Thread by @localnotail

Lots of women have had helpful abortions that changed their lives for the better by giving them control
#HerBodyHerChoice

I have had:
1 miscarriage after not knowing I was pregnant,
1 contraceptive failure termination in a bad time & place,
+ 1 full term pregnancy

Due to my mental health instability until midlife, I would not have been a good parent to either of the first potential people I made, but by the last one, I was so ready & we're doing well.

Obviously as ~1/5 of conceptions end in miscarriage naturally there may have been others

First known:
I had IUD (coil) contraception in place

Turns out I was >16wks unwittingly pregnant when I miscarried. Ectopic.
No idea I had conceived at all. No emotional connection at all, no sense of change to my body.
Only realised I was pregnant after I haemorrhaged it out

No awareness gave me no attachment
This meant I felt meant no grief, only relief that my choice had been made for me.
I was not ready to be a mum back then, at 25, failing medical school, on Lithium.

When I was 32 I had some weird bleeding & went to my GP who told me I was 9wks pregnant.
I'd just come out of a long-term relationship & also out of the psychiatric service care that dominated my 20s.
Due to go travelling around the world 2 months later.
I'd used contraception

I wasn't in a relationship, it had been a casual fun thing.

I had to wait a month for my termination
Heartbreaking 4 weeks of waiting, aware that a potential person was building inside me. But I'd just come off Lithium, not v. stable.
And I'd had lots of vaccinations for travel

When the time finally came for my pregnancy termination, it was very difficult, even though I knew it was the right choice for me & that potential person. Not stable. Not able.
I was ~15 weeks then. I could feel them.
But my choice was cemented by travel vax stopping growth/devel

I had my abortion on the NHS & it saved me from a scarred life that would likely have ended in suicide.
Incapable of being a good mum at that point in my life, didn't want it,
& torment of having to carry a pregnancy to term & then give it up for adoption would've finished me off

But, I learned that I wanted to be a mum, but to do it right.
9 yrs later got my chance. Stable relationship, planned baby.
Without that termination for the 2nd pregnancy, I'd probably not be here now.
My lovely child would definitely not exist as would not have met their dad.

The anti-choice protesters outside the abortion clinic were so fixated on the rights of the potential people they wanted to force women to carry to term.
They had no care for the women & their lives & future, or that of any family that they already had or might have later in life

For yrs after my abortion, I worked nearby
Unpregnant, while pregnant & then with my baby in a sling, I'd visit the anti-choice protesters on my way past the clinic & ask why they still did *nothing* to help the many living children in real need within a mile of where we stood

Anti-choice gang never answered - all they cared about was their mission to try to shame & intimidate women making a very difficult choice about *our* lives

Sometimes I'd ask why they'd deny me & the baby in my arms the right to be happy existing together now

That confused them

In an ideal world with full access to education & contraception, we should have very little need for abortions.

But even if that goal is achieved, I believe it's still a woman's right to choose what happens to her body & her life.

So shocked that America has failed to protect♀️