Abortion

I have full comedy sets on abortion that would get me banned from certain conservative rooms in Minnesota when I was still performing. “Oh that girl was so funny and wonderful, until she started talking about abortion,” was the feedback I would get. I did not mind. I enjoyed seeing people who disagreed with my beliefs laughing at a joke that contradicted their views. They tried hard to hold in their laughs but would fail. Wives would punch their husbands as laughs slipped out. Or a woman wearing a cross necklace would cover her face and turn away in annoyance that I had made her laugh at something "so terrible." Part of me hoped that laughter would influence how they thought about abortion or the people who got abortions, even if it was just in a tiny way. Maybe the laughter would shake their firmly-held beliefs loose a little bit. I hoped they would be kinder to their daughter or neighbor who had an abortion because they saw someone like me had had an abortion. I watched other female comics perform sets supporting abortion but they never would say they had an abortion themselves. It felt to me like an omission. When I saw the passion they had, I sensed these female comics probably had an abortion but were scared to admit it.

When I first started performing sets about abortion, women would come up to me after those sets to tell me they had an abortion, too. But not openly. They would whisper it in my ear. They knew what a good chunk of the general population thought about abortions and they did not want to be seen as a slut or loose or dumb. They would quietly cheer me on, wishing they could be as open about their experience as I was with mine.

I had an abortion in the fall of 2021. I was raised in a religious home, so I thought I would never have an abortion. I figured I would not have sex until I got married, so I would not have to worry about something like killing a baby. I thought abortions were reserved for less intelligent people, too. It seemed so easy not to get pregnant. I was naive. Women have abortions for so many reasons, even within marriages.

When I accidentally got pregnant, I was scared. Up until a few days after I knew I was pregnant, I still believed I would never have an abortion. I was physiologically attached to whatever little thing was growing inside me, but I knew I did not want a baby with this partner. My relationship with my then-boyfriend was turbulent. The night I got pregnant, we were fighting and I did not want to have sex. He pressured me into it and I gave in. I was unable to hold a healthy boundary. That was a consistent pattern in our relationship and in many of the relationships in my life at that point. I was angry when I realized he hadn’t pulled out early enough. He assured me it was fine. I had the sense that it was not, but I did not want to take the “day after” pill, so I hoped that I wasn’t fertile on that particular day and tried to move on with my life.

At the time, my boyfriend and I were living with his parents. I had a mountain of student loan debt and could barely support myself. My bf earned barely more than minimum wage and had no plans to move out of his parent’s home. I never wanted to move into his parent’s home in the first place, but he convinced me to do it, saying it would be temporary. Again, I was not able to protect my own wants and needs.

The abortion felt like one of the few times I listened to what I wanted to do with my life. My bf had incessantly pursued me to get me into the relationship in the first place. I said “no” to him asking me out so many times that people around me asked if they should do something about what he was doing to pursue me. I said “No,” he seemed innocent enough. But I eventually fell prey to his continued pursuit because of my loneliness and sadness after severing my dysfunctional relationship with my mentally ill mother (and inability to trust my discomfort and distaste for him).

I thought through what our life would look like if we kept the baby and it felt like a recreation of my parent's life. My mom got pregnant with my older sister unexpectedly, so my mom and dad had a shotgun wedding. My sister was born six months after their wedding date. What ensued was chaos and ultimately divorce for my family.

I had been feeling so depressed by the relationship before I got pregnant. I thought about leaving him almost daily. My ex had many behaviors I would want to protect a child from. I could only see a future of fighting and separation for us. I decided I did not want to put a child through that, after what I had experienced growing up.

My boyfriend supported the abortion decision. He had no desire to take on the responsibility of a child. He wanted to focus on hosting a comedy open mic in a run-down bar in Minneapolis. He said he would have supported me if I kept the baby, but I could tell he did not want a baby. On top of my own reasons for wanting the abortion, I was not interested in forcing someone into being a dad.

I left him that December. The abortion solidified the sinking feeling I had that I should not have started this relationship in the first place. I went through withdrawals after leaving him, unlike anything I had experienced before. I understood later that the relationship was a band-aid for the loneliness I felt after losing my mother and for the pain of the years I had lost trying to save my mother. I replaced my dysfunctional relationship with my mom with a dysfunctional relationship with a partner. Couldn’t I choose a more unique plot line?

On the day of the abortion, we walked up to a worn clinic with the earliest opening for me to get a free abortion. As we walked through the parking lot, a midwestern-mom-looking lady popped up over the fence on the side of the clinic and said, “There is a precious baby inside of you, Ma’am!”

I thought it was hilarious. We had been warned that a religious group hung out in front of the clinic and might pester us as we walked in. She genuinely did not bother me. I respected her mission and was grateful for the laugh (due to my surprise at her popping up over a high fence and her appearance). I once held her beliefs, so how could I blame her for having them herself?

The procedure itself was painful. I am not sure if they messed up the anesthetic or if it is usually painful, but I almost passed out from the pain. I asked to see the tiny blob they took out of me. I wanted to know for sure that it was gone. The embryo was still barely visible so I was not entirely convinced they got everything out, but I bled for days after that. My body returned to its usual shape, with my boobs and nipples shrinking and returning to their original color. My tummy went down, too. Then my period returned and I knew the embryo was gone.

I was in awe of how fast my body had changed for the embryo. I had an appetite that could not be ignored and a fierce sense of smell. I looked at my boyfriend with doe eyes I never had for him before. The chemicals that course through your brain when you are pregnant make it tough to wade through what you genuinely want to happen in your life.

Somehow I found the stillness to not listen to my bodily impulses to keep the baby, and I am incredibly grateful that I did. I am thankful I had access to an abortion, although I had no health insurance at the time. Accidentally getting pregnant also made me realize that I did want to have a family of my own, but not the way I had been living. After it happened, I made many positive changes in my life. I knew I needed to take better care of myself to feel strong enough to care for a baby.

I thought about all of this again after seeing a vote affecting abortion on the ballot in Florida this year. I wanted to share my story to encourage voters to support abortion.

Abortions should not be stigmatized. Abortions are healthcare. If I had not had the choice to end that pregnancy, I would have forced new life into chaos and dysfunction. I would have made my life and my ex’s life much more difficult. Due to our trauma, we were not ready to support a child. To have a healthier and freer world, women need to feel empowered to make decisions to support their health and well-being.