(By my wonderful wife, Briana)
Nearly 10 years ago now, Chris and I were “just friends” working together at The Statesman, Stony Brook University’s student-run newspaper. When he, then the Opinions Editor, challenged me, then the Copy Chief, to write at least one article during my rapidly waning tenure, I decided I might as well go big. Channeling my then-raging and highly personal frustrations over a fellow campus publication’s decision to push an ethically dubious and decidedly pro-life piece, I wrote the article I remain most proud of and which still has particularly alarming pertinence: “We need to talk: My abortion was the best decision I ever made.”
As anxiety-inducing as the entire process of getting this part of my story out there was, the reception I received back then – just before a certain someone was elected to office – was thoughtfully critical at its “worst” and overwhelmingly positive at its best. Contrary to the fears I expressed, I had earned no scarlet letter nor did I lose any of my existing friends or opportunities. In fact, in the near-decade since my piece was published, I’ve earned my bachelor’s in English, moved to Costa Rica to become certified to teach English to non-native speakers (which is where I discovered how much I love working with kids), come back to the States and become certified to teach English, Social Studies, and ESL in Texas, gotten married, moved home and started a new role in elementary special education, and, as of last Wednesday, finished my Master’s in Teacher Leadership — all things I might have missed out on had I not had the abortion I wrote about. I’ve also watched as politicians and lawmakers who seem to know disturbingly little about what goes on in our bodies continue to chisel away at both inherent and established rights and freedoms, most devastatingly with the 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Settled in Houston at the time, I had already seen how leaving abortion decisions to the states had what many consider its intended effect. An arcane 6-week abortion ban passed in late 2021 known as the “Texas Heartbeat Act” had already effectively eliminated all documented abortions in the state. Though state law – which is still on the books – ostensibly still allows physicians to terminate pregnancies that put the mother’s major life functions at risk, those same aforementioned politicians and lawmakers who still know nothing about basic human anatomy have moved onto using threats of or the actual involvement of the legal system to override expert medical opinion and prevent women from receiving the care their doctors deemed appropriate. Taking things a step further, Texas has also incentivized and deputized its citizens to out any resident who receives or performs an abortion or helps someone do so, even if the recipient travels to a state where abortion remains legal. It should come as no surprise, then, that just 5-10 officially recorded abortions are currently carried out each month in Texas. It should also come as no surprise that the women and infants the Texas pro-life crowd claims to cherish are now dying at statistically significant increased rates, with infant mortality up 12.9% in the year after the six-week abortion ban was passed and maternal mortality up 56% between 2019 and 2022. Though some state officials have done their best to hide these stats, an overall trend is increasingly observable nationwide as other states passed their own post-Dobbs legislation and physicians are left to decide between saving a life or their livelihood. Today, over 23 million women of reproductive age – one in three – are living without clear and consistent access to potentially lifesaving services. As ever-increasing numbers of women and children continue to suffer and one candidate in this year’s presidential election openly brags about being directly responsible, I feel it is my duty and obligation to share the other half of my story I left out all those years ago, naively thinking there was no way they’d ever come for lifesaving procedures.
In December of 2014 – almost a full year before I wrote my article – I survived a burst ectopic pregnancy that could have killed me had it occurred just a few years later or in a different state.
Learning from my experiences at 16, I had done everything “right” this time around, having had an IUD – one of the most effective forms of birth control available – implanted just 3 months prior and being in a monogamous, slightly more stable relationship. When I began spotting one night, I thought nothing of it as I was due for my next period anyway. When the next morning brought with it one-sided neck and shoulder pain and a nagging sense that something was wrong, I did what any lost 20-year-old would: I called my mother. Her nurse senses tingling, she drove an hour out to Stony Brook to pack me up and bring me back home to East Meadow, where I could ride things out in comfort and under supervision. My OBGYN, looped in via a phone call on the ride home regarding my then-mild symptoms, told me how unlikely it was for a pregnancy of any type to occur; however, if the at-home test I was advised to take came up positive, I would need to book it to the hospital as soon as possible to rule out an ectopic.
Roughly three minutes after arriving home, I knew I was in trouble.
Walking into the hospital completely unassisted, I’m sure I didn’t seem to be on the brink of death. After we calmly explained to the triage nurse that I had both an IUD and a positive pregnancy test and that I was experiencing some concerning symptoms, I was given another urine test, which came up negative (as ectopics are wont to do). I was also booked for a sonogram to see what could be causing my symptoms and had my blood drawn for, among other things, a qualitative hCG reading. To get the best picture, I was asked to drink enough liquid to distend my bladder. As the sonographer pushed down, the pain I had been tolerating just fine suddenly became unbearable. I ran from the table into the attached bathroom and vomited uncontrollably, crying hysterically and profusely apologizing at the same time. As the scan resumed, the sonographer grew quiet. A few minutes later, medical students and staff began pouring into the room to stand and stare at my images, and my mother and I grew more and more frantic as the silence persisted. I later found out that my left Fallopian tube had been the site of my ectopic pregnancy and had completely burst, and everyone was staring at the aftermath.
I don’t remember much of my pre-surgery experience from that point on, but I do remember the look on my parents’ faces as reality set in. Being a nurse and an EMT, my mother and father have never been alarmists when it came to our health; in fact, I still joke that their occupations are the reason we rarely had bandaids in the house growing up. This time, however, was different; rolling up to surgery, I could see my father barely holding it together, half-heartedly laughing with me at the jokes I cracked in an attempt to diffuse the situation. I could see my mother looking completely helpless, probably the first and only time I’ve seen her that way. I also remember the concern of one of my nurses as she explained that I might be more prone to vomiting and aspiration while being put under due to the volume of liquid I had consumed for my sonogram. As she massaged my throat and I willed myself not to succumb to any of the things trying to kill me that day, I went under and emerged a few hours later, alive and almost completely whole.
In the end, I was one of the lucky ones. My left Fallopian tube was completely obliterated and excised, but I was fortunate enough to keep its correlating ovary. My OBGYN assured me that my fertility would be minimally affected – a hope I cling to as Chris and I start trying in earnest for kids of our own – but I also now live with an increased risk of future ectopics. Still, unlike far too many women these days, I made it out of my traumatic experience alive. My ectopic pregnancy, like all others, was never viable, yet we still see recent legislation that argues otherwise and puts lives at risk. I was objectively a picture of health on the outside and still taken seriously during my experience, while women like Amber Thurman, Josseli Barnica, and Navaeh Crain were on death’s doorstep and still turned away or made to wait until it was far too late. As more and more cases of women being denied the healthcare they so desperately need pile up, it’s hard to not feel some sense of survivor’s guilt along with my rage and disbelief. The idea that I survived and subsequently thrived solely because of when and where my ectopic occurred is unacceptable to me. In a nation that boasts being the best and the freest in the world, a citizen’s ability to make deeply personal and sometimes lifesaving choices for their bodies under the careful guidance of their physicians should never come down to luck or be litigated by those who probably can’t even find the clitoris.
Today’s election marks a pivotal moment when we can take back our country – just not in the way a certain someone keeps spewing. Instead, we can vote to once again enshrine abortion protections in our state and federal laws. We can listen to and spread the stories of those who have fallen victim to abortion bans, especially those which challenge the arguments of the forced-birth crowd. We can (and I argue, must) share our personal stories in the hopes of making at least one person in our orbit think before they cast their ballots, both today and in the future. Above all else, we must commit to a protracted fight to regain our rights as any electoral wins this week are just the first step. While we still have quite a ways to go as we rebuild from the rubble, we also benefit from access to an entire generation who fought and won a similar war before. Should the 64% of women and 61% of men nationwide who support access to legal abortion come together to clinch this election and restore abortion protections, the next major anniversary of my piece might feel far more celebratory. Until then, I will continue to unabashedly share what is now the full story, hoping that those who know and love me realize they are only able to do so because an abortion that would be questionable in other circumstances saved my life.
Voting Resources:
Candidates’ Stances on Abortion
Vote.org – a one-stop shop to register to vote, check your registration, view a sample ballot, and much more.
Issues with voting: – Call or text 1-866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683); 1-888-VE-Y-VOTA (en Español); 1-888-API-VOTE (Asian multilingual assistance); or 1-844-YALLA-US (Arabic)
Abortion Resources:
NYS Department of Health Abortion Services – details procedures currently available in New York and links to official state resources, such as a cost estimator.
National Network of Abortion Funds – a network of grassroots organizations aimed at ensuring equitable access to abortion nationwide.
National Abortion Federation – a professional coalition of physicians whose website hosts links to pregnancy and abortion resources, such as finding an abortion provider.
Ma(’)s Espacio 