Second, I want to agree with your astericks – or at least the one that I can speak to. Yes, when you are pregnant and don’t want to be all of your options suck. I found myself in that situation many years ago and after realizing that *I* couldn’t bring myself to have an abortion and deciding to find an adoptive family (a difficult choice as well, since I’ve always wanted children), I then miscarried. It was painful, both emotional and physically. I thought that I still had months to come to terms with letting this baby go to another family, and instead I had to say goodbye overnight. Even after this experience, though, and finding that I couldn’t have that procedure done on me, I’m still pro-choice. My decision would not have changed about whether or not to continue that pregnancy, though if I’d discovered that there were serious problems with the fetus, I’m not sure what my decision at that point would have been – or if it even would have been my choice any longer, as I’d elected to place my baby with another family. More importantly, the choice should always rest with the person who is carrying the fetus – and her partner if she chooses to include them in the decision. It still amazes me how many preconceptions there are around abortion and that anyone would think that a woman would or could make that decision lightly.I was lucky to know a woman who had adopted all 3 of her children and a woman who had been adopted as a toddler and another who was in the process of placing her newborn with a couple who would make a great home for that child. Seeing all of those faces of adoption made it easier for me to make that decision …… but it didn’t make it any easier to deal with the emotional effects of having a miscarriage. I’ve found bits and pieces of healing through the years, and I now have a wonderful daughter who turned 5 last month, whom I have cherished more than I thought would be possible *because* I know how fragile life is now.Again, thank you. It’s important that women stop being silent about the pain that is caused by these decisions. Maybe if we all start sharing our stories more openly, some of the misconceptions will be changed. Maybe another woman will be more prepared for the possibility of a spontaneous abortion. Maybe another woman will not feel so alone if it happens to her. Maybe if we all speak up just a little more, we can make the world a more understanding place – which can only make it better.

maggie
What you have done here is create something beautiful. Your heartfelt sharing of a story has clearly echoed in the minds of literally hundreds of posters on BB, and what I see above is an outpouring of wonderful emotion and caring. You should be proud. You have started to create the very lexicon that we lack for this topic, and I thank you.

I wish you the best outcome in this time of difficulty.

Jonathan
Denver, CO
the Fiat RN

I am also even more impressed with your and your husband’s compassion for everyone else who has shared their stories here.  You both must be going through so much pain of your own that it is amazingly generous of you to express your gratitude and support for others right now.

My heart goes out to you.

I hope that this difficult moment passes for you with the minimum of pain and trauma, and that you and your husband be blessed with a happy and healthy pregnancy soon.

My heart goes out to you.  You’ll live through this and then get on with providing the world with some new happy mutants.  You won’t ever forget but whatever your choice it will be your history and your decision, as it should be.

Life sucks sometimes.

John G

Thank you for such an inclusively written article.  I fall into the “unchosen childlessness” group, and it’s rare to be mentioned in the reproductive rights conversation.

Definitely not TMI. I wish stuff like this was less secretive.

This is not TMI.  Since you’ve come to BoingBoing I’ve been repeatedly impressed by your ability to take information and present it in a manner both thoughtful and succinct.  Though I understand this subject matter is not exactly in your wheelhouse, you’ve done the same again.

All I can say is I’m sorry: that you are suffering, that miscarriages happen at all, that the procedure you are considering is so legally fraught.  If having this abortion will make your emotional pain easier to bear, then please don’t think you don’t need it.  Psychic suffering is real suffering, and no one denies that people in physical pain need treatment.

Whatever happens, I hope that things get better soon.  If you need anything, please don’t feel afraid to call on the BoingBoing community for help.  

M

… Something to show in the face of picketers outside clinics. (And really… if they want to save fetuses… shouldn’t they be picketing for more research to prevent misscarriages?)

   First off, Maggie, I want to say that your work is impressive and important and I feel amazingly lucky to get to read it nearly every damn day.
   I also wanted add my voice to the chorus outing the members of the World Shittiest Secret Society (our chant: W-S-S-S?). My wife and I have had trouble getting pregnant, and lived through the choice you’re facing this week.  At 6 weeks we had a healthy growing fetus, and at 7.5 there was no heartbeat and ‘signs of reabsorption’. Our choice was the same as yours: abort or wait, with waiting being an option that would just drag out the pain for weeks more. We chose the mifepristone/misoprostol option, and lined up a Harry Potter movie marathon for light distraction to get through the few hours of discomfort that the doctor described. My wife then lived through at least eight hours of intense, body wracking pain while I lamely hugged her and rubbed her back through it, with the tidy, saccarine exploits of a young wizard on the TV in front of me. 
    In the weeks that followed, people came out of the woodwork, to tell their stories and try their best to help us through it, much as is happening right now in this thread. That helped.
    We’re both academics (me: evolutionary biologist, she: economist) and we’d approached pregnancy with the due diligence we dorks bring to our lives, so we knew the stats, but we had no idea how many people in our lives had lived through ‘our personal tragedy’.
     As much as I felt warmly to those that opened up, I was incredibly mad at a society that just never talked about miscarriage, so when we were in that moment, we felt broken, felt that there was something pathological about our inability to make this work, and felt alone about it all. As much as I love data, stats don’t help with those feelings. Personal stories do. And stats aside, the only personal story I knew of this happening to another person was Howard Stern’s miscarriage experience he told in his autobiographical film. Howard Stern. That’s it.
    Sympathies and empathies after the fact are wonderful. But building a dialogue between humans in our lives and in our literature so that everyone knows about this part of the human condition is the only thing that can disband the World’s Shittiest Secret Society. 
    So, thank you for getting people to tell their stories, and hopefully folks to whom this hasn’t happened yet will talk about it.

To that end I propose: 
                      – The first rule of WSSS is that you do talk about WSSS.
                      – The second rule of WSSS is that you DO talk about WSSS.

Any more?

No matter what, my heart is with you — I understand.

Personally, I’ve never faced a known miscarriage, though it’s entirely possible that I had an early one a very long time ago when I was a teenager and my thyroid condition made for largely non-ovulatory cycles and heinously heavy and painful periods.

What I am familiar with, is the agonizing over the decision whether or not to abort. In my case, there were no health concerns, either mine, or the baby’s, just a matter of timing as my divorce was not yet fully finalized, my partner wasn’t living with me and my kids yet, and my children from my first marriage were still showing signs of the grieving process from the split between their father and I, even several years out from the separation.

Ultimately, the right decision for me and my partner, was to continue the pregnancy as I was concerned about the side effects of an abortion for future fertility, my age (pushing 40) and knowledge of myself – I don’t think I could have lived with the sorrow and regret of choosing to abort. It was a very difficult decision to make especially as I’ve observed my kids struggling with how this baby fits into our blended family, in spite of also being excited to have a new sibling,  and me not being as available to them as a single parent as  I’ve slogged through severe morning sickness and fatigue.

If I’d decided the other way, if I’d chosen to abort,  I would expect the same level of support and understanding from my family and friends as they’ve offered to me pregnant.

There are no good and bad choices as you say, only the choices that are right and ‘best’  for each of us in the face of a given time and set of circumstances.

I wish you and yours all the best and hope that a better outcome is in your future some day.

A wise friend of mine has impressed on me the mantra that “stoic silence is for suckers.” Today she shared with us the pain of having a surgical drain removed as she is newly home recovering from a cancer-forced mastectomy. We support her with our words as best we can. I hope that your choice to share your story continues to bring good things into your daily stream.

I have had 2 miscarriages, 1 termination (of twins) and have 1 healthy baby after a very complicated pregnancy. The termination was a horrible situation – the twins were identical and shared blood-flow, but Twin B was getting too much blood and Twin A not enough. B was rapidly dying and A was going to experience a great trauma when B died, because the loss of pressure would cause even more of the blood to flow over to B, depriving A. We consulted with many experts, and no one could give us good information about what would happen to A. She might have died from the trauma when B died. She might have had brain, heart or lung defects. She might have lived a long and healthy life. There was no way to have enough information to feel good about the decision. I used to think that choices were a good thing, but now know now what a burden they can be.

This article is slightly off-topic, but this quote from a bioethicist really spoke to me and is relevant here: “In an odd way, having more choices actually places a much greater burden on women, because we become the creators of our circumstance, whereas, before, we were the recipients of them. I’m not saying we should have less choices; I’m saying choices are not always as liberating and empowering as we hope they will be.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/magazine/the-two-minus-one-pregnancy.html?pagewanted=all

After my termination, something happened that I understand to be fairly common. Some of the placenta did not come out during the procedure. This caused massive bleeding and chaos for 3 months when we were desperate to start trying again. It was horrible. I understand that this is common – one midwife said “yeah – the placenta’s really not designed to let go at that stage.” In some ways it is a good thing – doctors used to really scrape the walls of the uterus during a D&C, and they didn’t have as many problems with retained placentas, but they did do lots of damage to uteruses.

So, in the spirit of talking about things that are common but not much talked about, I thought I would pass that along. A friend of mine had had this happen before me, and it helped me that I knew it was a possibility.

Best of luck to you and your husband.