“The pregnancy continued not so much because I chose it … I sobbed, until I could sob no more, and a quiet defiance and resolution settled around me, holding it all.”
The day after Roe v. Wade was overturned, I was supposed to attend the quarterly meeting of an environmental civic organization in my adopted state of Arkansas. I had joined the organization a few years before, and although most of the participants out-aged me by decades, I enjoyed collecting wildflower seeds, planting trees, and cleaning up hiking trails with the chapter’s two dozen retirees. Gathering with women in their 60s and 70s to paint tree IDs on giant slabs of slate often made me feel like a 14-year-old at a quilting bee. I happily traced chinquapin oak leaves onto stone while listening to the women gossip.
But that Saturday, I arrived stunned, frozen and silent. Though the fall of Roe unsettled and shocked most moderate or liberal women of childbearing age (and many conservative women, too), for me it also reignited memories my body held from six years before, when I’d discovered I was pregnant with my second child. It wasn’t a pregnancy I’d wanted, or a pregnancy my husband and I had planned. And the pregnancy continued not so much because I chose it, but because when I mentioned a possible abortion, my husband walked out of the room, refusing to discuss it. I can still remember the way I lay there, listening to his heavy steps exit the house. Options disappeared, and a dark, frozen hole enveloped me. A hole which would take six years for me to fully climb out of.
That Saturday morning after Dobbs, at the civic organization’s chapter meeting, I looked around at the other attendees’ faces, hoping to find safety. My body thrummed, and the room spun. We were in the Bible Belt, where most people were Christian, and although these environmentally minded volunteers likely ran more toward the political center, I couldn’t be sure. I remember standing there, stiff, hoping just one woman would look at me, see the sorrow and shock in my eyes, and nod with acknowledgement. Even that little bit might have been enough.
But I saw no acknowledgement. The women smiled and laughed with each other—no mention of current events—and when the programming started, everyone sat down to listen to a talk on fish rehabilitation, a talk I barely recall because I mostly zoned out. “You don’t need to sit so far away by yourself,” one woman said during the lunch break, her face cheerful and oblivious as she and a handful of others circled up to talk about their grandchildren and their church book studies. The space between us widened, electric. After I finished my sandwich, I excused myself, saying I needed to bring my daughter to a birthday party, and left.
On the way home, I cried in my car. Later that afternoon, I cried in my closet.
The next morning, I logged into a Zoom yoga class I’d been attending for years. I moved through the poses in stiff, awkward, shaking angles, and near the end of the class, when we were supposed to lay on our backs, an acidic pressure rose with a wail in my chest. I flipped over quickly, only to sob for over 15 minutes, my microphone (thankfully) muted, as my back shook on my mat, long after the class finished. I was sobbing for myself, sobbing for my daughter, sobbing for all the individuals who had, or would now—like me—feel forced to proceed with a pregnancy they didn’t want. Who would feel that violation in the soft folds of their inner parts. Who wouldn’t feel able to speak about it because their family said no, or their culture said no, or their religion said no, or their political system now said no. I sobbed, until I could sob no more, and a quiet defiance and resolution settled around me, holding it all.
I would never return to the civic organization, but later, when I watched the recording from that yoga class, I noted how my yoga instructor—a dear friend—waited quietly. Long after she waved goodbye to the other attendees, she sat there, glancing at the screen and then at the floor. Her face somber, respectful. Holding space. Before she turned the recording off, she looked directly into the computer once more and gave a deep bow.
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The Supreme Court’s overturning Roe v. Wade represented the largest blow to women’s constitutional rights in history. A series from Ms., Our Abortion Stories chronicles readers’ experiences of abortion pre- and post-Roe. Telling stories of then and now shows how critical abortion has been and continues to be for women and girls. Share your abortion story by emailing myabortionstory@msmagazine.com.
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