“Looking back at it, it’s really easy for me to say, ‘Well, I didn’t really have any choice.’ … My situation was very clear cut. I was absolutely going to die.”
Villamor has had two abortions. She’s one of four Utah women who recently shared their abortion stories with The Salt Lake Tribune.
She added, “Nobody takes it lightly. ... It’s a heavy decision,” and “you can’t pass a law ... that could possibly encompass every different situation.” At first, doctors thought the pain might be from heartburn or her gallbladder. After testing in the emergency room, “a doctor came in and said, ‘The best case scenario is that you have hepatitis.’”Finally, doctors determined Smith had a severe variant of preeclampsia called HELLP syndrome.
“Looking back at it,” Smith said, “it’s really easy for me to say, ‘Well, I didn’t really have any choice.’ … My situation was very clear cut. I was absolutely going to die.” She added, “I don’t want to die. I have kids. I have a husband. I have a life.” At the same time, “I don’t feel like I should be deprived of a healthy, fulfilling relationship with my husband because I can’t use birth control.”, would allow exceptions for abortions for the life and health of the pregnant woman.
Villamor was 21 at the time. She was “working at some really crappy diner, and life was not great,” she said. “I was drinking a lot.” She was also “wrapped up into a relationship” with an older, married man. “You feel guilty,” she said, “like … I was so irresponsible and now this is happening. … But what is the alternative? I’m going to traumatize this small person, is the alternative. And I don’t want that, either.”
When Villamor had her second abortion in 2015, she had been using “the pull-out method” with a long-term partner who didn’t want to have children. Villmaor feels lucky, she said, that she didn’t “have that difficult a time” getting an abortion. She could tell her family and friends, without having “to worry about getting shunned in my community or my church or whether I had to come up with the money for it.”
The family was quickly shuffled over to a genetic counselor, who went over a list of possibilities. It was overwhelming, trying to focus on her boys and their needs, while taking in all this information, Earl said. After getting some genetic testing done, Earl learned her baby had Trisomy 13. “So, if I did decide to move forward with my pregnancy and then at like 30 weeks, I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore,” she said, then “I actually had permission to terminate at that point, as well.”
About a year after her abortion, Earl’s mother received an anonymous, handwritten note in the mail. At the top, the sender quoted Psalm 139:14, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” The letter read: So, Tschilar went to a clinic near where she was living in Arizona. There weren’t any signs out front indicating abortions were performed there. Still, the protesters were waiting when Tschilar arrived early one morning.More than 30 years later, Tschilar can still see the posters they shoved in her face, showing doll parts in some kind of soup or ketchup “so they looked bloody,” she said.
“Heartbroken” and “defeated,” this woman “had to sit there and tell her story in front of” strangers. Thinking back on it now, Tschilar thinks that was “cruel.”
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