I Chose Life

In the pro-choice/pro-life debate, I've always fallen squarely on the pro-choice side. I will gladly fight against anything and anyone that makes it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion, for any reason. I abhor Texas legislation that makes it mandatory for a woman to get a transvaginal ultrasound and listen to the fetal heartbeat before terminating her pregnancy.

With that being said, I've gotten pregnant now, twice, unexpectedly. That's putting it mildly. The first time, I thought there was no way in Hell I could get pregnant because I was on the Pill. With my second pregnancy, although people don't believe me, I got pregnant on accident. It was the rhythm method gone awry (see: ovulated a week late). My Dad blithely noted, "Now you know why there are so many Catholics in the world." Another friend told me the old joke, "What do you call two people who use the Rhythm method? Answer: Parents". Each time I've been pregnant, I've been faced with a choice whether or not to terminate the pregnancy. With the FOB, he told me he wanted the baby and would grow to be a wonderful, loving father and we would raise the child as a family. Clearly, that didn't happen, particularly when I left New Hampshire at three-and-a-half months pregnant and moved cross country to Texas in a 1995 Honda Civic. He wouldn't stop drinking or smoking pot and I wasn't going to raise a child around him.

With this second pregnancy, it's been a much harder choice. I wanted the baby, but I'm only half the equation. The Father of the Baby Part Deux (or King George II, as I will refer to him), has been wildly confused about his wishes and desires. At first, he said we should get married, so he didn't have to be a single father and pay child support. I basically told him those were the worst reasons ever for two people to get married. We agreed that he would move in and rent a room in my house.

That was up until my first ultrasound. Where KGII saw nothing, not even a clump of cells, I saw the beginning of life. The gestational sac was present and my uterus had started expanding. Although it wasn't life yet, it was the beginning of one and I wanted to give it a chance. He asked the doctor about my risk of miscarriage - less like it was a risk and more like an opportunity for a spontaneous abortion. If I could have bottled the look she gave him, I would. Then I'd sell it to single Moms. She looked at him like, "Who the fuck are you and why are you in my exam?" She said that there was no evidence to indicate I would miscarry and everything looked normal for 4-5 week gestation. The hard part is some of my friends with kids encouraged me to bring KGII to the first prenatal appointment. "He'll have a change of heart," they said, "It will be a turning point in his relationship with this baby," they murmured.

It was a changing point, alright. Just not in the way they, or I, predicted.

He said we needed to abort before the embryo's heart started beating. That defined "life" to him and I had approximately five days to end it. And I just looked at him and thought I had never been so alone. I suddenly became histrionic. I started crying and shouting, "Why do you want me to kill my baby?" which basically just adds guilt to a toxic emotional soup. Rationally, I can recognize that. Emotionally, asking me to live the rest of my life without knowing whether or not my child would ever have a beating heart was asking too much of me. The thread of the conversation never really ended, though. When I would get sick or my back would start to hurt, he would say, "It doesn't have to be like this. You could get this taken care of. You don't have to be sick," and I would continue vomiting, suddenly about twenty times more sick than I had been thirty seconds before.

Then other people started to weigh in on the contents of my uterus. After a delay, KGII finally told his parents and they asked if I was going to "keep the baby". He said yes and from what I gather, they had some strong feelings they expressed to him about me NOT keeping the baby. Then, suddenly, KGII's parents were in my house doing home renovation while I was at work and it started to bother me more and more. I got home from work and told them that I didn't think KGII should finish moving his stuff in without knowing how he was going to pay his August rent and they should stop all construction immediately. They quickly offered to pay his rent for him and I went to lay down. They left shortly after that and KGII said I had been ugly.I think I was just defending my territory, both inside my house and inside my body.

Although 90% of his things are over here, KGII, with his parents' support, decided to not move in tonight. I went home early from work because I was so unbelievably sick and tired and he woke me up to tell me that he will be living somewhere else. My Dad came over and we changed the locks on my doors and arranged a time for him to come get his stuff with supervision. Again, he said he didn't understand why I was being so ugly. I just felt so abandoned. So hurt and so abandoned.

But I don't regret choosing to see life. Regardless of how hard this pregnancy is and the fact that I'm alone, once again, I don't regret it.