Three Dead Babies

I’ve been party to three abortions.

I am ashamed of this fact, but this is the truth. I’ve sat in pastel-colored abortion clinic waiting rooms with three different women — one from each of the three most substantive romantic relationships in my life.

With Roe being overturned, I must reflect on the three dead babies that were 50% due to my irresponsibility.

What if those three babies were born?

The year was 1995, and I was 22 years old and deep in love. Tally was sweet and caring. Thin with a delicate figure, full lips, and a bubbly personality, I fell hard for her. She was also crazy about me. Our sex was terrific and frequent.

Birth control pills made Tally extremely emotional, and we both hated condoms. We used the pullout method while periodically trying different types of birth control.

The Depo-Provera shot worked — but only because it killed Tally’s sex drive, and she never wanted to fuck. I wasn’t a fan.

We were both frustrated.

Then Tally missed her period, and the pregnancy test showed positive. We had been dating for eight months, and the prospect of raising a child together didn’t seem viable. We had no money. We were both college kids trying to find our adult identities.

We decided to abort. The two of us cried together in the car when we were leaving the clinic. We moved forward and went on an epic three-month road trip that summer and broke up on the way home.

I cannot fathom what my life would have been like if I had been forced into fatherhood at that stage. Maybe I would have risen to the occasion and been an all-star dad, but maybe not. I was young, dumb, and selfish.

Tally is happily married with one grown-up kid. The two of us are friends to this day.

*******

I was 26 years old, working in an entry-level sales position for a cellphone company. A dental hygienist named Ashley and I hit it off, and we quickly jumped in the sack. She was on the pill but warned me that she “wasn’t a good pill-taker.”

I didn’t heed her warning; she was pregnant six months later, to nobody’s surprise. Ashley was driven and pragmatic and did not even consider carrying the baby to term. We promptly made an appointment to terminate the pregnancy.

The day we came home from the clinic, I had a friend drop by, and we drank beers together while talking in hushed tones on my back porch. Ashley was furious with me. Usually cold, detached, and unemotional, the abortion hit Ashley hard. She cried for days and was livid with me for not being as upset and depressed as her.

We wound up marrying 1.5yrs later, and she birthed my only daughter just one year after we wed. Our marriage fell apart quickly, and we divorced after 4yrs.

Four months after our divorce, Ashley was knocked up by another dude named Matt. She married him and proved a natural breeder, birthing three more children to add to her brood.

The idea of having two children with Ashley makes me shudder. We could have done it for sure. We both had decent jobs and could afford to raise a child before we actually did have a child together. There is no doubt that this was an abortion of convenience.

The truth is that we extinguished a life — somehow, I am grateful that we did what we did. Ashley and I were a terrible couple, and raising two children in a broken home is harder than one.

Does this make me a shitty person? I’m not sure. I could see how you could think that.

*****

I met Ginger (aka “Gin”) when hosting a big house party on June 10th, 2006, and we fell immediately in love. She was striking movie star-like gorgeous — 5'10" with legs that went up to the sky. She was open-minded and fun, and she loved to be with me. I impregnated her in the first month of our 7.5yr relationship. She had an OB appointment to get on birth control when we discovered it was too late — she was already pregnant.

Gin didn’t have any money, but I was doing fine. I owned my own home and had a solid job making a six-figure income. I was 33, and she was 26. We could’ve easily had the baby, but we had just started dating and didn’t want it. We were both big-time partiers and felt we weren’t ready.

We aborted the pregnancy, and this hurt Gin deep inside of her being. I felt relieved, and Gin went on the birth control pill.

Five years later, Gin and I were engaged to marry, but our relationship had significant flaws, and I kept delaying planning the event. Instead of marriage, we went through a nasty breakup, including an embarrassing incident that had me arrested for family violence. She started sleeping with my best friend shortly there afterward. She always wanted to be a mother, but now she has no children. Gin opted for a party lifestyle in lieu of motherhood.

I’ll always love Gin but was apprehensive about marrying her due to her hard-partying ways and lack of professional ambition. My apprehension proved well-founded as Gin’s life is currently in shambles with a heavy cocaine addiction and no ability to hold a long-term job. I am grateful we didn’t bring that baby to term even though we could have done it. Like my prior terminated pregnancy with Ashley, this was also an abortion of convenience.

******

Falling firmly in the pro-choice camp, I still see some validity on the other side. Ending the life of an embryo shouldn’t be something done flippantly. My own dalliances and irresponsible behavior had me involved with extinguishing no less than three human lives.

I could have easily prevented these terminated pregnancies — simply by using birth control. You think I would have learned after the first abortion. I did not. You certainly would think I would have learned after the second abortion, but I made the same mistake yet again.

Everyone knows that condom sex is the worst. I liken it to eating a brownie still in the plastic wrap. You know the brownie is in there, but you can’t totally taste it. Women don’t like the feeling of condoms, and men hate wearing them. Some men like me have difficulty reaching climax while wearing a condom.

But is the natural intimacy and lubrication of raw sex worth the risk of having to terminate a pregnancy? Obviously, it was for me. I did it over and over again.

Does that calculus change when abortion is not even a legal option?

As a man, I didn’t feel the abortion. There wasn’t a child inside of me that I had to have removed. If I had gone through that physical process that each of my partners did, I likely would have taken birth control more seriously.

Am I so shallow that there must be negative results to me personally to modify my behavior?

I don’t regret having any of the three abortions, but I wish I had done things differently.

Each of my three respective partners and I were fortunate to have the freedom to make life-altering reproductive decisions. Had we not had the option to abort, my life would have been very difficult trying to raise four children with three different women. Just from a practical standpoint, I don’t know how I could have carried that financial burden. Children are expensive.

I worry about who will care for a slew of unwanted children that will result from a lack of access for women with irresponsible boyfriends like me. (or even worse)