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In the summer of 1987, when I was 30, I had started a new relationship and we got a bit careless – that old story. My biological clock had been ticking, but I just wasn't ready for this pregnancy. One morning, my hands shaking, I dialled the Morgentaler clinic in Toronto and made an appointment for an abortion. Then I climbed into my bed and cried. It seems like I stayed there for days, trying to reconcile myself to my situation. I was lucky because my partner was supportive, but I knew the decision was between me and this potential baby.
In the end, I cancelled the appointment. A couple of weeks later, I had a miscarriage. It was all very dramatic, the middle-of-the-night rush to the hospital and the emergency dilation and curettage to remove the remains of the pregnancy. And in one of those fateful moments of irony, I discovered that I had been carrying a blighted ovum; there never had been a baby. At the time, it seemed like a crass joke, but those weeks were among the most intense of my adult life.
And I rarely talk about them.
With all of the controversy surrounding the naming of Henry Morgentaler to the Order of Canada, I began wondering why I, like so many other women, had been silent on the personal experience of abortion. Why is it acceptable to sit around a dinner table and talk about colonoscopies, hot flashes and Viagra, but not about our abortion experiences? Why don't I know whether any of the women in my book club have had an abortion when I'm familiar with so many other intimate details of their lives?
It has been 20 years since the Supreme Court of Canada decriminalized abortion and – with a few notable exceptions in provinces such as Prince Edward Island (where it's not available) and New Brunswick (where recommendations from two doctors are required) – most Canadians have access to legal, timely and safe abortions. Almost 100,000 Canadian women each year make the decision to end a pregnancy, yet in all but a few cases they never discuss them, even decades later.
Given the frequency with which women decide to end a pregnancy – there were 28.3 abortions for every 100 live births in Canada in 2005 – why is there still such a powerful stigma around a legal procedure?
SECRETS AND SILEN CE
Paige Thombs, now living in Western Canada, was attending a Catholic girls school when she became pregnant at the age of 18. The decision to have an abortion wasn't easy, and it was made more difficult by a boyfriend who put a lot of pressure on her to go through with the pregnancy.
Her condition became a complicated web of secrets and half-truths. Her school principal, a former nun, knew of the pregnancy, but no one else did – until a friend broke a confidence and word leaked out among the students.
After the abortion, Ms. Thombs told the principal that she had had a miscarriage. Not long afterward, her religion teacher invited a Christian couple into the classroom to give a talk on why abortion was a sin. Ms. Thombs knew that another girl in the class had had an abortion too. “I just remember this guy standing up there and telling us you could not in all honesty consider yourself Christian any more. At the time, that was certainly shaming.”
The secrets became silences. Her mother, a quietly pro-choice Catholic, gave Ms. Thombs her support at the time, and yet they don't talk about it. Her younger brother knew about the abortion, but they don't discuss it either.
Even now, 20 years later, Ms. Thombs still wrestles with a guilt that she senses was imposed upon her. “Sometimes you feel relieved, and you feel ashamed that you don't feel shame.
“Like, ‘I should feel bad about this, I killed my baby' – all those things the anti-choice movement tends to say.”
She says she knows that she should have used birth control, “but you know what? If it was any other kind of stupid mistake, you wouldn't spend so much time beating yourself up over it. There is so much media stuff that tells you, whispers in your ear, ‘You better not tell anybody about this.' People who are very pro-choice, who've had abortions, stay silent. People who are anti-choice are very verbal.”
