During a routine appointment at my fertility clinic, I found out I had miscarried. I had made it eight and a half weeks, which, in fertility world, is a celebrated milestone—the point at which a patient migrates from their fertility clinic to their regular OB/GYN. After four months of unsuccessful IUI procedures, an egg retrieval, and one round of IVF, I was eager to be on my way.
“I am so glad I won’t ever have to come back here,” I said to my wife over FaceTime as I sat swinging my legs on the exam table, waiting for the clinic’s ultrasound technician to arrive. The second the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. Within minutes of the exam, it was clear the fetus was no longer viable.
Shell-shocked, with my wife still on FaceTime (COVID protocol prohibited partners from being in the exam room), I asked the doctor what my next steps would be, assuming he’d recommend taking a few months off before we tried again.
He proceeded to give me three choices. I could go home to see if I’d naturally self-abort, take abortion pills, or have a procedure called a Dilation and Curettage (D&C), a type of surgical abortion performed within the first fifteen weeks. I stared blankly. I had never thought about what needed to occur physically. I asked which choice would be the easiest. Without hesitation, my doctor told me that a D&C would be the smoothest route for my body. I scheduled the appointment for three days later.
I cried on the subway home, rage ate a turkey sandwich (for the first two months in a pregnancy, cold cuts are generally not advised), and then pulled myself together. In many ways, I was lucky. I had a supportive network, outstanding health insurance, and I lived in a state that respected abortion rights. It wasn’t lost on me that if I lived in Texas, or one of the other 13 states where abortion is banned, my doctor would have sent me home with condolences and the hope of an uncomplicated natural miscarriage. Natural miscarriages can be a gnarly, painful, and lengthy experience.
In her stand-up special, comedian Michelle Wolf describes how she had an abortion in the morning, popped a LaCroix, and then headed straight to work. This is comedy, of course, but Wolf isn’t wrong when she asserts a narrative that presents abortion as routine and easy. Planned Parenthood has long advertised the statistic that 1 in 4 women will have an abortion by age 45–a useful statistic for internalizing how commonplace the procedure is, but not one that makes much room for conversation about its occasional complications.
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