If you ever had one or loved someone who had, how did you feel, emotionally, after the abortion?

Do you mean physically or psychologically? Totally different things.

@beatthelastboss I meant psychologically, I’ll edit that in

She still is haunted by “what if…”

…and it was 23 years ago.

@DrBill and you? I mean, if the baby was yours

Well, my wife had a embryo that formed on the outside of the tube, and it was ‘removed’ during a related surgical procedure. That was about 20 years ago. So if it had been in the right place, we’d be parents of a 20 year old son or daughter. Personally, I never wanted kids, and she didn’t either, so we both simply see it as ‘just one of those things, ya know?’

besides, the doctors have always told her that childbirth would be fatal, and given a choice, I’ll choose my wife over some kid that will only grow up to break my heart.

@evelyns_pet_zebra wait, why would it be fatal? and in terms of kids, they don’t have to break your heart…but I am really glad that it worked out the way it’s best for the two of you

I never had one, thank goodness I was never faced with the decision because it would have been a terribly difficult one. I have had 2 very good friends who did. It was not an easy decision for either of them. And despite the fact that the circumstances were very different, both felt it was the only responsible answer for them at that time. One felt having the child and putting it up for adoption was an alternative but eventually reached the conclusion that she could not possibly bring a child into the world and not be absolutely sure that it was being taken care of the way it should. The other believed that from the very beginning.

In conversations since, and it has been over 40 years, they both say it crosses their mind occasionally but they still believe they did the right thing.

I am absolutely pro choice but as I said, I am so grateful I never had to make the decision personally, and that was due to a little part luck and mostly good planning.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir something to do with her inner workings, and her history as a child (which I am not going to divulge, as it is her personal info to clarify as she sees fit). The part about kids breaking your heart is inconsequential, as we are too old to consider raising any kids now.

I had one at 14. Absolutely no regrets. I could have a 21 year old kid now. And who knows what my life would have been like if I kept it.

For the record, at the time I wanted to keep it, and I thought I wanted kids. My parents basically forced me. I was upset about it for about a minute and then I moved on.

I felt glad for my friend, because she had made a decision she knew she wanted to make, because she was ok after the procedure, and because her family and other friends were really supportive. I also felt upset that she didn’t tell the dad beforehand. But I didn’t feel that it was any of my business to criticize the way she handled it.

My first wife had one abortion early in our relationship, and 35 years later still feels comfortable with the decision, with no regrets. We went on to have two wonderful children who are grown now.

However someone else whom I loved and I had a pregnancy which she decided to terminate, and then she was later diagnosed with endometriosis, was infertile, and was very upset for a long time that she had aborted her last possible pregnancy.

She married someone else, and they went on to adopt two wonderful children who are also now grown.

Those are my only two experiences with abortion. If it had been up to me, I would have kept both or either.

I think this topic isn’t talked about enough. It’s so taboo and people make it seem like the worst thing you could possibly do…when in reality, there’s many more terrible things you can do during your lifetime.

I’ve had two. Both with the same man, my husband. I needed more emotional support through the first one. I didn’t really want anyone else to know…but I did tell my best girl friend and she supported my decision and let me talk about it.
For me, I’d say relief was definitely a factor. Relief that it was an option, since having another baby was not. Physically, emotionally and financially I did not want another child.
I’ve been on forums with a mixture of women…some who have had abortions and some who think it’s the devils work. They can’t fathom the relief a woman can feel from it. But, I know it can be experienced by many.
I did not feel emotionally attached to anything. I will say, I kept my distance and didn’t even want to know what my due date would be and wanted to just forget about it. Not surpress it or act like it didn’t happen, but I just wanted it to be done and over with.
I think the lack of emotional support after my second made it a rougher recovery. I bled for so long, and became anemic. I was even told by my dentist that I should go to a hospital to get a blood transfusion..but having no health insurance, it wasn’t an option. I got no rest after the procedure so that was difficult. I feel lingering feelings of resentment for the lack of support I received, more than anything.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir

No, it was not mine. But I also wonder “what if…”

When I was 22 my gf was preggers, but the child wasn’t mine. The father to be abandoned her, and I told her I would marry her, and raise the child as my own.
My gf had the abortion, and broke up with me.
She later regretted both acts, and wanted another chance for us, but it was too late.

I still have not told my current partner that I have had an abortion, nor my family. I did not at the time have a support system of friends or family; I still don’t(not true, I am just scared to tell). I feel ashamed at times, but I think I made the right choice considering the circumstances. I wish I had someone to tell me along the way that the decision I had made was ok and that they still loved me and supported me…

Two of my girlfriends each had an abortion while with me. The first one never told me about it, and we’ve never discussed it. I only figured it out after the second one told me, and she didn’t tell me until some 10 months after the fact. I grieved a little over the second one, but in both cases felt I had dodged a bullet by avoiding deeper entanglement with two women who were and are very wrong for me. I suppose I feel a little lucky that in each case I never had to have the discussion.

I would lose all respect for that person.

I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to be offensive here..
But to those who’ve dealt with abortions in one way or another.. How’d the pregnancy occur? Lack of birth control? Birth control straight up failed? Was the pregnancy originally intended, but then upon thinking bout it, you decided against it?

Miserable, dark and sinfull

I did not mean to say I have not told the father I had an abortion, my current boyfriend was not the father… Definately should tell father.

@Sarcasm, in my cases, my girlfriends gave me an “all clear,” so to speak, during sex. I’m not sure what the motivations of the first were, but the second thought she was safe. She later realized she was off by a week. Those were the only times I came inside either of them without some kind of birth control in effect. It’s hard to rationalize, of course, but I had no idea about either until almost a year and around four years later, respectively. Thankfully, it’s not a worry in my current relationship.

edit:: back to the original Q, I also have moments of wondering what my deal is that I haven’t created space for a right someone with whom I could have started a family.

Luckily, I’ve never been in this situation but there have been one or two times that my period has been late and I have looked seriously into abortion. Even before I knew for sure if I was pregnant or not, just looking up information about abortion was making me almost physically sick.

@Sarcasm Well, ask another question with those questions…because this question wanted to know the psychological effects on those that had, or were close to someone who had an abortion.

I have personally never had an abortion (nor would I ever) but my mother has had 2. One when she was only 16, and one just a few months ago. She is over 40 and didn’t think she was even able to have children anymore. So she had unprotected sex with a man she was dating (assuming she wasn’t able to conceive anyway). To her surprise she got pregnant. She felt that she was too old to have a baby and her relationship with her boyfriend wasn’t stable enough. She aborted the baby and seemed to handle it well. She seemed fairly unemotional. I was pretty upset about the whole thing. I didn’t agree with her decision. I think she took the easy way out. Of course I tried to give her as much emotional support as possible but in my eyes a child is a blessing. If you aren’t ready to bring a baby into the world, then be more careful about safe sex! I just don’t understand when people say it was an “accident”.

@ItalianPrincess1217 An abortion is not the “easy way out.” And even if it is, why can’t women have the option to not become mothers when they don’t want to? Going through the process of delivering a baby, and carrying it for 9 months is extremely draining and affects your life greatly…even to just give the baby up for adoption or keep it.

@ItalianPrincess1217 this was absolutely your mother’s decision and definitely not yours, at all…I hope you never end up in a situation that you think is so easily preventable…

@casheroo I will try to answer this as quickly as possible due to the fact that these responses were not supposed to turn into an anti or pro abortion battle. Women DO have the option to not become mothers before they are ready…it’s called protection. Most birth control, if used correctly, is 97% effective. If it does fail, yes, women should have the right to decide what to do with the baby. But if you have unprotected sex and call it an accident, that’s plain irresponsible. I may be making assumptions here but it seems like you’re only concerned about the mother being able to choose whether or not to have an abortion…does the baby get a choice in any of this? Because the child certainly didn’t ASK for their mother to be irresponsible with their body. Bottom line is, abortions have become too easy. “Oops, I got knocked up, ehhh, no big deal, I’ll just get rid of the baby again.” I just think abortions have become much too popular and aren’t taken seriously enough.

@Simone De Beauvoir Yes the decision was my mother’s choice, which is why I gave her all the emotional support she needed. I never gave her a hard time about it or made her feel like a bad person for choosing to abort. But that doesn’t mean I agreed with it. It hurt me to know I could’ve had a little baby brother or sister.

@ItalianPrincess1217 it’s good that you allowed your mother to live the way she chose..in your life, you get to live the way you want…so you can have lots of kids and never abort, etc.

Let’s leave the moral harangues elsewhere. There is no such thing as 100% effective birth control. Shit happens. Why must we assign blame to anyone?

@pdworkin Shit happens…accidentally becoming pregnant and choosing to have an abortion deserves a bit more of an important category title than “shit happens”. Don’t you think?

No. I mean what I said. You are analyzing the statement at the most surface level possible. I meant, if you had trouble understanding it, that it is not up to you or I or anyone else here to assign blame for the tragedies of others.

okay again not what the q is about

I had one four years ago. I’ve been pro-choice for as long as I can remember and I always will be. That said, it was definitely a lot harder on me than I would have ever been able to imagine. I still think about it, all the time. I don’t think a day has gone by where I haven’t thought about it, if only for a few minutes every day. Some days I deal with it better than others, sometimes I break down and cry like it happened yesterday. Part of this, I think, is because I have endometriosis and I wonder if that may have been my one and only chance. I don’t even know if I want kids right now, or if I will… But I don’t know. I want the choice. Knowing that I might not have one makes it that much harder.

Right after the fact, I kind of don’t feel like I had enough support from the people who knew. I mean… None of them looked down on me, none of them disagreed. But the support that was there was a little too silent. Which, I guess, a part of me understands. It’s not the easiest thing to comfort someone about, for fear you might say the wrong thing. If fear is what stopped people from talking to me though, I wish it hadn’t. To this day, I still don’t know how much it did or didn’t affect my partner. I asked, a lot, especially when I was having a really hard time with it, but… It was never clear to me. Sometimes I felt like it didn’t matter at all to him and I didn’t know how to deal with that. If it was easier for him, I’m glad in a way. But I wish he would have seen how much I was hurting.

I also bled a lot. Too much. I almost had to go to the hospital the day the clots starting coming out. The pain was so horrifying that I actually thought I might be dying. Again, that same day, my partner knew and decided that he wanted to go out with friends instead of staying with me to help. He may not have known what to do, but anything would have been better than nothing.

I don’t know. Unfortunately there are not enough words in our language to accurately convey how abortions make people feel. Women who get them aren’t bad. They aren’t evil. Sometimes, it’s just the right thing to do – regardless of what anyone else thinks. Dealing with how you already feel, plus all of the people that think you’re an evil bitch? Not so easy. The day I went, in fact, they had a bomb scare. It was very surreal, sitting there waiting to be seen, knowing that there are people out there who are so against murder, but so willing to commit it.

@DrasticDreamer It sounds like what you went through was awful. Thanks for sharing such a personal experience and giving us such a “real” recap of it. You’re right when you say there aren’t enough words to explain how abortions make you feel. So true.
Also, it sounds like your partner wasn’t exactly there for you when you needed him most. This probably happens more times than not. Men tend to be shut off or distant when it comes to situations like this. Regardless, he should’ve comforted you during such an emotionally difficult time. Needless to say, you seem like a very strong woman and you are handling it to the best of your ability. Keep your head up :)

When my fiancee cheated on me, and left me I was distraught, but I got over it with friends and a lot of weed. When I learned she was pregnant and had an abortion afterward, it hit me even harder. It honestly really screwed me up. I was so emotionally lost I considered suicide, just to simply my thought processes. It still bothers the friggin’ shit out of me every single day. But then again it’s not even been two months since it happened.

I’ve known two of my best friends to have abortions, neither through lack of birth control before anyone starts. and the way they have coped with it has always seemed strange, but then I have not been through the same thing so I suppose it might do.
But anyway I felt a change in those friends both times, not a change that would be noticed by a passer-by on the street just a subtle change in their personality, a general hardness about life and a distaste or pregnant women, these are both cases where the abortions were a release but not a decision made lightly and left a weight upon the shoulders of both friends for months.
One of these friends has now got a little boy and is happy and settled where as my other friend now has fertility problems after a still birth and both her and her partner still aren’t fully recovered.

This is slightly different to what your asking but I thought it may have it’s pace in this discussion anyway.

My best friend fell pregnant when she was 18 years old (shes 24 now) and after a lot of soul searching she decided that she really couldn’t go through with the pregnancy. She booked in for an abortion. Two days before the abortion was due to take place my best friend suffered a miscarriage. I don’t know how she feels nowadays about it (although she always remembers he date that she miscarried and the date she was supposed to have the abortion and she tends to get very down at that time) but I do know that she blamed herself for the miscarriage. She felt that if she hadn’t had an abortion booked she wouldn’t have miscarried. She was aware of how irrational that feeling was as, of course she would have still miscarried, but (and she is not really a religious or even spiritual person) she felt like the “baby” knew it wasn’t wanted.

@Leanne1986 yeah I was just thinking about how common miscarriages are…a lot of the aborted babies would have been miscarried within the first 12 weeks…a lot of the abortions never would have been grown children and all that…

I imagine that straight after you feel the most awful guilt, because it is a child created by love, with someone you love. Maybe in time those guilt feelings fade, but never the what if’s, especially if you know the expected due date.

How do you know it was created by love? It was created by semen and ova.

@tinyfaery Love between two people. It’s how it normally works.

@Sophief: What if it was created by lust and a lack of a condom? And a lot of scotch.

Then it’s irresponsible and the abortion feelings maybe wouldn’t be the same as it would if the couple were in love.

@Sophief I love my husband dearly, but that didn’t change my mind on having an abortion or not. He supported my rights to choose. If I had wanted to keep the baby, then he would have been on board. He feels it’s my body and I get to decide if I carry and care for a child.

@casheroo I wasn’t saying that, I meant if a couple were in love and had an abortion then the feelings will be stronger when the baby is terminated.

and so on.

I’ve known a few women who had abortions never been any of my dna getting the boot though I feel that abortion is like liposuction only cheaper. I have a suspicion that 90 % or the emotional distress is caused by societal guilt mongering rather than any thing that originates with the woman having the abortion. here’s a url that’s kind of interesting www.imnotsorry.net

@shf84: What I find very interesting is that condemnation of abortion is a relatively new thing. Ancient cultures would often employ herbs and certain physical exercises to get rid of unwanted pregnancies and I believe the Pope only outlawed abortion completely about 600 years ago. Before that, abortion was permissible before quickening.