It’s currently after 2:30 am and I had a realization. So, here I am, wide awake thinking. And so, like many bloggers, I found myself turning on my computer and starting to write.
Thanks to my post yesterday and the comments I received, I’ve realized that:
I have not forgiven myself for our abortion.
In a comment yesterday, someone posed the question “If instead of receiving a medically-necessary abortion, the choice was made for you by miscarrying, would you tell the bio parents?” I can answer this question relatively easy because we had 4 other pregnancies end in miscarriage where the choice was made for us. And I know I would tell them if they asked, and in fact our home study makes reference to our 5 losses. However, from this question, I now realize that I do not have the same troubling sense of guilt around those other 4 miscarriages – yes I have grief and sometimes I struggle with not blaming my body for them. But, I also realize that the final demise of those pregnancies was out of my control and did not require us/me to terminate a baby while it was still technically alive – a distinction that is clearly important in my mind.
In my comments yesterday, another person actually stated “go easy on yourself and forgive yourself!.” As I read those words, I realized she had a point, I simply have not forgiven myself for the decision.
Yes, we made the decision to terminate and I have no regrets. Honestly, I’d make the same decision tomorrow if we were in the same situation again. So, I know it was the right decision.
Yet, at the same time, I also realize that there is not a day that goes by that I do not think about our decision to terminate. Which means there is not a day that goes by that I do not know what if or was it really that dire of a situation? What if the infection never turned deadly for me? What if the lab results were wrong? What if….
I know our baby would have died eventually, there was no way she would have survived to term let alone to be “compatible with life.” But, I cannot seem to let go of the fact that I* ultimately ended her life. Ultimately, I made the decision, and while I know it was the right decision I clearly am not in a place yet where I have been able to forgive myself for it.
The more I’ve thought about it all of this tonight, I’ve realized that a lot of my abortion guilt is likely wrapped up in the fact that we had to go to an actual abortion clinic for the procedure and we had a pretty horrific experience at the abortion clinic. I cannot help but think about how much that experience plays in my mind and how much that has impacted my ability to forgive myself. I will never know the answer, but I do wonder, if we had been given the procedure at a hospital, outside of an abortion clinic, would I feel differently today? Would I be able to forgive myself? When we were forced to share the waiting room, I developed an appreciation for the other women/couples there, but I also began lumping myself in with those who were there for an elective procedure, vs. the reality that we were there for a medically necessary procedure. And as another person noted yesterday, “I wonder if it helps or hinders your healing to classify it in this manner in your head” – well, I know the answer to that too, it doesn’t help me to classify myself as the medical system does. But yet, I do. Heck, I tend to use the word abortion not terminate for medical reasons, because I went to an abortion clinic, and so that’s how my medical system classifies me. Yet, there is a difference, but our experience has enabled me to blur the lines between our reality/decision as medically necessary or not. And I continue to let myself blur the lines further, even though it is clearly not a healthy way for me to think..
I don’t know how I am supposed to over come this and how I am to come to a place of forgiveness. But I now realize this is something I need to process further and work to deal with. I realize I cannot spend the rest of my life wondering and that I must find a way to forgive myself.
*Note that while Mr. MPB was a full participant in the decision to terminate, I do believe that as it was my body I was ultimately responsible for the final decision and therefore I often use the pronoun I, not us.
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We had an abortion.
We are adopting.
The situation was far from ideal, but we did chose to end the life of our child.
I am depending on someone else to choose the life of their child so that I can have a child.
The irony of this is not lost on me.
.
I do realize it’s not as simple as this, but on the surface it could be viewed this simply.
Regardless of what I say and I believe, some may say that I did not fight for our child’s life, some may say that I gave up on our child the day I ended her life.
And yet, now, I need someone else to put their child’s life above all else so that I can be a mother.
If that’s not ironic, I don’t know what is.
.
We were honest about our choice to terminate for medical reasons while we went through our home study and adoption process. We told our social worker everything. As always, we were honest.
Yet, we noticed that this specific fact was not included in our home study. So, unless we tell the birth mother directly, she will not know.
I know the point of a home study is not to tell every detail about your life. Rather it seems to be about showing what type of family you were raised in, what your marriage is like, how you came to choose adoption and how you work through difficult circumstances. The home study makes mention of our losses and our attempts to figure out how to have children, but it doesn’t focus on it. I get all of this.
Yet, I cannot help but wonder, should a birth mother/father know this specific detail considering that they clearly chose not to have an abortion rather to have the child to place it with a family like us? I don’t have the answer, but I cannot help but wonder.
I don’t have the answer. Who am I to know the right way to handle this situation, it’s one of those life situations that no-one is ever prepared for.
I don’t really think that our decision to terminate for medical reasons will come up in conversation casually, because honestly, I’m yet to encounter a casual conversation about termination. And I can honestly say, I don’t see myself meeting the birth mother for the first time and then saying we had an abortion to save my life. Seriously, how does that just come up in conversation? And I honestly feel as though the focus of the first meeting conversation should be on our future child and our expanding family, including the child and possibly her. And yet, even though our adoption agency didn’t feel the need to share this piece of our lives with potential birth mothers, there is a nagging voice at the back of my mind that says she has the right to know.
And then there is a part of me that fears that she wouldn’t chose us if she knew.
So, what are we to do?
I feel as though this is one on of those situations where there is no road map. A situation where there is no right or wrong. A situation where no-one can tell us what to do.
Really, like so many things we’ve lived through in the last few years, this is yet another one of those situations that just sucks. It’s just another situation that I wish I didn’t even have to contemplate. Yet, I cannot change our losses, I cannot rewrite this part of our lives nor can I forget. Instead, I am left trying to navigate it, hopefully with some grace and compassion.
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