Anonymous

The first time I had an abortion, I was 16 years old.

I was two months pregnant and had lost my virginity just two months before. The guy was the one, I had thought. I loved him to bits and thought he loved me too. But I was just a foolish kid who didn’t even know how old the boy was. Looking back on it now, he was probably 22 or so.

I remember that I knew I was pregnant without even having to take a pregnancy test. I told the father of my baby that I was pregnant, but he didn’t seem to take much notice of the fact. I don’t know whether he didn’t believed me or didn’t care. Perhaps his motto was ‘ignorance is bliss’.

It was a Saturday morning when I made the appointment at the clinic. On the Monday when I was going to school, I called and told the father that I was going to terminate the pregnancy. He gave a weak one-line protest, saying, “Don’t you kill my child.” I hung up the phone.

On the Tuesday morning I woke up, put on my school uniform and went to the hospital. My mother thought I had gone to school. When I got to the hospital, I had to fill out all kinds of consent forms for the abortion. The nurses were anything but sweet. One nurse in the administrative department shouted at me for having an abortion in my school uniform. She asked me if school uniforms were the new overalls.

It was a long day; I got there at eight in the morning and left at three in the afternoon with four pills. The instructions were to push two pills into my vagina at 4pm and the other two six hours later.

When I got home, I did as I was told. At about five in the morning, blood started gushing out of me, as though a tap had been opened in my vagina. I felt like something was sitting at the opening of my vagina and, when I went to the bathroom, I felt a soft lump pop out. The weight of the world lifted off of my shoulders.

They made me wait in a small room when I went to the hospital again later that morning. After what felt like forever, they called me into an adjacent room where I was instructed to lie on a bed with my legs stretched out. What happened next makes me cringe just thinking about it, but at least the nurses performing the procedure were really caring. I was sent into another room for an injection and then to sleep and recover.

When I woke up, I went to get medication and was ready to go. One of the nurses said to me, “Now you can have your beautiful figure again.”

Looking back on the whole experience now, I am saddened by recalling it, but I give credit to the young me for having the courage to make that decision. As for the father of the baby? I’ve never heard from him since that Monday morning phone call.