He Gave Me A Way Out

I knew it. I really did, but I was not ready to accept it. The white stick in my frail, shaky fingers finally screamed the truth I was denying for some time. It was late at night and everyone in the house was sound asleep while I was silently sobbing in the middle of my bathroom floor. The pieces finally came together. The changes in my body, my mood, my appetite. I called the father. The father. I immediately shut out any possibility that whatever was inside my body was a human being. It was only a small piece of tissue. This made me feel better, or so I thought. A memory of a conversation the father and I had a year prior flashed through my mind, clear as day. We were at a Chick-fil-a when I asked him what we would do if we ever got pregnant. Matter-of-factly, he told me that I would have an abortion because we were too young to handle raising a child. Well, what about adoption? That wasn’t an option, he said. Clutching my legs to my chest on the cold bathroom floor, I told him the news. He didn’t sound surprised as he asked me what I was going to do. We’re too young. His words spoken over a year ago hung over me. Did I really have a choice? I told him I would get an abortion and he said he thought that was best. Of course you do.

The next morning, I was sitting in the office at work. The father told me to take my time in there, that he would take care of opening the store. I was then left alone with my thoughts. Who else was I going to tell? Definitely not my family. Ever. Any Christian friends I had I would avoid at all costs. They all would try to talk me out of my decision. The anxiety-provoking thoughts triggered a spike in my nausea that forced me to focus on taking deep breaths for the next five minutes. Once I gathered myself as best I could, I google searched abortion clinics in the area and called the first one I found. It was as if a stranger was speaking when the words, I’m pregnant, left my lips. Do you do abortions? How are you supposed to ask that kind of question? They told me they did and that I could walk in anytime. I felt relieved.

The father and I decided that day to tell the other managers at work what was going on. We sat outside on a metal bench in broad daylight. I felt exposed. As we told the news, one of the managers acted indifferently towards us and excused himself back to work. The other stayed, his brow furrowing. When he spoke, his words hit the wall that was already built up around my heart. The baby would be so cute! I smiled a little, but kept silent. He went on and offered to babysit whenever we needed help. I looked down, fully aware that he was subtly trying to convince us to keep it. We told him we were set on our decision. I saw his spirit deflate.        

It was Monday and the father drove us to the clinic I had contacted. We arrived at a small, gray brick building and walked in through the back entrance. No protestors. Not many cars in the parking lot. Both of us exchanged suspicious glances as the father opened the door for me. I began filling out paperwork anyway, reading things carefully. Toward the middle, my eye caught a phrase that made me freeze. We do not offer abortion services nor do we refer out for them. I was stunned. Why had they lied to me? I suddenly felt trapped there, like they too were going to try and convince me to keep it. Am I allowed to leave? I looked at the father with desperate eyes. He had to take the matter into his own hands. He gave the clipboard back to the receptionist, tore up the forms I filled out, and then threw them into the trash. Let’s go. He took my hand and led me out the doors.

As the father was driving me back to work, I began google searching again, determined to find an actual abortion clinic. Were there any in Texas? Panic began to manifest again. I quickly forced myself to calm down, afraid I would become nauseas. A location in Dallas sounded promising after I read through the reviews. We sat in the parking lot as I dialed their phone number. I had to get things straight: Do you actually perform abortions at your clinic? They do. Great! Shame flooded over me at the sound of excitement in my voice. The receptionist scheduled me to come in two weeks from today. According to what I had read online, I could take the abortion pill up to the tenth week of pregnancy, so I was relieved when they determined I would be ten weeks along by the time my appointment came. I finally felt a sense of control I hadn’t experienced since my body started to change. However, that feeling quickly left when they spoke their next words. According to them, I would need to undergo a surgical abortion. I broke. Uncontrollable sobs racked through my body. For some reason, this made the abortion more real. They would be performing surgery to remove the tissue that was growing rapidly inside of me.

Two weeks feels like an eternity when you’re trapped in a situation you don’t want to be in. It was the rainiest spring the area had seen in a while. The gloom matched the innermost parts of my soul if there even was one. If I wasn’t working, I was with the father and if I was with the father, I was asleep. Exhaustion ruled my eyelids and anxiety caused my nausea to skyrocket. Isolation was the norm for me. No one else knew what I was going through better than he did. I was comfortable with him; I was trapped by him. Who could I confide in?

On a rare sunny afternoon, I found myself at a friend’s house whom I’ve known for almost ten years. While I waited for her to come home, I sat on a lawn chair in the backyard with her sister facing me, standing. Can I tell you something? Absolutely. I hesitantly confessed to her that I was pregnant. It didn’t feel good to let it out in the open. What are you going to do? The word “abortion” left my mouth and sat in the air between us. She rocked from one foot to the other, contemplating for a while on what to say. I anticipated her answer. Judgment? Approval? Pity? Are you sure you don’t want to keep it? Her face looked nervous. Maybe she was scared I was going to rage at her. I reassured her that I was going to go through with it. Okay, be safe out there. She now looked worried. Right then, my friend walked outside to greet us.

I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but I told my friend about my decision to have an abortion because I knew she would approve of it. I desperately wanted approval from someone other than the father. We sat next to each other on the couch in her family’s playroom. The house was quiet and so was she. She was usually excitable and talkative, but her demeanor showed a worry I hadn’t ever seen from her before. It was hard for her to make eye contact with me. She agreed that me having an abortion was the right thing to do. Relief washed over me, but not thoroughly enough to clean out the underlying shame I wanted so badly to get rid of. I was hoping her words would completely take it away from me.

Nausea struck me with an intensity that I couldn’t deny. Since I was a child, I had always hated throwing up. I still closed my eyes and plugged my ears if someone vomited in a movie. So, when the heaving came and food was trying to come up, I prayed as though my life depended on it. I cried out to God. The God of the universe. The Holiest of holies. I acknowledged Him only when the nausea was too much to bear and at night before going to bed as a preventative measure. I couldn’t talk to Him about anything else because I would then have to change my decision; I knew what I was doing was wrong to Him. I never threw up the entire time I was pregnant.

The week of my abortion coincided with Easter Sunday. I put on loose clothing and attended church with my family. We sat in the very middle of the sanctuary. I felt claustrophobic; what if everyone could tell that I was hiding something? I had to bend my neck upward to look at the screen to appear interested. The thought of God looking down on me was angering and I found myself falling deeper into my stubbornness. I was surprised that I still listened to the preacher with the small hope that he might mention something about how God forgives women who get pregnant outside of marriage. Instead, he paralleled his message to the movie Frozen. I remembered that it was the first movie I had seen with the father. He linked the story back to how Jesus shows all people the same sacrificial love that Anna had for Elsa. Once the sermon ended, I was eager to get out. Though, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed; I was hoping to specifically hear that God still loved me despite my mistake.  

April 2nd was finally here. I put on my sweats and fuzzy socks as was recommended by the clinic. I decided to wear my glasses instead of contacts that day, remembering a trick my sister used several years back. She had shared her testimony in front of over five hundred people and took her glasses off while she spoke, that way she wouldn’t see anyone. I wasn’t sure what I’d see that day, but I knew that whatever I had the potential of seeing wouldn’t be pleasant. The father picked me up from my parent’s house, and drove us an hour away. We parked in the back parking lot, just like the clinic told us to. As we stepped onto the pavement, the scene looked a lot more fitting for an abortion clinic than the first one we visited. There were more cars; it was a Saturday morning. There was a clinic worker waiting for people to arrive so she could escort patients to the door and block them from the protesters. As I approached her, she greeted me, telling me to ignore them. She and the father were on either side of me, arms protectively around my shoulders. YOU COULD BE A HERO! A protester was yelling towards the father. I looked over to see the man with outstretched arms, trying to reach our hearts. The father mockingly laughed, that guy is ridiculous. I wanted to hate the protester too, to tell him he didn’t know us or our situation. All that came, though, was sadness. He was wasting his time; our decision was already made.

I sat impatiently in the waiting room, anxious to get the procedure over with and get back to normal life. Everyone there had their eyes to their feet; hardly anyone ever spoke. After what felt like an eternity, a nurse finally called out my name and I looked to the father. I knew my eyes communicated desperation, fear. He gave me a reassuring smile and told me that everything would be all right, that he would be right there when I was done. I nervously smiled back, carefully stood up on my feet, and walked through the doors that led to the fate of my baby.