Birth Story: Oklahoma
Submitted to Abort73 by a 22-year-old woman on August 9, 2014.
I have never had an abortion—but I survived one. The product of a tumultuous and abusive teen marriage, neither of my parents wanted me. My mother had had at least one other abortion prior to her becoming pregnant with me. She'd terminated that pregnancy in part because she had been impregnated through spousal rape, and in part because my father had apparently shot up with meth, gone on a rampage and started waving a gun in her face—threatening her life if she would not go through with the abortion. I never knew my father. He signed away his rights when I was three and shortly after was locked up on felony charges for drug trafficking and assaulting a police officer. He's still in prison.
Initially, my mother toyed with the idea of simply signing me over to an adoption agency, but my father was against the thought. When he heard that she was considering simply giving me away, he attempted to induce a miscarriage himself by choking my mother with a piece of wire and slamming her stomach in a car door. She didn't press charges, and he walked for this.
She was examined by a doctor afterward who detected no fetal heartbeat and pronounced me dead. She was sent home that night, and the next day went back to the doctor to have my corpse removed from her body. After trying one last time but still detecting no heartbeat, they injected my mother with a drug that sent her into labor.
The problem was, I was not dead. Nor was I nearly as young as they'd thought. My mother had believed herself to be about three or four months along. Actually, she was eight—I was just stunted because my father had ruptured my amniotic sac and it had dried out and shrank around me—making it impossible for me to grow or move. I did not cry when I was born. I didn't have the strength. But I could move my eyes, and the moment that I was delivered, they popped open and stared up at the doctor who cleaned me off, dubbed me a miracle, and handed me to my mother.
She's often said to me, "I didn't know what love was before that day. When you were born I realized just how cheated and short-changed I'd been up until then. I held and talked to you and you looked straight at me like you understood every word I said; you didn't fall asleep until I'd run out of things to say. I rocked you in my arms while you snored and for the first time in my life I wanted to live, for the first time I felt love." I realize that not all people conceived through rape or born into abusive homes are as lucky as I am. For whatever reason, fortune smiled on me and my mother, and we were able to escape that world of hate and pain and find a happy ending. That doesn't always happen.
Sometimes things work out terribly in these kinds of situations. But it shouldn't be legal to destroy what is most helpless on the mere chance that they may not be happy here. I love my mother dearly.
Now that I am grown, I do everything I can to support her and ensure she's taken care of. For as long as I am alive, my mother will never want for anything, I've sworn it. We've been inseparable since the day I was born, and we will always be best friends. If there happen to be any women reading this considering abortion, please reconsider. That baby might turn out to be your dearest friend and strongest defender in the future. No man ought to be more important than your baby!
Age: 22
Location: Oklahoma
Date: August 9, 2014
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