By Sarah Terzo
A woman tells her abortion story:
“It was much more painful than I thought it would be. Jenny held my hand and I think the nurse held my other hand– she was very nice to me. I was pretty stoic about it but it was very painful, physically. I mean, everybody told me it was unpleasant but they didn’t tell me it was terrible. I mean, it didn’t last very long, but…
The doctor was just perfunctory. It was kind of depressing because obviously he was doing a series of these; he was clicking right through it… It probably would’ve been psychologically better if he would have taken a few more minutes before, a few more minutes afterwards.… I kind of felt – I analyzed this looking back – I feel like he’s taking no responsibility, well, no responsibility for his part in his relationship to you. Because just physically, he is doing this thing to you and he needs to take a little time with that. You need to know there is a person on the other end of this experience. A little warmth, too. That would have helped.
It’s a very vulnerable thing… You’re in the most vulnerable position in the world.… It doesn’t matter what they say, it’s still close to rape in terms of that sort of feeling of being gutted emotionally as well as physically… It was a real crushed feeling. I think that I had a moment of, well, I did think this was the most horrible thing in the world.…
And I felt a lot of pain afterwards. In fact I had to go in a couple of times because they thought maybe something had gone wrong or something, but nothing had. So I was worried for a quite a while.”
Sumi Hoshiko, Our Choices: Women’s Personal Decisions about Abortion (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1993) 98 – 99
Editor’s note. Sarah Terzo is a pro-life author and creator of the clinicquotes.com website. She is a member of Secular Pro-Life and PLAGAL. This appeared at clinicquotes.com.