Contrary to popular belief, access to abortion care should not be up for debate. People NEED access to abortion. I am pro-choice. This means that I believe that everyone should have the choice to do what they want with their body. For me, that meant that I would never choose abortion for myself. That is until I was faced with a life or death situation and chose to have an abortion.
Back in October 2020, I was experiencing what I thought was a miscarriage. I asked for an ultrasound requisition from my doctor so that we could confirm that it was a miscarriage and monitor it to make sure everything was going ok. Unfortunately, it was not a miscarriage. It was an ectopic pregnancy. An ectopic pregnancy happens when the fertilized egg implants somewhere other than the uterus where it should be. For me, it was in my left fallopian tube.
It is not possible to carry a pregnancy to term in a fallopian tube. If it is not caught early enough, the fetus will grow to be too large and burst the fallopian tube. Oftentimes this causes hemorrhage and both the fetus and their gestational carrier will die.
So my options were to let the pregnancy continue to the point that it ruptured and killed us both OR choose to have an abortion to save my life. I chose to end the pregnancy so that I could care for my living children and hope to have another one day.
The pregnancy was surgically removed and my left tube was taken along with it. It was an incredibly emotional experience especially to go through it during a global pandemic.
In some US states, this life-saving surgery is incredibly difficult to obtain because of restrictive abortion laws. Some people are even pushing to have the pregnancy reimplanted in the uterus which is not a viable option.
We need to protect the legality of abortions in Canada and support those who are having them. Birthing Advocacy is running a continuing education course on how to be an abortion doula, you can read about it here. This is a really great course for doulas to understand how to support someone through this form of loss and help them through their care associated with it.