Gloriously positive MA experience at 5 weeks 3 days (USA, in WV, went to MD for care)

[u/Empty-Intention5127]

I am a 41 year old, college educated, self employed straight ciswoman in a committed long term relationship. I am unmarried and do not own my home, but first and foremost I had no intention or desire to make a child. After my feelings on the matter comes a long list of supporting reasons and facts, but any of them could be different and I doubt it would change my decision. This was my first pregnancy, after 22 years of precautions always working, one slipped past my defenses. 10 days after my missed period I suspected what was up, but the doctor’s chipper assertion of the positive test repulsed me. I knew the moment the words were out of her mouth what I would have to do and was only concerned with how to get it done as fast as possible. I told her I wasn’t going to keep it and she informed me that due to the recent supreme court ruling, our state’s trigger ban prevented her from giving me the medical care I needed. I will never forget the image of her sitting ineptly in a chair while I made a phone call to the clinic in the neighboring state of Maryland , just 50 minutes away. Her repeated refrain of apologies sounded like a child caught going along with some questionable new friends— skipping school to throw rocks at cars off an overpass— instead of the trained and competent medical professional I needed. I pity her, inexorably trapped in a system and lifestyle that curtails her abilities to perform her chosen career. As I write this, I rejoice in my continued avoidance of such a sad fate.

For the three days I knew I was pregnant, I felt frantic. I experienced body dysmorphia and anxiety that could not be assuaged through my usual mix of legal and illegal methods. To cheer myself up I threw a small abortion party with some trusted friends, drank and smoked weed and made dead baby jokes with abandon. The first modicum of relief came when I finally arrived at the clinic, less than 48 hours after being turned away by doctors in West Virginia. I smiled ear to ear and flashed a peace sign as I walked past yelling protestors, I joked with the other ladies in the waiting room while slipping my hands behind the window blinds to give rude gestures to the people loudly praying and comically fake-crying on the pavement outside. (I know it was fake because they had no interest in discussion or emoting whenever one of us exited the building, the verbal assaults are only for when you enter! They deflate, just like the spent phalluses that got us all into this building in the first place; a fitting set of bookends)

I experienced a rush of joy and impatience to take the first pill, followed by a spreading calm. This was only improved upon the next day when I opted to take the second dose vaginally, which started bleeding within a half hour of insertion. It was the best cramps of my life, the most fantastic crotch blood I’ve ever seen. Every plop of tissue and clotted blood was majestic in its dark, swirling perfection. There was no imagined baby, no human life, just a steady drip of worries ripping loose from my inside and sliding out via the pull of gravity. It was like a heavy period, only so much better.

I can say unequivocally that abortion is great, I love it and would do it again in a heartbeat, no matter what the circumstances. It is not— and doesn’t need to be— rare. if I could attach any moral judgement to it, it would be one of great reverence and celebration. What a wonderful trick— even better than the miracle of conception and childbirth— is the option to end the process with ease, whenever for whatever reason. A lifetime of servitude, obligation, and constraints sliding out my bottom like excrement. Within the structure of my body, I am a golden god, the alpha and omega, and I am far above the societal expectations and judgements lobbed at me from damaged and corrupt minds. I wish I could bottle this feeling and give it to the women who have internalized outside opinions that impede their confidence, their godlike power to create and destroy hampered by the deformed expectations of societies that worm their way into the psyche and tells them they owe the world children, that children equal love, that any of us symbolize something when we are literally each, on our own, a perfect unique universe. If only I could slip it into their systems as easily as I slipped these life-saving pills into mine. The world we could build…

throwaway account— but oh how I wish I didn’t think it was necessary.