For many women, abortion isn’t simple, easy, or painless.

By Sarah Terzo

In a previous Substack article, I wrote about three women who took the abortion pill and told their stories in a 2013 article in New York Magazine. Now I want to highlight several other stories from the article.

Not all the stories in the article were from women who suffered because of their abortions. (Although, of course, we know denial is often a feature of post-abortion trauma.)

But several of them told stories of coercion and emotional trauma.

Some women used pseudonyms, but I will identify them by the names used in the article.

Abortion Coercion from a Boyfriend

Nichole had an abortion because her boyfriend demanded it. She says:

I wanted to keep it. My boyfriend always had football practice, so he couldn’t go to the doctor appointments with me. If he’d gone, he would’ve felt differently. But he says, ‘No way.’

I wanted to show him that I loved him enough to do it for him.

She was 13 weeks along when she had the abortion.

The morning of the abortion, she told her boyfriend she didn’t want to go through with it. Nevertheless, they drove to the abortion facility. She says they both cried on the way.

She also says, “I don’t think abortion is killing, but I’d always been against it.” I’m not sure if this is denial here because I’m uncertain why someone would be against abortion if they didn’t feel, at least on some level, that it’s killing.

When the couple arrived at the abortion facility, the facility’s credit card scanner wasn’t working. Suspecting a trick, her boyfriend asked her if she was lying about the scanner. They eventually went to a nearby ATM to withdraw $1000 for the abortion.

On the way back to the clinic, Nichole says:

I was hysterical, and he says, ‘Okay, you don’t have to go back.’ I was so happy. Then he says, ‘We drove all this way. Stop crying, act like a woman.’ I was angry, but I was so sleepy and tired of fighting.

When Nichole had the ultrasound, she asked the abortion worker to print out a picture for her. The abortion worker responded, “Seriously?”

This may have been an unusual request. But it should have been a red flag to the abortion worker that Nichole was ambivalent about the abortion.

It seems like none of the abortion workers asked Nichole questions about whether she was being coerced or if abortion was really what she wanted.

A month after the abortion, Nichole’s boyfriend admitted he regretted it as well.

But Nichole says, “When I cry about it, I cry alone. He thinks it would make me sad to talk about, but I don’t want our baby to think we forgot.”

She thinks of her lost child as a baby and says that her child’s due date is approaching, and she’s “dreading it.”

Hiding the Truth

Another woman, identified as Red, lied to her boyfriend about her abortion. He wanted to get married and have the baby.

She describes going to the abortion facility in the pouring rain and seeing pro-lifers with “disgusting pictures.”

Red also says the abortionist “acted like it was assembly-line work.”

She told her boyfriend she had a miscarriage. The couple dated for another year but, she says, “The secret was devastating.”

He never knew that she aborted his child.

A “Grotesque” Abortionist and Abortion Coercion

Heather says the following about the abortionist who killed her child:

The doctor was grotesque. He whistled show tunes. I could hear the vacuum sucking out the fetus alongside his whistling. When I hear show tunes now, I shudder. Later, he lost his license.

A few months before being interviewed for the article, she became pregnant again. Because her in-laws had been assisting her and her family financially, she felt she had “no choice” but to tell them about her pregnancy and let them weigh in on the decision.

They told her to abort and gave her the money. She felt like she couldn’t say no. She says:

They gave us $500 cash to bring to the clinic. I felt very forced. I felt like I was required to have an abortion to provide for my current family. Money help is a manipulation. I’m crazy in love with my daughters—imagine if I did that to them?

So, she had a second abortion, even though she didn’t want to.

Now, she suffers emotionally. She says, “It’s almost too much to open the door of guilt and shame because it’ll all overcome me.”

She also says that when she went for her abortions and sat in the waiting room, there was “a dead silence that’s hard to describe.” All the pregnant people waiting for their abortions, she says, were holding in their emotions “to a heartbreaking degree.”

A Second Chance, Lost

When Mayah went to the abortion facility, she says she was “secretly excited for the ultrasound.”

But she was so early in her pregnancy that abortion workers couldn’t find her baby on the ultrasound screen. They told her she could come back for the procedure when she was further along, but she says she “couldn’t stand the idea of letting it grow.”

On the abortion table, the nurse told her to be quiet, which made her so angry, she says, “I wanted to sock her in the face.”

She was so early in her pregnancy that the abortion cannula missed her baby, and she was still pregnant.

She says, “The amoeba—my baby—was somehow surviving. The next time, I kind of hoped it wouldn’t work.”

But the next attempt at an abortion did work.

Mayah says, “I tracked the whole pregnancy online, living in fantasies about how big my belly would be.”

She went to a pregnancy resource center for support but didn’t feel talking to the counselor was helpful. In fact, she claimed that the only people who would listen to her about her post-abortion trauma were “people who wanted me to fall down on my knees and ask forgiveness.”

Perhaps it was the religious aspect of the post-abortion counseling that turned her off, or perhaps she was just unwilling to admit her abortion was wrong.

Abortion After Rape Doesn’t Bring Healing

Janet was a victim of date rape at 18. She had an abortion and says she “didn’t think about the baby” when she arranged it.

She had to save up money for the abortion and didn’t arrive at the clinic until the “very last possible week.” So, it was a late-term abortion.

It was at the abortion facility that she first realized she was carrying an actual baby. She recalls thinking to herself, “Oh my God, there’s a baby inside me.”

She went through with the abortion and says the staff was “very matter of fact” and showed no kindness. A nurse told her that her baby had been a girl.

Janet doesn’t say much about the emotional aftermath of her abortion or how she feels now, but she knows she lost her child, and that she was pregnant with an actual baby, a little girl.

Madeline was also a victim of rape, or something very close to it. She says, “I didn’t think I was ready for sex, but my boyfriend pushed it. Rape feels too strong, but it wasn’t really consensual.”

She was 20 weeks along when she had her abortion. During the ultrasound, the abortion worker told her how big her baby’s head was. Madeline says that this “was the most scarring thing.”

She says, “I feel bad that it was so far along, developed.”

Madeline was still in school and says that in one of her classes, they spent a week discussing abortion. She describes this as “awful.”

Like most of the other women, Madeline doesn’t talk much about how the abortion affected her. But for the rest of her life, every time people around her talk about abortion, it will bring back the memory of her lost baby.

A Plea in the Comments

The final quote I want to include is a comment on the article by an unknown post-abortive person. The comment says:

My only advice – if you are thinking of getting a termination PLEASE get proper councelling [sic] first. I am pro choice [sic] but my god – I had no idea my abortion would be this hard…

I just had no idea that this would be so life changing.

Yes – I was solving a problem, but that doesn’t mean you are left problem free. No one mentioned the profound grief, hormonal rollercoaster and loneliness that has now come.

Though still “pro-choice,” she was clearly devastated by her abortion.

Abortion coercion is real. And abortion is traumatic, even after rape. None of the women quoted above were unscathed by their abortions. Had they been interviewed in more depth, it’s likely they would’ve expressed more trauma.

This article originally appeared on Sarah Terzo’s Substack. You can read more of her articles here.