Double Jeopardy for One Teenager

I am 56 years old, a wife, mother and soon-to-be grandmother. I’ve just retired from a joyful career as a teacher’s assistant in an elementary school in Georgia. This wonderful life of mine was made possible by two abortions in my teens.

My first abortion was as a ninth grader. None of the adults in my life had taught me about sex, healthy relationships or how to stand up for myself in social situations. I got involved with an older boy who pressured me relentlessly. I got pregnant the first and only time he penetrated me in what was a frightening, painful and degrading encounter. My parents arranged the abortion and swore me to secrecy for eternity. I felt so deeply ashamed.

The author as a teenager. Image by Courtesy of Karen

Then, when I was 19, I was in a relationship with a guy in his mid-20s. He was kind at first, and I thought we had a future. But then he began mistreating me, and I endured it because I had such low self-esteem. I was depending on the diaphragm, and when I got pregnant again, I sank into deep suffering. I still lived at home and could not tell my parents, so I would close myself in my bedroom closet, fall to the floor and silence my sobs in a pillow.

If he had wanted to get married, I might have agreed, simply because I was paralyzed by panic and passive in my despair. Thankfully, he arranged and paid for an abortion. He dropped me off alone, and did not come back for me until the clinic had long closed. I wandered on the city street in a fog of humiliation, and yet I was overwhelmingly relieved that I was not bound to him by a child for the rest of my life.

My first abortion was as a ninth grader. None of the adults in my life had taught me about sex, healthy relationships or how to stand up for myself in social situations.

Those two abortions saved me. I was able to get a college education and build a thriving family with a loving man. The worst part has been facing – alone and in silence – the incessant malice of religious and political condemnation. The billboards and bumper stickers, the preachers and politicians — they all take delight in dehumanizing people who’ve ended accidental pregnancies. Decade after decade, I lived a kind of inner solitary confinement, tortured by the belief that others, if they learned the truth, would see me as a murderous monster and abandon me.

At the age of 40, I was finally able to confide in a friend, and a few years later I told my husband. Then, in 2013, I shared the truth with my grown sons. Instead of casting me out of their lives as I had feared, my loved ones embraced me with compassion.

I am so grateful for this chance to tell people that abortion care saved me, but the merciless public messages of shame hurt me, and that is why I will spend the rest of my life trying to shatter the silence and end the emotional brutality of abortion stigma.

— Karen, 56, Georgia

NEXT STORY

Silent No More

— Readers’ Abortion Stories

Mah Ramsey Got Arrested – by Kathleen Peratis, 71, New York
I Was Almost Aborted Before the Holocaust; I Survived – by Alfred, 75, District of Columbia
Forming a Spiritual Being – by Stosh Cotler, 48, New York
Saving Lives at the University of Florida – by Michael, 73, New Jersey
Not Worth a Gamble — by Carol, 71, Arizona
Double Jeopardy for One Teenager — by Karen, 56, Georgia
A Law Student’s Brutal Dilemma – by Victoria, 64, New York
A Masked Man at a Farm Near Baltimore, Then a Happy Ending With Boxer Shorts – by Rosalyn, 70, Maryland
In Brazil, Abortion Is Still Illegal – by Ana, 58, Brazil
In a Back Alley of Tijuana – by Nancy, 75, Israel
From Generation to Generation – by Claire, 65, California

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact Opinion authors, email [email protected].

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO