Let The Air In
by Sydney Gayle Amanuel
Northern California looked like fall but it was August. Their draught was and still is, really bad. I remember thinking, âThe planet is dying and our solution is to give it a slow death.â I lived in NY but I was teaching at Berkeley for the summer. My boyfriend, who lived in Boston at the time, was on a tour with his band down the East Coast. We were at almost perfect ends of the United States, Northern Cali and South Florida, when I called him and told him I was pregnant. We'd been dating for almost a year.
We have what most consider a good, solid relationship; we are open and honest in our communication, we like to be around each other, he's seen me poop and vomit, all the basics. We talk about everything from politics to pop culture and like to debate with one another, so weâve already discussed our stances on women's rights long ago. We agree that a woman has the right to decide what's best for herself, her life, and her body.
It was comforting to know that conversation already happened and there wasnât some âhills like white elephantsâ situation in the room that we had to step over, but it was still hard to tell him knowing what came next: my personal choice to have an abortion.
I'm very close with my mom, so I was able to talk to her about my pregnancy and my plan to have an abortion. My best friend and roommate was an activist and grass rooter for planned parenthood and knew more than I did. I definitely did spend my time around like-minded people, but to have my mother, best friend, and my partner support me immediately, no questions asked, was more than relief, more than luck. I can't imagine the emotional upheaval for girls in less ideal situations. I was surrounded by positivity for my decision, something you don't see or hear about often and something that is more common than you think. Statistics say 1 in 3 women will have an abortion in her lifetime. It was only after I had decided to have mine, that women I knew spoke up and shared their experiences with me. As soon as I got back to New York I called my local Planned Parenthood and made an appointment.
As comforting as it was to have support from friends, the week before the abortion I found myself doing what everyone does, googling. How much does it hurt? How much does it cost? Will I feel physically bad after? Is the bleeding like a period? What method will be used? How long does it take? What are the risks?
It was almost like google was typing back, surprise! Feel ashamed you careless idiot! Every story I read, every personal account of an abortion, was a tale of woe and regret, of guilt and shame over the death of a child. And these weren't even sites with a blatant religious slant, these made up the first full page of my google search, presented as fact. The internet is not really your friend, not in our post-fact world, alternative fact world. You would think with the abundance of fact checking capabilities and resources, we could sift, see past misinformation, but itâs not so easy. Especially if you are alone. If, unlike me, you didnât have a mom or a best friend to turn to and say things out loud, make them real. I wasn't really phased by the stories, I've always been strong in my convictions and I've never sat on the fence about a woman's right to choose, but I was stunned at the amount of forums screaming, "Don't do it."
After hours of clicks and scrolls I found myself deep in Youtube looking at abortion photos week by week up until stillbirths. *Not for the faint of heart* If you donât like blood, donât look. But for me, it was helpful and kind of amazing. I felt like I was rediscovering my vagina in a way. I remembered when I learned women can masturbate just like men do and orgasm tooâI felt tricked. The woman is taboo, and everyone wants to talk about us, just not truthfully and not with us in the room. I closed my laptop.
The day of my procedure. Iâm about to get down to details here, feel free to turn back, Iâm not censoring anything so, content warning folks.
My roommate went with me to the clinicâturned out guests couldnât really go further than the front door, they had a whole separate waiting room on the bottom floor. I sat in the designated patients waiting room, staring at glossy pamphlets, wondering if the girl across from me was also here for an abortion. I looked around trying to nonverbally communicate and tell her, âIt's okay, Iâm scared too.â I didn't know this at the time, but Planned Parenthood not only provides many services for womenâs health, but also they have their own staff dedicated to insurance as well as counselors to talk to. Planned Parenthood didn't take my insurance, so they lead me to their insurance floor where I sat and talked with an agent. She explained that through the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), I would be covered for my abortion as well as a new birth control method. I asked what the co-pay was or what she guesstimated the bill to be. She told me I was completely covered, I wouldn't owe anything, that's what the ACA is for. It helps peopleâthat's what it does.
After the insurance was settled, I was called to have a quick checkup and ultrasound. Then they sent me to meet with a counselor who looked a lot like a girl I used to do a radio talk show with in college. I didn't know meeting a counselor was mandatory and I felt uncomfortable, afraid she was going to talk me out of getting the abortion or make me feel the shame the internet implied I should feel. When she asked, âWhat brings you here today?" I think I may have just said "Abortion." I was so confused and anxious. She nodded and we started to discuss birth control. I wanted to explain: Iâm not careless or uneducated, I taught sex-ed to middle and high schoolers, my mom supported me, I use condoms, Iâm in a healthy relationship, Iâm normal. I wanted to be told that an abortion was normal. She eased me through any questions I had or topics I wanted to discuss. I asked if I could see the sonogram they took of me. She told me I was six weeks along and there, in the shaded grey was a barely visible white dot on my black open uterus. A sack of cells. I kind of wanted to keep the picture, but then thought she might think that was weird, and I realized, yeah that is weird, so I didn't ask. We decided on a new form of birth control together. I had been on the pill since I was 15, I had no choice at the time. I had ovarian cysts and had to regulate myself before they got any worse, but didn't like the negative hormonal effects from the pill. I had mood swings, weight gain, acne, and I never remembered to take it which made me sick and reduced its effectiveness. AKA I had an ineffective form of birth control, which is why I got pregnant. I decided to have an IUD which, she told me, could be put in right after the abortion. No one I knew had an IUD, even my Gyno never mentioned it. But its description was like a light at the end of the tunnel I was walking down again, my taboo female body had been left in the dark.
When it comes to an abortion, there are two options: a surgical abortion or a medical abortion. Surgical abortions take place in a hospital or center, while medical abortions are induced by pills you can take at home. If you have the surgical abortion, you have the choice to be put to sleep or stay awake.
I wanted to have the surgical. I wanted to stay awake. I wanted to fully understand the procedure, be present and remember everything. If I chose to be put to sleep, would I remember anything? Or would it feel like those waking dreams, the ones you canât discern from reality, and leave you only feeling sad when you wake up. Wishing you could go back in and feel it, even if it was bad. I wanted to know, so I could tell my friends, any woman, that her choice is her choice and it's okay.
In my hospital gown, with blue booties on my feet, I sat in a semicircle of chairs. Other girls also had gowns and booties on, we were all the same. Sitting.
I was given a small white paper cup containing two tylenol pills.
I laid on a white table in a small white room. There were three women in the room, a doctor, her assistant and myself. The doctor explained the numbing solution she was going to put on my cervix can make a personâs lips numb too, like novocaine. I laid back, she numbed me, and kept talking, explaining the next steps. The numbing stuff actually made me lose hearing, quite quickly. The doctor had been talking to me in a calm, slow voice and suddenly a ringing started that got higher in pitch until my ears felt like they were underwater while also on an airplane. I tried to talk, to tell her I couldnât hear, but I realized I couldn't form the words. So I just sort of grunted to let her know I was okay. She turned on a large machine next to the table I laid on. It looked like a vacuumâit basically was. The machine made a loud sucking and groaning noise which I could hear clearly. This was when the pain started. Special absorbent rods were then used to dilate my cervix. I assumed it was similar to induced laborâyour insides sort of start pushing and pumping and it is very, very painful. Women: imagine your worst period cramps x20 and also giving birth all at once. The machine pulled and sucked up the blood as it was being pushed out and my body worked in overdrive to assist the process. This lasted for maybe 10 minutes, but it felt like 30. The whole time I held my hands clasped together, pressed hard into my chest and stared at a florescent light above me. Its plastic covering was painted to look like clouds. I barely remember her putting in the IUD. When the doctor turned the machine off, everything happened fast. They sat me up, placed a pad between my legs and scooted me into a wheelchair. I involuntarily started crying, but I wasn't sad. I think I was happy, relieved.
I was wheeled to a recovery room and placed in a big comfy chair, pad between my legs and hot compress on my uterus to help with the pain. I was exhausted, but also very concerned with accidentally bleeding through my gown and kept drunkenly patting myself to make sure I wasn't. The doctor put a hand on my shoulder and said âWe have to do an ultrasound to make sure we got everything.â
In another room, a nurse pressed the plastic ultrasound probe through the cold gel onto my skin. My uterus felt like a used punching bag. They missed part of the sac and I was told they had to go back in to remove the rest, it would be dangerous to leave it. Once again, I was back in the small white room looking up at the fake painted clouds. Another nurse was in the room this time using the ultrasound while the doctor performed my second abortion so that she could clearly see the remaining sac. When she asked how I was doing, I almost laughed. The nurse smiled and held my hand. She told me I was so brave to do this and that I was doing well.
In less than an hour, I technically had two abortions. They also had to insert, remove, and reinsert my IUD. I was told what happened was very rare, and they usually get everything with no complications. I was also told the blood and sac were dark, meaning the blood was old and had been sitting. This could indicate different things, but most likely I would have had a miscarriage if I didn't have an abortion. After my second abortion I was back in the recovery room again, soon changing back into my clothes and eating crackers they tell you to eat before you snip your bracelet off and sign yourself out.
My roommate and I took the subway back to our apartment and within three days I felt fine with no pain or IUD side effects. A month later I got a letter from Medicaid saying I owed nothing but if I wanted to re-up on my insurance I could join and start a plan. A year later I was working in California again, feeling lucky to be alive. I called my partner and we talked about how different our worlds would have been without my abortion, without my right to choose. Now, two years later, the leader of our nation believes in punishing women who undergo this procedure.
I felt compelled to write about my experience, mostly for girls like me. I wanted to tell those girls, those women, that I did it and I am fine. I did it and I am normal and so are you. I am not ashamed, or embarrassed, nor am I guilty or regretful. I'm not saying my decision was easy, but I knew immediately what my decision would be. When I think to myself that 100 or even 50 years ago this was not an option for women, I feel sick. But the truth is, we havenât really come that far. Look at us, at our country as a whole at the March for Life, the grab em by the pussys, the repetative rape culture. I can only understand these issues through my experiences being a woman in this country. And I fear for marginalized lives, those not as privileged as I am. I fear for those who are people of color, non-white passing, non-cisgendered, for anyone in the LGBTQ community, for anyone of Islamic faith, and for any woman whose rights will be taken away or compromised.
I had my abortion legally, safely, through Planned Parenthood. I now have an effective form of birth control for the next eight years. Both my abortion and birth control were covered under a health program created to give affordable healthcare to Americans that need it. Planned Parenthood offers healthcare and services to both men and women. They provide STI and STD testing as well as HIV testing. Planned Parenthood helped meâthey are there to help. To remove funding for services and centers, to create laws that ban certain procedures, and to shut down care centers nationwide is to tell all women in this country that their reproductive rights and health care is not important. It tells women that you do not support them and will actively regress and erase years of an uphill battle that they alone have climbed. What is most hurtful, most frustrating, is that the people who need to read this message will not take the time to. But to those who have, thank you. I hope we can change things, I hope we don't have to end up always fixing them, again, forever.
Sydney Gayle Amanuel is a Salem-based artist. Check out her amazing work here: http://sydneygayle.com

















