avatarPatsy Fergusson

Summary

A woman recounts her experience of falling in love with her husband after undergoing an abortion and their subsequent marriage and family.

Abstract

The story is a personal account of a woman who had an abortion early in her relationship with her future husband, Larry. She was initially unsure about the paternity of the child and had reservations about marriage and parenthood due to her own circumstances and grief over her deceased parents. However, Larry's supportive and understanding response to her situation made her fall in love with him. After the abortion, they eventually married and started a family, with their first child, Rose, born three years later. The woman reflects on the guilt she felt over the abortion and how she reconciled it by viewing Rose as the reincarnation of the lost child.

Opinions

  • The woman initially had reservations about marriage and parenthood due to her own circumstances and grief over her deceased parents.
  • She was initially unsure about the paternity of the child and had to confess to Larry about her past relationships.
  • Larry's supportive and understanding response to her situation made her fall in love with him.
  • The woman felt guilt over the abortion but reconciled it by viewing Rose as the reincarnation of the lost child.
  • The woman's experience of falling in love with her husband after undergoing an abortion highlights the complex emotions and decisions involved in such situations.

The Story of My Abortion

Or how I came to fall in love with my husband and start our family on solid ground

On our wedding day on the San Francisco Bay which was actually 37 years ago, but who’s counting?! :p

I had hoped, when I married Larry 20 years ago, that one of our children would inherit his magnificent hair, so voluptuous and appealing that just putting your fingers in it communicated a sense of abundance, of largesse. But none did. Rose has medium-thick hair to which she periodically applies a henna paste to in order to color it red. It isn’t curly, but when she came home after a year at UC Berkeley last summer, it had metamorphosed into chin-length dreadlocks that emanated off of her head like a white girl’s afro. In one or two places, she had fastened a shell. Eddy’s hair is dusty brown and lank. Michael is a blonde Arab. Not one of our children inherited Larry’s voluminous hair.

But, that other child — the one I aborted a month after beginning a sexual relationship with Larry — she might have had his hair. During the two weeks that I considered becoming her mother, I envisioned her looking Arabic, like her father, with big, liquid brown eyes and luxuriant black hair. I saw a thin frame, like Larry’s, and lean, artistic fingers. I saw her standing before me in a white dress.

Paradoxically, the abortion was what convinced me it would be safe to love Larry. He already had many of the elements I desired in a partner. He was smart. He was funny, and I liked his dark, boyish looks. But there were drawbacks. He was extraordinarily shy, for one. He drove me home from the newsroom of San Francisco State University’s Golden Gater for two months before he kissed me, and even then, I had to engineer the event.

“You can kiss me now, if you want to,” I told him one night outside my flat on 19th Street and Guerrero in San Francisco, sitting on my side of the bench seat in the phlegm-green Valiant he had inherited from thick-haired Grandpa Dabu. He moved across the seat with alacrity and took my head in both hands.

His smooth, purple lips tasted of almonds. His moustache tickled my nose. It was a more than satisfactory kiss. But there were other problems, too: Larry suffered from a perennial lack of enthusiasm; he wasn’t joyful, or enamored of life, like me. Besides, at 23, I wasn’t yet in the market for a husband. I preferred grieving with large quantities of gin over my two dead parents. But when I accidentally got pregnant despite the enormous, thick plastic diaphragm that I filled with spermicide and maneuvered up my vagina every time I had sex, Larry’s heroic reaction couldn’t be ignored.

“I’ve got a problem I need to talk to you about,” I told him one evening after school. We were sitting at the round table in my small kitchen, drinking cranberry juice. The room was cramped and cluttered, but cheerful. Light poured in from a skylight overhead and a small window overlooking the fire escape. Photographs and magnets covered the refrigerator. A few random dishes waited rinsing in the sink. My three roommates could be heard in other parts of the flat. Both a television and a radio were blaring. It seemed likely that we’d be interrupted any time.

“Oh yeah? What’s that?” He looked at me guardedly, wondering what I might be planning to spring on him. My behavior was still almost completely unpredictable to him. We’d only been sleeping together for a month.

“I guess I’m pregnant.” I watched his face closely, to see how this news would affect him. Unbelievably, he registered relief.

“Really?” He looked happy. It was inexplicable.

With my maid of honor, Jane.

“Yes,” I nodded, looking down at my glass, barely able to suppress a smile in spite of my heavy mood. “What are you looking so happy about?” I couldn’t help teasing him. “This is a serious situation.”

Larry nodded, adopting a sober posture right away. He reached across the table and put his hand over mine. “What do you want to do about it?”

Here it comes, I thought, the rationale for an abortion.

He was probably just happy for one fleeting moment when he realized I wasn’t dumping him. Or maybe he’s glad to have his potency validated — some kind of macho pride in his healthy sperm.

“I don’t know,” I said aloud. “I really don’t see how I can keep it.” In spite of my intentions, I started to cry. “I haven’t got a job. I haven’t got a college degree. I haven’t got a good place to live.” I spread my hands to indicate the inadequate party flat, noisy and dirty and full of people. The smell of marijuana wafted from a back bedroom. The refrigerator had nothing in it but bacon and beer.

“But I don’t want to have an abortion, either.” My voice sounded soggy. “I always told myself that I believed in a woman’s right to have an abortion, but that I would never have one myself… It’s not fair! I used a diaphragm every time! I don’t see how this could have happened.”

Larry scooted his chair closer so he could put his arm around me. He tried to mesh our bodies smoothly, but was all angles and bones. His knees and mine collided. Both our backs arched awkwardly. Our huddled bulk was blocking both the doorway into the kitchen and the refrigerator. He leaned his head over, put his cheek next to mine, making a sort of private space with his halo of hair. “You can keep it if you want to,” he murmured. “I’ll help you. Do you want to get married?”

“Married?!” I pulled back to look him in the eyes once again. No one had ever offered to marry me before, and I couldn’t help feeling a flush of exhilaration. But then I sobered. “How could we get married now? We hardly know each other.” He seemed surprised by this obvious drawback. “We still could. If you wanted to…”

“Look Larry,” I decided I had to be the grown up, the one with both feet on the ground. There was something strangely threatening in his proposal of marriage. What if he was a radical Christian who would insist that I carry the baby to term? He’d never mentioned Jesus before, and it didn’t seem likely, but then neither did the proposal of marriage. “There’s something else I need to tell you.”

“What’s that?” His eyes were beautiful behind his wire-rimmed glasses. Deep brown pools. Tender. Welcoming. I felt an overwhelming desire to take him back to my bedroom and make love to him.

“Well…” I didn’t want to tell him what I had to say next. I didn’t want him to withdraw his proposal. I didn’t want him to fall out of love. I didn’t want him to stop driving me home from school, to stop following me around the journalism room with his big, hungry eyes. I didn’t want him to decide that I was a slut, to discard me like a used condom. I felt suddenly tired of the passionate fervor with which I’d been grieving dead parents with promiscuity and alcohol. I felt suddenly ready to turn over a new leaf. But there was no getting around the confession before me. It had to be done. Besides, what I was about to say would act as insurance against any Christian crusading he might be considering. It would be a test of his mettle, his suitability as a partner.

A few snaps from the wedding album

“I’m not entirely sure it’s yours,” I blurted, with the same urgent bravado I used when jumping into a river from a high bridge.

His face was blank, unreadable.

“You’re not?” he finally said.

What was going on behind those John Lennon glasses? Had he already crossed me off his list of potential life partners? I waited fretfully. When he said nothing more, I stumbled ahead.

“I’m pretty sure it is,” I offered. “I mean, we’ve made love like a hundred times this month, right? But two times I made love to other people.”

“Two?” He was still unreadable.

“Yes. Right at the beginning. When we were first getting together. When we weren’t really a couple yet.”

“Who were they?”

I began to feel agitated. Was he going to get angry now? Was he going to expect an apology? In my heart of hearts, I didn’t figure I owed him one. We weren’t engaged. We weren’t married. We barely knew each other. Still, I didn’t want to prolong the discomfort by equivocating. Straight through with the truth was bound to be best. If he decided to dump me, so be it. He was too skinny, anyway. Too inexperienced. Nothing of significance had ever happened to him, while I’d already lost two parents and become both a slut and a lush! I wrote poetry! He had pimples — a whole array of pimples in a pink bloom across his back.

“One was a professor at school. I practically forced myself on him. He wasn’t really interested. I don’t know what I was thinking, why I seduced him. I’m pretty sure he already has a girlfriend. Besides, he’s about a hundred years old. There’s no way I’m going to tell him about this. He wouldn’t be the slightest bit interested.”

Larry nodded and waited.

“The other was an old friend. We’ve been flirting with each other for years, and before I started going out with you, we tried being boyfriend and girlfriend for about a week. But it didn’t work out. He got angry one night and threw me out of his apartment even though I was pretty sick with strep throat. I don’t think he’s someone I could depend on. Besides, he’s a hardcore alcoholic. He wouldn’t make a good father. I don’t want to tell him about this either.”

I stopped talking and awaited his condemnation. I had no idea what he was going to say next. We had drawn apart by this time, sat separate in our independent chairs.

“Look Jo,” he began. “If you don’t want to get married, but you still want to keep the baby, and you don’t want to bring it up with either of those other guys, I’d be glad to be the father.” My jaw dropped. Where was the recrimination? The jealousy? The hurt pride? Were we just going to skip over all that? This man may be inexperienced, but he was certainly strong-minded. It began to dawn on me that despite his drawbacks, Larry was at least as interesting and unpredictable as I was.

“You’re kidding.” I mumbled.

He shook his head. “I think it would be fun.”

“Well, it’s tempting,” I stumbled. “Because my father died this year, you know, and this baby could be his reincarnation.”

I put my hand on my belly. It seemed unbelievable that my regret and alcohol-suffused body was capable of creating new life. Still, I thought I felt something inside. Some lightening. Some forgiveness.

Larry sat quietly, waiting, apparently undisturbed by this new revelation of my uncertain belief in reincarnation. I began to feel safer, less pursued by the Furies, more capable of deciding my fate. But there was one more land mine I needed to negotiate.

“But what if I decide I want to have an abortion? How would you feel about that?”

My chief roommate — the one who held the lease — appeared outside the door to the kitchen and barked playfully at us to move out of the way. We scooted back in our chairs, staring at each other, as he pulled a beer out of the refrigerator. “What’s going on in here?” he wondered, leaning back casually against the counter as he twisted off the top. “What are you two up to tonight?”

“We don’t know yet,” I answered, giving him a brief glance before returning my gaze to Larry. “Right now we’re just having a kind of…private conversation.”

“Oh, I see how it is,” he looked first at me, then at Larry. “God forbid you should have your private conversation in the privacy of your room,” he said with a laugh. “But hey, that’s okay. I know when I’m not wanted. Fine then. Be that way.”

He tossed an imaginary hank of hair over his shoulder as he left the room. Larry still didn’t answer.

“What would you think?” I pressed him.

“If that’s what you want to do, then I’ll support you,” he said. “But I don’t want you to think it’s your only option.”

So that pretty much covered the gamut. He would marry me. He would be the father of my child if I didn’t want to get married. He would drive me to the abortion clinic, if I chose that. Once all the power was placed in my hands, it took two more weeks for me to decide on the abortion. It was partly because I had begun to fall in love with Larry that I finally made that choice. It seemed possible that we might make it, might make a successful marriage — under different circumstances. Perhaps if we were graduated, employed, monogamous, and had known each other for more than three months… And there was the ill-conceived phone call to his parents, whom I’d never met. He was still so naïve that even as he reported it to me, he wasn’t entirely aware that he had done something wrong. It went something like this:

“Guess what Mom and Dad. I have a girlfriend.”

“That’s nice son.”

“And guess what else. She’s pregnant!”

“What?!?! (this would be his father speaking). You’ve only just met her. How do you know it’s yours?”

“She’s 90% sure it’s mine!”

When he related that phone call to me, my first thought was that his parents were going to reject me. My second was that the child, if I carried her to term, would have no loving grandparents. My parents were dead, and his parents would never be sure that this grandbaby was their own — not to mention the animosity they might feel for the woman who had apparently trapped their innocent son into marriage with the oldest trick in the book.

I put my hand on my belly. It seemed unbelievable that my regret and alcohol-suffused body was capable of creating new life. Still, I thought I felt something inside. Some lightening. Some forgiveness.

So I made the decision to abort and my child — the first one, the lost nomad with luxuriant black hair — was excised.

I don’t remember undergoing the procedure, only the crowded waiting room on Van Ness Avenue, where Larry sat beside me and held my hand. Afterwards, he took me back to his flat on Larkin Street and spread a sleeping bag on the floor in front of the television. I had told him I wanted to watch soap operas all afternoon and eat gourmet food. As I lay on the floor swathed in blankets and pillows, he brought me duck liver pate and a small silver knife; round, white, water crackers on an enameled tray; a jar of caviar; cream cheese; slender slices of sourdough bread; cut green apples; Vermont cheddar cheese; round Lindt chocolates with caramel filling wrapped in fancy blue paper; Planter’s mixed nuts; and a bottle of Silver Oak, the most prized red wine at I Sorrelli, the restaurant where he’d been working for the past year and would continue to work for the next 20, eventually becoming a partner.

Erica on All My Children was tied to a chair in a leaky basement, struggling to escape her psycho kidnapper, who loved her so much he felt compelled to kill her when she threatened to marry another man (his twin brother — both albinos).

That was the afternoon that I decided that I had grieved over my dead parents long enough. I decided the time had come for me to stop being an alcoholic slut loser. I released myself from my prison of penance for past sins. That was the afternoon I noticed the deep brown color of Larry’s eyes when he took off his glasses. I decided to call him Lawrence. I fell in love.

Although I don’t remember my own abortion, I have a pretty good idea of what must have happened that day from the time a friend asked me to support her through hers. She lay on a narrow bed in a dark room under a blue plastic and white paper blanket. The doctor had a white paper mask overhis face, like a roadside robber who wanted to keep his identity secret. He told me to stand behind him, back by the machine; he wouldn’t let me stand next to her and hold her hand. The machine was cylindrical, with a long, crenellated hose, like a vacuum cleaner. A receptacle on top was made of clear plastic. When he flipped a switch, a voracious noise filled the room and bits of bloody tissue began splattering against the sides of the machine. My throat filled with vomit.

You’d think I would be able to remember that apocalyptic noise, anyway, or whether my own doctor was a man or a woman. But I don’t. I’m good at forgetting — forgetting my abortion, forgetting the night in the hospital when my mother died, forgetting my father’s funeral — did he have an open casket?

Once all the power was placed in my hands, it took two more weeks for me to decide on the abortion. It was partly because I had begun to fall in love with Larry that I finally made that choice

Three years after my abortion, when I had married Larry good and truly and Rose became our firstborn child, she didn’t look Arab, but Irish, like me. I remember a few weeks after she was born, I was sitting on the beach at Santa Cruz with one of my sister Jean’s friends, looking at my plump, pink child sleeping peacefully under an umbrella in her plastic baby seat, so healthy and sweet-smelling she was practically edible.

“A few years ago, I had an abortion,” I confessed mournfully to the woman sitting beside me, a woman I barely knew. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

The air was crisp and wet with salt water; the ocean made loud, sibilant noises that pressed against the back of my neck. Beneath my towel, the warm, brown grains of sand cupped my butt and thighs. Off to the right, beyond a bluff, we could see the tips of the tallest rides at the Boardwalk — the Ferris wheel, the Hammer, the Giant Dipper — and every two minutes we could hear the screams of riders on one of the country’s oldest roller coasters as they came down that first enormous hill.

“Why not?” Jean’s friend — what was her name? — asked quietly.

“I don’t understand,” I continued. “Why does this baby get to live, when the other one didn’t?”

Jean’s friend turned her broad face toward me and asked a simple question. She had chin-length silver hair that she tucked behind one ear as she wondered, “What makes you think it’s not the same one?”

The idea startled me.

Scientifically, of course, Rose couldn’t have the same body as my little Arab girl. That particular fertilized egg was excised by the abortion machine. But spiritually, Rose could easily be the same soul inhabiting a different body. After the abortion, she might have gone back to an ethereal waiting room until I was ready to be her mother. And then, when I was graduated and employed and married and sober and living in my own little house with Lawrence, just to punish me, she could have made me wait and work a whole year at getting pregnant before consenting to re-inhabit my womb.

So that’s how I looked at it from then on. That’s how I assuaged the guilt of my abortion. And that’s how I learned Larry’s true nature.

Abortion is how I fell in love with my husband, and started our family on solid ground, where we were able to take root and grow strong and withstand the many slings and arrows of misfortune that were still to come.

This story of my abortion is an excerpt from my novel Count All This.

Besides writing stories about movies, books, women, mental illness, and politics on Medium, I edit the feminist publication Fourth Wave and I’ve published two novels here: Thirsty Work and Count All This. Check them out! And if you’re a writer with a passion for equality, submit to Fourth Wave.

Abortion
This Happened To Me
Relationships
Feminism
Women
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