In this podcast episode of the Abortion, with Love podcast, host Camile has Nadine as a guest on the show. Nadine shares her personal experience with an abortion after an abusive relationship. She describes how, at age 22, she leaves her abusive boyfriend, moves cities, finds out she is 11 weeks pregnant, and undergoes an abortion.
Listen to this podcast episode on Spotify, or Apple Podcast.
Abortion after abusive relationship #
At age 19, Nadine entered into a relationship with a man who was 12 years older than her. She believed he was the man of her dreams and that they would have a fairy tale life together. However, at age 22, she realizes that this is actually far from true and that he is manipulative and abusive. She decides to leave her boyfriend. To break all connections with him, she moves to another city.
Pregnant #
After a few weeks in her new place, she realizes she hasn’t had her period in a while. But she doesn’t think too much of it since she has a very inconsistent cycle. Unworried, she decides to go to the gynecologist to check if everything is ok. This is how she finds out that she is, in fact, 11 weeks pregnant.
Pro-choice #
Nadine has always been pro-choice. Still, she believed that if she would ever get an unwanted pregnancy, she would make it full term and then raise the child by herself or give it up for adoption. But now that she is in the actual situation, she realizes she can’t and immediately knows she wants to have an abortion.
In this podcast Nadine shares #
- How it was for her to see her baby on ultrasound.
- Her thought processes and feelings in deciding to have an abortion.
- How it felt to go to the hospital on the day of the abortion.
- How she wished she would have known that in hospitals an abortion is referred to as D&C.
- How the recovery process took her by surprise and that she hadn’t expected as much bleeding.
- How she still has physical symptoms similar to women who had a baby.
- How her abortion has impacted her relationship with her family.
- The importance of being able to feel and share her feelings throughout the process.
Shared experiences #
Nadine believes it is important to know other people who have gone through a similar experience and to be able to share that. Ten years after the event, she has written the story of her own abortion after an abusive relationship down. Afterward, she was contacted by many people who were thankful to read the story of someone who had a similar experience. You can read Nadine’s story at medium.com.
