Culture + Politics

If I Got Pregnant Today, I'd Choose Abortion

By Leah Berkenwald

March 26, 2012

With plenty of life left to live before becoming a mother, Leah Berkenwald finds comfort in her ability to choose abortion if she became pregnant today. Eventually, she'll have children, but not yet. Not until she's truly ready.

As a 16-year-old, I knew that if I got pregnant by accident I would have an abortion. Ten years later, I am in a completely different place—a place where I could, realistically, support and parent a child—and I would still choose abortion.

I believe in the power of telling stories. With the 80 new restrictions on abortion rights enacted by state legislatures in 2011 and more coming every day, I believe it’s especially important to tell stories about abortion and the role it plays in creating an egalitarian society that allows women, and men, to control their destinies. Until recently I felt like I didn’t have a story to tell because I haven’t had an abortion. I cannot speak to the experience of making that decision or undergoing the procedure. But I realized that I do have a story, a story that has grown with me as I matured from a 16- to 26-year-old adult who could, if I chose to, be a mom.

The story begins when I was 16, before I had sex. At this time, abortion wasn’t super relevant to my life. I was pro-choice and that was enough. Still, I didn’t rule out the possibility that I might want to have sex in the near future. (If I'm being honest, I wanted to have sex with my high school boyfriend but he wanted to wait. How often do you hear that narrative in the media?) I started using birth control at 16, and I knew that if I did start having sex and got pregnant, I would choose abortion.

At 16, there was no ambiguity for me. I knew that I wasn’t ready to be a parent and I knew my parents would agree and support my choice. I was headed for college and whatever bright future that entailed. I would not, under any circumstances, give up the liberal arts college experience I had worked so hard to secure. It may have been selfish but it’s a kind of selfishness that's developmentally appropriate for a teenager, not to mention prudent. I still don’t apologize for putting my own future first. At that point, like I said, the decision to choose abortion was easy because things were simple. I wasn’t even having sex.

Then, in college, I started having “the sex.” I don’t think I’m shocking or scandalizing anyone by sharing that information (although this article probably won’t make it into my dad’s scrapbook—sorry, Dad). Now that getting pregnant was actually possible, the abortion question became more real, but my decision remained the same.

As a college student, I was completely dependent on my parents financially, emotionally, and almost every other way. I was no more ready to have a child in college than I was in high school. Besides, at the time, my primary objectives were to enjoy the "college experience” (complete with sexy escapades and public drunkenness) and graduate summa cum laude. Thanks to birth control and Plan B (the morning after pill), I did both.

Once, the condom broke the same week I missed three days in a row on my birth control pill schedule. I was glad to have affordable and convenient access to Plan B at my college health center, but I still knew that if I had gotten pregnant I would have chosen abortion. This incident, though fairly insignificant in retrospect, made me really think about the logistics of an abortion for the first time. Where would I go? How would I get there from campus? Would my health insurance cover it? Would my parents find out since I was covered by their insurance plan? How much would it cost if I paid out of pocket? Would I have to ask my parents for money? Would I tell my parents if I had the choice? Would I tell the guy? Would I tell my friends? Luckily, there were lots of resources at my college and I knew that if I were in that situation, there were people to go to for referrals, support, and advice. If I could have one wish, it would be that every young person felt so secure knowing that there were resources, options, and non-judgmental help available to them.

Then after college, I met someone with whom I imagined having babies. Yep, I fell in love—real, consuming, hardcore love. For the first time in my life, I entertained the idea of a future with someone. I imagined marriage, kids, and growing old with this person. The choice to have an abortion was suddenly a lot more complicated. If I had gotten pregnant at that time, a part of me would have wanted to carry the pregnancy to term. It wasn’t until after we broke up that I realized just how much I had hoped to procreate with this person.

It happened when I got my period for the first time after the breakup. An emotional wreck, I felt as though my imagined, future children were literally being drained from my body. I sobbed for the hypothetical babies that would never be; I mourned the loss of my fantasized future family. In that irrational moment, it would have been very difficult to choose abortion. But the moment passed, and the rational, bigger part of me knew that I was still very young, single, underemployed, living in my parents’ basement, and not at all ready to be a mom. I still would have chosen abortion, but it would have been an excruciatingly difficult decision to make.

About a year later, I got my first grown-up, full-time job. I moved out of my parents’ basement. I had my own health insurance. I could pay my own bills. I can’t pinpoint it, but there was a moment when I realized that my salary, meager as it was, could support a child; plenty of women did it on less. Scary! Up until this point, abortion was the obvious choice because it was the most responsible. Once I could financially support a child, my reasons for choosing abortion sounded less convincing and less politically correct. I could no longer say I was doing this for the sake of the hypothetical child because I could raise said hypothetical child. If I became pregnant, the choice to abort would be about me and only me. It would be “selfishly” made (as some would argue) so that I could continue on the path I had planned—a path where adventures, career, and marriage came first in the order of operations.

Within a year, I decided to go back to school for a master's degree. I dropped to part-time at work, and my salary dropped accordingly. Over the next two years, I saw my student debt triple. Once again, I had to lean on my parents for financial support. I remained steadfast in my decision to choose abortion because I knew that I wasn’t ready to give up on future opportunities to advance my career, have adventures, or make my contribution to the world as a single, un-tethered person. And now that I’ve taken advantage of some of those opportunities, I’m no longer financially capable of supporting a child. I was able to make these choices and sacrifice my financial stability because I knew that I would—and could—choose abortion if I needed to.

This year, my close friends started having babies. The faces of two beautiful little baby girls now grace my refrigerator door. Both of them were unplanned. These days dozens of baby photos clutter my Facbeook newsfeed, babies both planned and unplanned, their parents both married and unmarried. I now read my friends' pregnancy and parenting blogs, look through whole albums of baby photos, and comment earnestly with the usual “How adorable!” and “S/he’s getting so big!” Contrary to popular belief, pro-choice women are not baby haters. Nor do they disapprove of other women’s choices to carry unplanned pregnancies to term. I am proud of my friends for making that choice, and feel nothing but joy for them and their families.

I am sure that some of my friends have made different choices. Only one person has shared her abortion story with me, but if one in three women have an abortion in their lifetime, it’s likely that a number of my friends, classmates, and acquaintances have had abortions. I am equally proud of them for their courage and deeply respect their reasons for delaying, or in some cases, rejecting parenthood, whatever they may be.

Someday, I will be a mom. Ideally, it will happen five to 10 years from now when I’m well-traveled, happily married, financially secure, and wildly successful in my career. It might not happen the way I envision and I’m OK with that, but only to a point. I’m not going to have a child until I’m ready to have a child. I’m still not sure exactly what magical criteria will have to be met before I’ll feel ready, but I know that today is not that day.

I recently met my good friend’s two-month-old baby girl for the first time. In the two hours we spent together, I probably took 200 photos of her little face, her little feet, her gurgly smile. As I held her, her teeny hand clutching my finger, I felt those pesky pangs of maternal longing and the urge to procreate, to nurture, to love and be loved unconditionally...but as I left my friends, their daughter sleeping soundly in her bassinet, I knew my own parenting journey was still years down the road.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” Robert Frost wrote. “But I have promises to keep.”

I have promises to myself—to finish my master's degree, to backpack across South America, and have a fabulous, exciting career. Just knowing that abortion was accessible, safe, and legal has given me the freedom to pursue my dreams. If we truly believe in egalitarianism, we must protect women's right to self-determination—her right to choice. Choice does not only benefit pregnant women; it bestows upon every woman the freedom to be the architect of her own life. Even though I have never been pregnant, I have been able to choose abortion and that choice has granted me the courage and security to take financial risks, to love fully with body and soul, and chart my own course in this world. Someday I will make a different choice, but I have miles to go before I leap. And miles to go before I leap.

Leah Berkenwald is the Online Communications Specialist at the Jewish Women's Archive and editor of the Jewesses with Attitude blog. She is currently pursuing her M.A. in Health Communication at Emerson College in collaboration with the Tufts University School of Medicine, where she is designing a body image campaign for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In her spare time, she blogs about health and gender at talkinreckless.com.

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Posted in Abortion , Culture and Politics, Life, nfti-home, Womanhood

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Kat
05/03/12 at 05:39 PM #
@Marcus
“Your college aged years were the time to focus on finding a good man to be the father of your children, not damage yourself with years of “sexy escapades and public drunkenness”. "

No, college years are the time to find yourself as a person, to make mistakes and have fun.
It is about bridging the gap between immaturity and adulthood, which may not be complete until you are in a good job.
Who wants to get married just after (or during) college?

To me that’s like finally finding your wings before suddenly being stuffed into a cage. (excuse the pun, marriage is not imprisonment but it gives you a limited and predictable path, lovely as it may be, when it happens)

So stop being so old fashioned. People are living longer, children need to therefore be children longer. And college is an extention of childhood in ways.
Screw getting married yet, I certainly don’t want to be any time soon. 25 even sounds too young to me! Don’t even get me started on children.

Let women live as they wish, their body, their choice. Slavery was all about controlling people, women are slaves to this judgemental and cruel society.
Marcus
04/13/12 at 12:37 AM #
Your college aged years were the time to focus on finding a good man to be the father of your children, not damage yourself with years of “sexy escapades and public drunkenness”.

If you get some sense, you may be lucky enough to find a man who can look past your mistakes and you won’t have to live through the nightmares of fertility treatments as you push 40.
Mary Weronko
04/11/12 at 09:33 AM #
I firmly believe that our society one day will look back on our practice of abortion like we currently look at the practice of slavery. Many of even the most upstanding citizens accepted the practice of slavery as part of the economics of the time. Now we look back and wonder what in the world were they thinking. Morally speaking, we couldn’t imagine having the practice in our current society. I believe one day, as we learn more about human development, we will be horrified by the thought of abortion also.
Jennifer
04/08/12 at 02:37 PM #
@Troy: Men also must choose whether or not they want to have sex with their partners. If a pregnancy results, both are responsible—you make it sound as if the man is wholly uninvolved here!

Pregnancy is a physical and mental burden that someone without a uterus will never experience—and remember, pregnancy is in fact classified as a medical condition because of its associated health risks, including the possibility of death. If we want to protect the lives and wellness of women, if we want to respect their right to bodily autonomy, we must allow them access to legal abortion services. Illegal, unsafe abortions kill both women and the unborn! Of course, in a perfect society we would perhaps have very little need for abortion services at all—we can make a start in lessening the number of abortions in the world by educating people about healthy, safe sex and providing contraceptives.

Every child wanted, every woman willing. That is the pro-choice stance.
Anon
04/08/12 at 01:40 PM #
Troy – just as everything on a biological level is apparently equal between men and women when it comes to who has babies and who has the right over what happens with the uterus the baby is in – remind me again how many MEN die as a result of pregnancy? How many men have serious medical complications as a result of pregnancy? How many men die giving birth? How many men lose their jobs when their employers find out they’re pregnant?
And just how many men are told by women that they’re going to stick by them and help raise the kids they asked for only to leave them as a single parent without a penny?

You have a choice whether or not you get a woman pregnant. You can use contraception, or not have sex. You have a choice whether or not you pay her money, you can sign away your parental rights and never see your kid and never pay a penny. But you do not have the right to decide what another sentient human being is allowed to do with the body they have. You do not have the right to decide what medical procedures another conscious, aware human being has a right to have. You do not have the right to decide if a person should continue with a pregnancy which will always be potentially life threatening. You lose the right to the final decision on what happens to your sperm the minute it enters her body. It’s not taking away men’s rights, it’s retaining them to the person who is carrying the pregnancy. When a trans man gets pregnant, he is the one who gets to decide if he has an abortion or not. And i’d like to remind you that the overwhelming majority of western governments are men – it’s not like women are making all the rules here.

And again, these women do not get pregnant on their own. Men choose to have sex with them, they know the risks, and they know that they do not get to decide what happens if pregnancy occurs. Men can keep their dicks in their pants as much as women can keep their legs shut.

Finally, stop thinking of pregnancy as some kind of minute cold that you can just walk off. It’s a nine month period exposing you to a world of health risks, both mental and physical, with a lot of responsibility and stress at the end. Sorry, but no other human being should have a say over mine as to which legal medical decisions I can make.
Dave
03/31/12 at 08:55 PM #
Beautifully written piece. Thank you for sharing deeply personal matters and giving us a glimpse into your life.
Kai
03/28/12 at 04:29 PM #
As a staunchly pro-choice mother of three, it is good for me to read this perspective. In the end, this is a perfectly logical argument, but for most it is not quite as easy. Especially if a pregnancy actually happens.

I wonder more about this ideal of being able to plan your life and have it go according to plan. Biologically, we are built to have children in our early to mid-twenties. Best for us and the babies we are growing, from a purely physiological perspective. Too often it is happening that women life this way and now are ending up in their late 30’s or even 40’s, ready to become mothers and find themselves infertile. Sometimes it can be remedied, and sometimes not. Abortions, especially when there are more than a few, can also cause damage to reproductive organs.
Troy
03/27/12 at 01:09 PM #
The problem with the “right to choose” is that everyone has the right to choose all the time. A person can choose to be a bank robber, rapist or even a killer. Why do we have laws? Well it’s like this… We have the right to do as we wish as long as we don’t affect somebody else’s rights. Not a complicated concept. I don’t think the right to choose (speaking of abortion) is for women so much as it’s against men. I’ll explain what I mean eventually. I believe it’s only right that people behave responsibly and fairly. I believe every woman does have a choice. To keep her legs together or not. Okay, I’ll even add that they can use protection or not. Once she allows a man to insert his genetic material inside her, it’s a different matter. She had the right to HER body but as soon as she allowed a man to insert his genetic material in her, it’s then about responsibility. The fact that men can’t get pregnant is just a fact of life. Being jealous of men, is no reason to be unfair. Let’s examine this more carefully. A woman gets pregnant BECAUSE she CHOSE to have sex with a man. She then CHOOSES that she doesn’t want the baby… BUT does the baby get to choose? Does the baby’s daddy get to choose? NO… NO.. If a woman decides to HAVE a baby, then she all of a sudden take the man VERY seriously. She comes at him expecting money because it is HIS child after all, but if she doesn’t want the child, this man’s opinion is nothing.. Even though the baby inside of her is just as much his as hers. The fact that it’s HER body is irrelevant. She allowed this to happen under her own free will. This is called having your cake and eating it too. This thinking is not about empowering women, it’s about taking away not only the man’s rights, but I would argue even the small unborn child’s right as well. Again, we all have the right to choose, BUT in society we all must be responsible for our choices. That’s what laws are for.
Stephanie
03/26/12 at 01:20 PM #
Thank you for this. I was 26, in a long-term relationship, and financially secure when I got pregnant. I knew before the words “you’re pregnant” left the nurse’s mouth that I would have an abortion. I never wanted to be a mother, and at 42, I can look back at that time in my life and know that I did the right thing. I was so fortunate to have parents who supported my decision. I was lucky that I could tell my parents! My parents actually went with me to the clinic, and my Mom stayed with me until it was time to go into the procedure room.

I have 10 nieces and nephews, and I love each of them fiercely. I am in no way anti-child or anti-motherhood. I just knew that motherhood wasn’t for me.
Suzanne
03/26/12 at 01:13 PM #
Thanks for your honest piece. Recently, I found myself thinking about my aunts and grandmothers — women who didn’t have the choice of abortion — and how their lives were completely different than mine. A grandmother who married at 15 and had 6 children; another grandmother who tried to commit suicide during a pregnancy because her husband didn’t want the baby (and ended up leaving). This gets tricky bc these aren’t just pregnancies — the resulting babies are aunts/uncles/cousins, etc. But I imagine the desperation and limited horizons of the previous generations and am oh so grateful to be alive now with my access to education, career, and, yes, choice.
Undercoverinthesuburbs.com
03/26/12 at 12:50 PM #
Thank you for this honest piece. I too have found that my emotional and mental reaction to the thought of abortion has changed drastically as my life circumstances have. Most recently I have had to struggle with whether I would make the choice to have an abortion now that I am, in fact, a mother, a mother who suffered infertility at one point. I find it so difficult as a mother in our society to feel entitled to abortion personally, even though I am wholeheartedly in favor of it politically. I am still struggling with what choice I would make were I to become pregnant again by accident. In some ways I think we can’t possibly know what parenthood entails until we do it, and at that point, we may be the best equipped to make a good decision about whether more children would be best for us and our families. However, I feel this sense that somehow, as someone who almost couldn’t have children, I am not entitled to that choice. In some ways I feel getting comfortable with allowing myself to have an abortion would mean true reproductive freedom in my own mind.