The A-Word

How is it possible that a woman could not know that she’d had an abortion? It’s more common than you’d think.

I’m not usually one for celebrity gossip, but I sure am one for abortion news. Last week the two worlds collided:

This is not news to me, nor to anyone else in TFMR land. I have held thousands of abortion stories from families in medical crises. I have seen, over and over, how this emergency strikes. Chrissy’s loss felt familiar.

In 2020, Chrissy’s public loss of her son Jack stirred a lot of feelings in support group. All of those feelings (and more!) playing out in the general public right now. It is difficult to watch. Especially hard is this polarity of meanness:

“Yeah right you didn’t know. You’d have to be an idiot not to know you had an abortion. You lied to us! How dare you? You OWED us this information” [The “you owe us!” comes from both pro-choice and pro-life voices for different reasons]

“TMI. Nobody needs to know your personal info. Why do you insist upon talking about your abortion when it’s supposed to be private? Drama queen.”

I absolutely believe Chrissy Teigan didn’t realize she’d had an abortion, and I don’t think she’s the least bit stupid. I see this All. Of. The. Time. in support group.

Abortion is a very confusing world. Ever had a miscarriage? Comb your medical records for spontaneous abortion. Or, maybe if you’re in Australia, you know you had a D&E to end a viable pregnancy, but all your doctors call it a medical termination to distinguish it from the experiences of women whose personal pregnancy crises are financial, relational, personal — not medical in nature. Or if you’re in America, maybe even though your baby was nonviable and your health was at risk so that it truly feels like there is NO choice at all, your doctor or nurse still calls it an elective abortion just to dig at you. Or maybe you had an ectopic pregnancy for which you had to take misoprostol (abortion meds), but you couldn’t get into TFMR support group because by the standards of my group doesn’t consider ectopic a pregnancy to begin with, even though it is a CLEAR medical emergency. What about my missed miscarriage? My blighted ovum? All placenta, no baby. What was that surgical procedure? It was identical to a D&E for abortion, but culturally different. If you’re confused, imagine trying to parse these linguistics in the fog of early maternal bereavement. Impossible.

For the purposes of this blog post, I include the ectopic case as abortion but exclude the miscarriage case and exclude the molar pregnancy case. An abortion is any time there is a growing embryo, fetus, or baby and by medicine, surgery, or induction of labor, the pregnancy is expelled early with the intention that the mother lives, and lives well, but the embryo, fetus, or baby does not. Some abortions (25 weeks and earlier) are induction of live birth to hospice. When the baby is pre-viability, the birth is induced first, the death follows inevitably. We set it all into motion. We choose the mode and timing of the death. We take on the responsibility of our own baby’s demise. Talk about confusing: I have seen a woman who had an induction-to-hospice abortion testify AGAINST abortion, not realizing even in her testimony that her experience was an abortion. She chose her baby’s death just as much as I did. She made her baby die just as much as I did. And she did it for the same reason we all get an abortion: because it’s what she could live with. It’s what she could handle. Her deepest wisdom said that it was better than her alternatives. She did it to save herself. Abortion means: “I saved myself.”

It doesn’t get any more taboo than this. If MOTHERHOOD is SELFLESSNESS, the most maternal thing a woman can do is to lay down her life for her child, and the least maternal thing she can do is to save her own life by denying her child. This is, of course, utter bullshit. Motherhood can truly be measured in love. To measure motherhood, instead, as martyrdom is terribly false, but this lie is the water we swim in.

Abortion is the worst thing a mother can do. That’s what the A-word means. Abortion = Abomination, mother coming before child. So when your doctors are trying to be mean to you, they will insist on referring to your loss as “elective abortion” [subtext: you chose this!] And when they are trying to be kind, they will refer to your loss as “termination” or “stillbirth.” This is messed up. The-A-Word is neutral. Cruelty lies in how the world treats those of us who choose Abortion.

Laurel’s loss was a stillbirth. Hours of labor, vaginal delivery… it doesn’t get more still birth than that. But it was also an abortion, because we induced both the stillness and the birth. When I call it a stillbirth, I am not lying. When I call it an abortion, I am not lying. There have been times I chose to use “stillbirth,” for it felt the most true and I didn’t desire everyone else’s baggage. There have been times I choose to use the word “abortion,” for that often feels the most true, especially when I talk about the 2000 miles, the $30,000, the bullet proof glass on the clinic door.

Who would want the mantle of this? Who would WANT the taboo? It is too much on top of the medical crisis and the deep, crushing grief. Too much on top of breasts producing milk for no baby to feed. Too much on top of coming home to an empty nursery that will stay empty and closed until you get the trauma-therapy you need to ever even open that door again. Who needs to step into the role of political scapegoat at a time like this? Who wants those nasty picketers to be about them? Who wants to be denied communion? Cut out of family? Publicly humiliated? Nobody. Denial makes so much damn sense I’m surprised anyone knows she’s had an abortion.

To my beloved loss moms:

You do not owe ANYBODY ANYTHING just because you had this loss. You do not owe anyone your story, your personal details, your most tender pain. You do not owe anybody your processing. You do not owe anybody any special vocabulary. You get to exercise your right to privacy and dignity in your most personal loss.

You also don’t owe anybody your silence. Wouldn’t it be nice and cozy for the unaffected to not have to hear sad stories that bum them out? Well guess what: you don’t owe them that comfort. You get to be as out there and frank about your story as feels right. Let them squirm. Let them feel uncomfortable for 5 minutes. You’ve been uncomfortable since your baby died.

You don’t owe anybody their favorite words for your experience. You get to pick your own damn words each and every time you use your voice. So does Chrissy Teigan.