‘You don’t think you could keep the baby - abortion isn’t the answer’
“I COULDN’T get out of bed, wasn’t washing, skipped work, things like that. I really just didn’t care. It felt like lies on top of lies.”
These are the words of a 24-year-old Tralee woman who travelled to Liverpool in March 2010 for an abortion.
The woman, who wished to remain anonymous because her family do not know about her abortion, spoke to The Kerryman about her experience and the difficulties she faced after deciding to terminate her pregnancy.
She had the procedure when she was 13 weeks pregnant, and claims she forced into it by the father of her unborn child.
“I was seeing a guy for about two years, but we weren’t together. I was working but not making that much money, and I’d be doing it on my own. I was 23 at the time and I couldn’t really see a way out,” she says.
“It all happened really quickly. He booked everything. At the time, it didn’t even dawn on me what I was going to do. It wasn’t until afterwards that I really thought about what I had done. When I went over there, I had my first scan. They gave me the choice if I wanted to see it, and I chose to. That was my downfall. I had agreed to it all at that stage. I could have gone back on it, but I didn’t.”
After the procedure, she found herself completely on her own, with her family and friends unaware of what she had done. She also received some crushing news from one of her relations.
“Just when I came back, my aunt told me that she was having a baby around the time that I would have been due. Every time I see her now, I think I should have a baby that age.”
Alone and unable to talk to anyone about what happened, she slipped into depression.
“I was a mess. Friends of mine were getting pregnant and having babies. I thought that I had damaged myself, that I couldn’t actually cope with getting pregnant again,” she says. “I really regretted it.”
“I didn’t think at the time that my family would be supportive, but they probably would have been. You don’t think that you could keep the baby yourself, but abortion isn’t the only answer.”
It took a year of counselling for her to start to feel normal again.
“I felt like I couldn’t really open up to anyone, not even with my family or friends, and there was no support network for women who had abortions in Tralee at the time. It was a year later, after a lot of counselling, that I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel and did come out of it.”
Despite having to travel to England for an abortion, she is undecided when it comes to legalising the procedure in Ireland, as she thinks that some Irish woman would abuse the right.
“When I was in the clinic, I met a girl who said it was her ninth abortion. She saw it as a form of birth control. That really shocked me, to think that it didn’t affect her at all and I was devastated.
“Part of me doesn’t think that there shouldn’t be abortion in Ireland because of that girl. I think a lot of girls would take the same mind-set and think it was something that wasn’t really a big deal, like another form of contraception,” she explained.
However, she says that she now understand why women have to make the difficult decision to have an abortion.
“I’ve always been antiabortion, until it actually happened to me,” she says. “I never really thought about up until I had to have an abortion. It wasn’t until after I got it done that I realised that people are put into such a position that they don’t really see a way out.”
After her own experiences, she thinks that women should not be afraid to talk about someone if they are considering to have an abortion.
“It’s such a taboo subject because it’s illegal in Ireland. Abortion is one of those things that people don’t really talk about, but I probably would have chosen differently if I had someone to talk to about it.
“If it was clear in my mind that I didn’t want it, it wouldn’t affect me as much.”
Almost two years after her abortion, she still experiences bouts of regret and depression, but has come to terms with her decision.
“Sometimes I think that I will feel completely like myself again, like if I’ve gone a whole day without thinking about it, but I don’t think I’ll ever fully get over it.
“Some days I think that I deserve to feel bad, but then other days I think that it was the best option for me at the time.
“There is really no going back from that.”