Study, people having abortions after 20 weeks were more likely to be younger and to be unemployed. Some people also report needing more time to decide what to do about an unwanted pregnancy. And other studies have found that difficulties locating and traveling to a provider, as well as raising money to cover the cost of the procedure and the travel, are things that commonly delay abortion. So abortion restrictions that close clinics and force people to travel, impose waiting periods, and block insurance coverage of abortion are all things that force people into having abortions later in pregnancy. But people who have later abortions are human beings, not numbers. So for the rest of this episode, I want you to hear from them in their own words. Like I said, there is no exact definition of a later abortion. So you'll be hearing from people who had abortions anywhere from 15 to about 23 weeks. We're going to start with HK Gray, who lives in Texas. 

HK Gray [00:18:48] I'm a proud teen mom and an abortion storyteller with Jane's Due Process and We Testify. I got pregnant with my daughter when I was 15. She's been the light of my life for the last four years. I was unable to get the birth control my OBGYN recommended after I gave birth, because in Texas you need parental consent. I had been living on my own since I was 14 because my mom was in and out of jail or prison and my dad was homeless. So getting consent was not an option for me. I ended up getting pregnant again three months later and had a miscarriage. 10 months postpartum, I got pregnant again with an unwanted pregnancy and I decided to have an abortion. I was 17 at the time, struggling to make rent and barely able to get our weekly groceries. I couldn't afford a second child. Then I found out that I needed parental consent to access an abortion in Texas, too. My mom was in prison and my dad was still homeless. There was no way I could involve them, even though they probably would have consented to it. I had no other choice but to get a judicial bypass. It's basically a legal procedure where you go before a judge and explain why you want an abortion, why you can't involve your parents and show that you're mature and knowledgeable enough to consent to an abortion without involving a parent. This process is draining and extremely stressful. During the hearing, I was slut shamed, made to feel small, and had every piece of my life scrutinized. I got lucky, though, and had my judicial bypass granted. I was finally able to get my abortion at 15 weeks, five days, 13 weeks later than I should have. So I had a really good lawyer. She told me, like, you are going to be judged the whole time and you just have to be strong and get used to it and you're going to get emotional. And because the lawyer had known about this judge particularly, so she just let me know, like it's going to be difficult. He's going to be rude to you. He's gonna slut shame you. And you're gonna have to just deal with it and smile and act like you understand what's going on. I think it was really eye opening to me, though, whenever I was in there and he was saying things like, oh, well, why did you have sex? You just shouldn't have had sex and things like that. And then he went on, the thing that kind of like made me lose my cool a little bit was I was telling him the part of, like, oh, my mom's incarcerated and my dad's homeless. And he actually asked me, oh, why is your dad homeless? And I was just like, I don't know how to answer that. And so that was really eye opening to me that I not only had to answer for, like getting pregnant and being a teen mom, but I also had to answer for, like, my parents' situations that were totally out of their control. I think the reason why I got it granted was because he was asking, like, okay, well, if you have one and you're managing, why can't you have a second one and manage? And I had to be like, I'm not managing. It's very difficult. And I had to blatantly tell him, like, I'm eating less food than a normal adult should, let alone a normal pregnant person can, because I can't afford to feed myself and my kid. And I'm feeding my kid first because that's the priority. And then he was like, oh, OK. Like, it just didn't even cross his mind that I might be having an abortion because I literally cannot afford a second child. I remember coming out of the courtroom feeling just very small and tiny. And I realize a lot of that was just the stigma associated with an abortion and the fact that he used everything that he could have used to stigmatize me further. And luckily, I've worked on all that and I'm fine with it. But it is really difficult when you're a teenager, you go to have like this conversation that you think is going to be like a normal court hearing and it ends up being this shit show where basically they just make you feel really bad about yourself. And then if you get granted, you're like, OK, cool. I got my abortion granted, I can get my abortion, but you still end up leaving upset and just feeling belittled. I didn't have a reliable transportation at the time. I didn't like, my car was just on its last leg. So I was constantly having to re-go to the clinics and I was constantly having to like re-meet with my lawyer and do all this stuff. And so it just took a really long time. Also when I got my ultrasound, my first ultrasound back and I went to my lawyer, I think a week later I showed it to her and she's like, you're gonna have to get another one. And I was like, Why? And it was because the way that it had been printed, my last name was not clearly visible. And so my last name had to be clearly visible to be able to present it to the judge, because that would have been just enough to get my bypass, like, not granted. So I went through all this process to get the judicial bypass. But then once I got granted, it was just a two day process. And it was just really bizarre to be able to see that difference of like, oK, so I spent weeks doing this and I should have only spent these two days. 

Garnet Henderson [00:24:07] HK now works as a peer group facilitator with Jane's Due Process, the same organization that helped her get her judicial bypass. Next, we'll hear from Briana McLennan. Briana is a social worker. She works for an abortion fund called the Texas Equal Access, or TEA Fund. 

Briana McLennan [00:24:25] I've had multiple abortions. My later abortion was around in 2010. So I was 20 years old. I was living actually in Atlanta, Georgia, at the time, which is where I got my abortion. And I can't remember exactly how many weeks I was, but I was definitely over 20 weeks. And I was actually pregnant with twins. So it was really, a really, I'm not going to even say a hard time for me at that moment. But it was a lot going on. I was a college student. I was unemployed, and it was a lot, to say the least. My partner was an amazing person, but they were in Texas at the time. And here I am sleeping on a mattress, trying to afford, you know, this next semester. It was just no way that I was going to be able to take care of not one but two children, you know, like, I couldn't even take care of myself. So I just had to make the decision to do what was best for me in that moment, and my priority was finishing school and just trying to make sure that I even had food in my mouth. What happened was that I don't I don't think I was 20 weeks when I went in initially. It's just that when they told me I was pregnant with twins. I left. I was just like, ugh, do I really want to do this, you know, like type of thing. Because, of course, people always tell you, like, oh, twins are a blessing and twins are a miracle. And I was just like, you know, I was really more so thinking about the stigma of, like terminating a pregnancy with twins versus like, is this really the best decision for me financially, mentally too. At that time, I probably wouldn't have been able to like be able to talk to you. And even within that time period, there was other factors that I was going through. Like I was having family issues at the time. I was having issues within myself about going to school. So it was so much stuff that was going on that I was so worried about. Like, was my family going to think about me finishing school, having the baby? Like it was just, I did not have a mind of my own I felt, you know? And I feel like now I definitely can be able to talk about it with confidence and to understand and still feel like I'm OK with the decision, you know? Like looking back at it, like I'm still I'm very, very happy I got that abortion. I don't know where I would be right now if I didn't. I'm still very, very happy I made that decision. And I'm happy now that I'm in a position where I can help clients or even be able to, like, share my voice and and talk about my experience. It's very, very important, especially as a woman of color, to be able to, like, talk about what I went through. So that way, if other folks hear this story, they'll be like, oh, there's someone that that's like me, that they went through the same thing. And it's OK to have an abortion. It's OK to not have everything together. Because I feel like for some people, we always think that we have to be OK a hundred percent of the time. We have to always make sure that we have our shit together a hundred percent of the time. If you are going to be pro-choice then you can't really put a limit on that, that's just my opinion. Like, everyone's situation is different. Everyone has an abortion for many different reasons. So I just don't feel that a person can be pro-choice if you're saying I'm okay with abortion up until this point. That means you're not pro-choice because you're not giving that person full autonomy of what they want to do with their body. 

Garnet Henderson [00:27:58] One of the things Briana does with the TEA Fund is facilitate a group called Post Abortion Truth and Healing. It's a space just for people who've had abortions. And I'm gonna link to that in the show notes in case you're interested. Next, we'll hear from Dr. Valerie Peterson, an educator and advocate who lives in Texas but had to travel out of state for her abortion. 

Valerie Peterson [00:28:21] At 17 years old, I became a teen mom. Growing up in Chicago, I went to one of the lowest performing high schools. And so it was a high school where there weren't low expectations. There were no expectations. If you can imagine being a student in that type of school, when they found out I was pregnant, I was encouraged to drop out. I am a first generation college student and I just knew that college was key for me to get out of what I was growing up in, in poverty. And so everyone encouraged me to drop out when I got pregnant as a junior in high school, except for one teacher. And that one teacher told me, you know, you can go to college, you can go away, you can take your baby with you, and I'm going to help you. And that's exactly what she did and exactly what I did. But little did I know is that while I had the grades and I had my new baby, I got on that college campus and boy, was I in for a surprise. And so I did get pregnant and already having a daughter, I knew that, you know, there are so many people that doubted my ability to graduate, let alone take care of a child full time, work full time and be in school full time. And so that was when I had my first abortion because I really wanted to focus on being in school and raising the daughter that I had. I did get pregnant again and I did keep the baby. And so that's now why I now have two daughters, ages twenty three and twenty one. But the second abortion is the one that really gave me an experience like no other. In 2015, after I moved to the state of Texas, I found myself pregnant. And, you know, I thought I couldn't have kids anymore. I'm geting ready to be an empty nester. And here I am pregnant. And I wanted, I was keeping the pregnancy. I going to keep the baby. And I was a high risk pregnancy because of my age and also the fact that I had high blood pressure. And so I was sent to see a maternal fetal medicine specialist so that they could keep a close tab on my pregnancy. And so every two weeks I was at the doctor's office. And around twelve weeks we started to notice that there may be something wrong with the pregnancy. And when we did the ultrasound, the nasal bone was flat. And what I learned is that a flat nasal bone is often an indication that there is some type of fetal anomaly. And so after scores of genetic testing and and other tests, came to the conclusion that nothing was wrong. And several weeks later had another ultrasound. And that is when we found out that my son's brain did not fully form. The condition was called HPE for short. It's alobar holoprosencephaly, which means that the two halves of my son's brain did not form. And the condition is 100 percent incompatible with life. Option one was to continue to carry until I miscarry because it was very clear that the pregnancy wasn't viable. And then my other option was to terminate the pregnancy. And I said to the doctor, So does that mean that right here, right now, you you admit me to the hospital and we take care what we need to take care of? And he said he said, no, I have to refer you out and refer me out. What I'd learned is that there was a law on the books in Texas, House Bill Two, which closed a lot of the abortion clinics in the state of Texas. And so if you can imagine how big the state of Texas is. There was a waiting list and that it could take up to three weeks to have the procedure done. And I shared with my doctor just emotionally and mentally. I couldn't wait that long. And he tried to get me in earlier. And I got a call from the clinic and I was, you know, say, hey, OK, if I have to suck it up for a week, I've got to suck it up for a week. But when I got the call from the clinic, alongside this law was mandatory counseling. So day one, I would go to the clinic and have to have this mandatory counseling and also have an ultrasound. And by this time, I did not want to see ultrasound pictures of of my son. I mean, it was clear on the pictures that his brain had not developed. And then after the counseling, there is a mandatory 24 hour waiting period. And so, again, I am like I know the decision that I want to make. Why do I have to go through all of these hoops in order to get the care that I need when I wanted it? And then after the 24 hour waiting period, because I was in my second trimester, they would begin the procedure one day in the second day. I was told that there was no guarantee that those days could happen in a row. And for me, that was devastating. I couldn't understand it. And I reached out to my aunt, who is a nurse, and she said, you're gonna have to leave the state. And that's exactly what I did. I got some referrals really quickly and ended up flying to Florida, where at that time there was no 24 hour waiting period. None of the stuff that I had to go through in Texas. And it was amazing because they were able to get me in the next day. Leaving Texas on a last minute ticket to Orlando, Florida, where I had to pay everything out of pocket. I paid for the flight. I paid for the hotel. I paid for the rental car. And insurance did not cover the procedure. And it was just devastating because I didn't know that this is what a lot of people have had to go through in order to get an abortion. I want people to know that I am a person that exist that had this experience. I am real. This is real. These laws are impacting individuals in a multitude of ways. 

Garnet Henderson [00:35:00] Finally today, we'll hear from Jenn Chalifoux. Jenn lives in New York and they're currently applying to law school. 

Jenn Chalifoux [00:35:07] I really thought for a long time that my abortion, and like having had an abortion was going to just, like, ruin my life and be this kind of, like, dark cloud. So I was 19 for a week when I had it done. I realized I was pregnant pretty late into my pregnancy. I had developed an eating disorder in high school and that eating disorder got bad in college when I was about 18, 18 and a half, so I left school to go home and get treatment for that. And that's an issue that's important because one of the symptoms of having an eating disorder is losing your period. Amenorrhea. And so we didn't know when I lost mine that it was because I was pregnant. We thought it was because of the illness. I was also on birth control at the time. I had been on birth control for quite a while. And so that was another reason why we didn't even think about it. By the time I realized I was pregnant, I was quite a few weeks in. All of a sudden realizing I was pregnant. Then all of a sudden realizing how late it was and realizing how expensive it was going to be, and thinking about my mental, mental health and what I wanted for my future. And I was definitely not in a very stable place. So it was really hard finding out I was pregnant while I was in like a partial hospitalization program or an eating disorder. That was really hard. And so I knew that I wanted to have an abortion almost as soon as I knew that I was pregnant. I just didn't know that it was going to be so difficult and so complicated. I talked to my gynecologist and she was like, how did this happen? You were on this birth control. And so by the time I knew how, by the time... I knew to go to Planned Parenthood and they needed further documentation. By the time I got that documentation together and I went back to Planned Parenthood, they said, well, this isn't. This is too late. Like, you're you're too far along for a medication abortion. You're going to need, like, some kind of procedure. And that was when they told me how much those things usually cost. I remember it was like it was like getting the wind knocked out of me. I was just like, there's no way that I can afford that. And so that's when I knew that I was going to have to make a decision about who to talk to next and where to look for help. And while I'm glad that I did that, looking back at it, I can just remember being so terrified. It's it's scary to go through alone. And it's also scary to involve people and to tell people. I told my best friend who had been with me that I was going to get an abortion. And how far along I was. And she ended the friendship. And so that that really taught me like a lesson that I kept with me for a long time. And I'm only now starting to shed by talking to people about my abortion. I probably spent a week just trying to figure out what I was going to do about money. So I did involve my parents and that was very scary. And ultimately, just like the absolute best thing that I could have done in my situation because of the people that my parents are and the way that they really supported me. I can remember telling them about it and I can remember my dad saying like, like, this is fixable. And I was like, oh, my God, you're right. And now now I felt like I didn't have to do it alone. I was towards the end of the second trimester. I was too far along for the procedure that they had been thinking about. And so something would need to be adjusted. And I remember them saying, and if we push it back further than a week, you're not going to be able to get it done in this state. And so it wasn't just the torture of like being in my body and being pregnant when I didn't want to be, it was also like watching the time go by helplessly, knowing that if too much time went by, I would have to go to a completely different state or, I mean, at that point, in my mind, like country even to get it done. For the Women's March in New York City in 2018, I made a sign and the sign said, I'm not ashamed of my abortion. And I was so scared. I was so scared that, like, someone was going to take a picture of me with a sign and then someone was going to attach my face to having had an abortion and people were going to, even back then, I, I was worried that that could affect things like my employment. What actually happened was I walked around with this sign and I had a couple people say some shitty things and a lot of people come up to me and say, like me neither or it's so nice to see somebody have this on a sign. Or I had one person who wanted to, like, take a photo with me. That was my first experience, being like, oh, actually, maybe talking about my abortion can be healing not just for me, but for people around me. And it doesn't have to be something that I'm afraid of. 

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Garnet Henderson [00:42:03] That's it for the show today. Just a reminder before we go that I am seeking stories about abortion during the pandemic. Whether you had an abortion or you work in abortion access in some capacity, I want to hear from you. You can send an e-mail or even better, a voice memo to accesspodcast@protonmail.com. 

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Garnet Henderson [00:42:41] ACCESS is produced by me, Garnet Henderson. Our music is by Lily Sloane and our logo is by Kate Ryan. I want to extend my deepest gratitude to today's guests, as well as to We Testify and Patient Forward, who connected me with them. ACCESS is an independent production. We need your support, and it's really easy to make a one-time or monthly contribution to support the show. You can do that by visiting glow.fm/apodcastaboutabortion. That's linked in the show notes as well. You can also leave us a rating or review. That stuff really does help. And best of all, please share the show with a friend. Subscribe to ACCESS wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on Instagram and Twitter @accesspod. A full transcript of this episode is available on our website, apodcastaboutabortion.com. ACCESS will be back with more episodes in a few weeks. See you then.

Garnet Henderson
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