Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader's Eye-Opening Journey Across the Life Line Read Online Free PDF Page B

take me.
    The year was 2000. I was twenty years old. Looking back, I find it hard to believe that the values I’d been raised with didn’t figure more into my decision making. The high school girl I’d been, the church I’d grown up in, and the family I’d come from—I just put them out of my mind. I’ve learned a lot since then. I’ve sat with women of all socioeconomic levels, many races and faiths, from young teen girls to middle-aged women, who have found themselves face-to-face with the same questions and choices I wrestled with.
    Today’s Abby knows what that Abby did not.
    But that Abby, the Abby I was then, agreed. In the space of a few days Mark and I made our plans, and I applied for my very first credit card so I could pay the five-hundred-dollar abortion fee. When the card came in the mail, I called the clinic and made the appointment. I never thought about one simple fact: there was already a baby inside of me. It was as if what I had was not a baby but simply a pregnancy—a medical condition that needed treatment to “cure” it. This pregnancy felt like the heaviest burden I’d ever had to carry—my first true crisis. I’d gotten myself into this. Now I was problem solving to get out of it. To my shame, I don’t recall any other thought process than that.
    I’d never been to Houston before. The morning of the appointment, I headed southwest on Highway 6 and drove the ninety miles to Houston. Mark was the passenger, the navigator, because he’d been there before. At the clinic, Mark came in with me as I signed in, and we both sat for a brief time alongside a number of girls my age. Then Mark headed outdoors. I was instructed, along with the other women, to move into a back room for a group counseling session. We all watched a brief video that explained the procedure. I can’t remember anything about that video today, but I do recall that when it ended, the clinician laughed and said, “Oh, don’t be worried, girls.” She waved away the video as if it were of no consequence. She had a long braid, twined with beads that caught my eye as her head turned, looking us over. “I’ve had, like, nine abortions. Really, this will be over before you know it. It’s no big deal.”
    Whoa. Nine? I don’t ever want to be like that, I thought. I could tell I wasn’t the only one who thought so; several of us made eye contact with raised eyebrows and expressions of disbelief.
    “We’ll call your name when it’s time to come back.” She disappeared into the hallway.
    That was it. Our “counseling” was evidently over. We sat in silence and waited.
    I’m fuzzy on what happened next. My next clear memory is of finding myself lying on a table, feet in stirrups, with a painful pressure steadily increasing in my abdomen. I was groaning, and the nurse was gently rubbing my forearm. “It’s okay, honey. It’s almost over.” I opened my eyes and saw a poster of a cat on the ceiling above my head. The cat was hanging from a branch, and there was a slogan written beneath its dangling feet: Hang in there.
    But then the cat moved, like it was sliding off the ceiling and onto the wall. “There’s something wrong with that picture,” I tried to say, but my tongue felt heavy and sluggish.
    “You’re fine, honey. It’s just the medicine. Shhh. Relax.”
    Another round of pain. I could hear myself groaning, but it sounded distant.
    I became vaguely aware that the pain had stopped. I was being moved. The next thing I recall is waking up slumped forward, sitting in a hard, straight chair. I looked around me. My chair was one in a long line, filled by the girls who had watched the video with me. Some were staring at the floor, some rocking with their arms wrapped around their bellies. Some were softly crying. Others, like me, sat silently, repeatedly trying to shift their weight to find a comfortable position. I don’t recall any eye contact between us.
    I’m not sure how long I sat on that uncomfortable