I Had An Abortion In My 40s. I’ll Never Forget The Shocking Thing The Doctor Said To Me.

Later, I would learn that 59% of abortion patients already have a kid — that the majority of the women who choose the procedure do it so they can better support a child that they already have. That my situation was actually quite common. Since the beginning of time, women have made decisions like this. I would also learn that the birthrate in the U.S. was falling each year and that 74% of parents under 50 were not interested in adding another child to their lives. 

On the way home, walking my bike down Vanderbilt Avenue and feeling woozy from all the blood taken for my geriatric pregnancy, with the ultrasound image folded in the pocket of my shorts, I started to cry from behind my mask. I could not have this child. Not right now, when people around me were suffocating because they couldn’t breathe and when I woke up in terror every night at 3 a.m. with an asthma attack.

When we were in bed later that night, I asked my husband if he was disappointed.

“It is your choice,” he said quietly, turning his face toward me. He still looked like a boy, my husband, with his wiry frame and shaggy hair. “I’ll support you no matter what.” But I knew he was already imagining a sweet little baby to dote on. I was picturing it too. Their soft puffy cheeks. Their first beautiful smile. 

My previous pregnancy was not easy. My daughter was in distress. There was meconium inside me — and I had run a fever. It was by the saving grace of my OB-GYN that I didn’t need a C-section.

But I was very sick, and we were scared for my daughter. I had to be given an an antibiotic while in labor. And when she emerged, violently, I was only allowed to hold her briefly before she was carted away to the neonatal intensive care unit to be monitored and given antibiotics.

No one’s birth ever goes as they expect, but this experience was terrifying. There was a point when we were told we might have to go home without her. I remember the relief when we could leave the hospital with her in her car seat.

The day after my new ultrasound, I tried to call Planned Parenthood, out of earshot of my daughter, but it was completely booked. So I had to return to the bright and shiny OB-GYN office that had provided the image of my uterus and what would soon be my dead child.

This time, they gave me some options. I told them that I preferred the one with pills — mifepristone and misoprostol. It seemed the cleanest, although I knew that nothing would be easy, that I’d pass blood, tissue, clots and remnants, and that it would all hang over me forever.

I was told about the risks, but I didn’t really think about them. I just wanted it done — and I knew that medication abortion was 95% effective if administered properly. 

Afterward, the nurse sent me to the office of a doctor there, which felt strange, like I was being sent to the principal’s office. Usually the doctor comes to you.

The man sitting behind the desk was about 60 years old. He told me to shut the door. 

“Now, how did we get here?” he asked after I was seated facing him. “You should really be more responsible, someone like you. You should know better. I recommend you come back after this for an IUD so this never happens again.”

I laughed involuntarily. His comment was so absurd and insulting that I felt my brain separate from my body, like I wasn’t there. “Responsible,” I repeated. “I’m married. I have a kid already. I take the pill. And anyway, I thought I was in perimenopause.” 

“Not perimenopause,” the doctor told me. “You are young and strong. This can happen again, and you need to be more responsible about these things.” The irony of being told this after being called a geriatric pregnancy wasn’t lost on me.

“Look,” I said, “you don’t need to tell me this.” 

The word “responsible” weighed on me. I thought of the endless forms to sign, the butts to clean, the meals to cook, the sheets to change, all the frantic work calls I had to take while my daughter was yelling for me down the hallway, all the rushing to do after-school pickups from the subway in the before-times. Of course I was responsible. Of course I had weighed this decision carefully. 

The doctor opened his desk drawer, removed a bottle and handed me some pills. He had wrapped them for me in Kleenex, which made me feel like this was somehow wrong or illegal or illicit, like a drug deal. He explained carefully how to administer them.

“But I want you to know the risks,” he said. “Sometimes these don’t work and you need to come back.” 

I took the pills from him and shut the door, filled with a rage that I’m not sure has ever left. More than anything, I wanted to just leave and run away, but I still had to settle my copay and schedule a follow-up appointment — because I’m responsible. 

I went upstate with my family to administer the pills at a friend’s house. I wanted to be with her — a woman. I felt ashamed looking at my husband.