SATURDAY, MAY 7 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
giving me were ‘Let’s figure out
the health of the pregnancy and
how we can support that.’ ”
Her friends came through, with
a pill that mixed both drugs,
which is supposed to have a
higher rate of effectiveness. After
more cramping and bleeding and
pain, the symptoms eventually
subsided. She thinks that if she
had been able to consult with a
doctor about her abortion, they
probably would have been recom-
mended she take that pill from
the start, sparing her the added
time and pain.
She had, finally, completed her
second abortion.The future
Ana doesn’t talk to her about
it. She doesn’t know how Emma
watched YouTube videos to fig-
ure out how to administer the
abortion pills from Mexico. Or
how she pretended to have a
miscarriage so she could find out
what was happening to her body.
The cramps, the bleeding, the
pain.
“The silence is deafening,”
Emma said.afoul of Texas law if they knew she
had taken an abortion pill. She
wanted to know if she was still
pregnant, and so she told them
she had started bleeding a week
ago, making no mention of the
pill.
“I basically had to sit in this
appointment and showcase an
a ppropriate amount of grief as a
miscarriage, just trying not to
raise any red flags that I had
s elf-managed this or undergone
an abortion,” she said. “While I
was sitting in the actual clinic in
the room in my robe, I was texting
my friends to see if I could find a
second round of medication abor-
tion.”
Although the appointment
confirmed she was still pregnant,
the clinic still could not help her
with what she needed.
“They were kind of scolding me
because in their mind they’re
thinking I have a wanted preg-
nancy and I’m just being irrespon-
sible about seeking medical care
when experiencing bleeding,” she
said. “I was getting scolded like
‘Why did you wait so long to come
in?’ Their options that they wereTexas ban went into effect.
Emma was already experienc-
ing pregnancy symptoms of
f atigue, nausea and dizziness, and
she couldn’t imagine traveling
that far. She also was afraid that
by the time she was able to get an
appointment at the clinic, she
would be too far along to qualify
for an abortion pill and would
have to undergo a more invasive
procedure.
So she turned to some friends
she knew in abortion activism
circles who regularly picked up
the abortion pills misoprostol
and mifepristone near the bor-
der, in Mexico, where the pro-
cedure is legal. And she bought
one and took it.
“It was extremely painful,”
Emma said. “It’s akin to inducing
labor cramps. It’s literally you’re
inducing your uterus to begin
cramping very much so as if you
were going into labor.”
A week later, she was still
f eeling pregnancy symptoms. She
made an appointment with
Planned Parenthood, this time
under the guise of having had a
miscarriage, fearful of runningEmma’s second abortion
Emma, who had moved to Tex-
as for graduate school, discovered
she was pregnant a second time
on Feb. 16, using a home pregnan-
cy test. She and her partner had
been using birth control, and she
was concerned because she was
taking a medication that could
cause anomalies in a fetus. She
also had a full-time job and was
on track to complete her master’s
degree this summer.
Her choice was clear: She
would get an abortion. And this
time, she would tell her mother.
“I immediately was, like, ‘This
is going to be rough,’ ” Emma
said.
She said it was more difficult
justifying an abortion this time
around. She was older and had a
stable job.
Her mother said the news also
was harder for her to take the
second time, “because one time,
okay, you made a bad decision.
But for it to happen again?”
“My daughter is not a bad
person,” Ana said. “But she
doesn’t know, like, she never had
a baby. And maybe she don’t
know what it feels to have the
baby with you, to see the baby, to
hold the baby, you know?” she
said.
Ana said it’s selfish of women to
get abortions just because the
timing is inconvenient. They
should at least consider adoption,
she said. She agrees abortion
should be an option in cases of
rape or when the woman’s life is in
danger.
Two of her pregnancies were
unplanned. Her son was a risky
birth: Ana was older and had an
IUD at the time, and the doctor
said the boy might have Down
syndrome or another condition.
But she never considered not
having them, she said.
“How great that she’s achiev-
ing the things she wants,” Ana
said. “But I’ll at least always have
that on my mind — that she’s had
abortions. You’re killing someone
to achieve something.”
And so Ana retreated from her
daughter’s life.
“She never asked me how I am,
or never asked me how it turned
out, or never asked me how she
can support me, much less of-
fered to come down and help me
recover from it,” Emma said.
“And so that’s a difficult aspect of
— that’s the way that abortion
stigma shows up within our fami-
lies and within our lives,” she
said.
“It could have been a moment
for her to show up and support
me, but it’s so deeply embedded
that it’s something that she
would rather ignore,” Emma said.
“It’s heartbreaking.”
Emma’s second attempt to
o btain an abortion was even
more difficult than the first. Tex-
as bans abortions after six weeks
— well before women often know
that they’re pregnant, including
Emma. A Planned Parenthood
employee told Emma she would
have to go out of state for the
procedure, and referred her to a
clinic in New Mexico. The clinic
is an eight-hour trip by car and
has had a backlog of patients
seeking abortion care since thefather was serving time for a
drug conviction and awaiting
deportation, which happened the
year she graduated.
But none of those things
threatened to derail her future as
much as when she went to the
Planned Parenthood clinic near
campus a few months before
graduation and found out she
was pregnant.
“When you realize you’re
p regnant, you become much more
aware there is no safety net to
catch me beyond my own ability to
figure it out,” Emma said. “Realiz-
ing how unstable my life was at
that moment, it made me ex-
tremely emotional. It was a very
big realization then and for years
a fter: that no one swoops in to
save me.”
Her boyfriend wanted her to
get an abortion but would not
provide her any support. She
knew she could not tell her devout
Catholic parents. So she carried
the emotional, financial and
p hysical burden alone, making
surreptitious trips to the nearest
abortion clinic, more than an
hour away on public transporta-
tion.
“I was in a really rough spot for
a long time,” Emma said. “I
wasn’t negatively impacted be-
cause of my decision to terminate
the pregnancy. I was negatively
impacted by the abortion stigma
surrounding me at that time.”
Indiana law requires an
i n-person counseling visit, as
well as a waiting period of at least
18 hours before a person can
obtain an abortion. A doctor also
must perform an ultrasound scan
of the fetus — which Emma did
not want to see. Patients also
must be told that personhood
begins at conception, a claim
unsupported by many scientists.
Emma said she had a lot of
cramping and pain after the med-
ication abortion. But the worst
feeling, she said, was that “I was
alone.” Telling her mother, years
later, was liberating. The weight
of the shame she felt from the
secret lifted.
Her mother was heartbroken.
“I got very sad. I didn’t know
what to say. I didn’t know what to
think. Because I never thought I
was gonna be, like, in this situa-
tion,” said Ana, who has four
children. “My daughters, they
have their own lives, they have
their own mind, different ways of
thinking, and there’s nothing I
can do about that.”
What stands out to Emma is
how her mother reacted to a trip
she took across Europe shortly
after graduation, a trip she would
have been unable to take if she
had continued her pregnancy and
not finished school. Her parents
had always been confined to Indi-
ana because they were undocu-
mented and lacked the financial
resources to travel.
Ana proudly posted photos of
Emma’s trip on Facebook and
captioned them: “Vuela alto y
libre u tu eres las alas que siempre
quise tener.” Fly high and free, for
you have the wings I’d always
wanted.
ABORTIONS FROM A
A mother and her
daughter, divided
“I know if I decided to have a
child today she would very much
want to be involved, and be by my
side, and want to support me
bringing in a new life,” Emma
said. “But she isn’t capable of
supporting her actual child in
making the health decisions that
work best for them. It’s more
support for the hypothetical life
that could come than the one
that’s already here.”
Emma expects to wrap up her
master’s degree in August, an
accomplishment far exceeding
the expectations of her parents,
who migrated to the United
States from Mexico undocument-
ed in 1989, and worked in low-
wage, under-the-counter service
jobs to make a living. Emma will
be among 6 percent of Hispanic
women who achieve graduate
degrees in the United States, and
she attributes that success to the
decision she made in February.
“She is really smart,” said Ana,
who will take the citizenship test
this fall. “She is the pride of our
family. She’s an example to her
little brothers.”
Ana said the whole family will
be attending Emma’s graduation
in August.
“Emma and I can spend a lot of
time together. I go visit her. We
can talk about everything —
about our lives.... She helps me,
gives me ideas,” Ana said. “But
that topic, it’s like 100 percent we
are not in agreement. We don’t
talk about it that much.”
Emma said her mom should
understand what it’s like to feel
trapped in your own body, unable
to control or determine your own
destiny.
“My mom has definitely expe-
rienced situations in which we
did not have the autonomy to
determine our own futures. Hers
specifically has been more so
related to immigration and not
having status within the country
— not being able to move freely
throughout the U.S. or visit her
home country,” Emma said.
One day, when she’s ready,
Emma hopes to have children.
Her second abortion prompted a
conversation with her partner,
for the first time, about whether
he wants that one day, too.
“I really look forward to that
journey,” she said. “But for me, I
see motherhood as a sacred un-
dertaking, and I want to make
sure that I’m taking that step
when I have all the resources
needed to make sure I can do that
well.
“I want to be able to offer a
child something more than what
I had to start off with,” she added.
Emma has always had big
dreams for herself and her family.
She was determined she would
graduate from college, and she
did. She would become a home-
owner, and she is. And now she’s
on the cusp of getting her gradu-
ate degree, with a plan to save
enough money to allow her par-
ents to retire.
“My abortions were an act of
love. An act of love to myself, an
act of love to my family. And I
hope that they one day see it that
way,” she said.FAMILY PHOTOSABOVE: Ana, Emma’s mother,
in her kitchen in Indiana
sewing face masks for local
businesses. Ana says w hen it
comes to Emma’s abortions,
“it’s like 100 percent we are not
in agreement. We don’t talk
about it that much.” LEFT:
Emma, shown graduating from
preschool in Indiana, said after
her second abortion, Ana
“never asked me how I am, or
never asked me how it turned
out, or never asked me how she
can support me.”ASTRID RIECKEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTActivists gather at the S upreme Court on Tuesday a fter a draft opinion leaked which indicates that the court would overturn Roe v. Wade and return the issue to states like
Texas, which bans abortion after six weeks. Emma was told that she would need to have her abortion performed eight hours away in New Mexico.