When I had an Abortion

Just after I turned 28, a little over 10 years ago now, I had an abortion. The guy who got me pregnant had raped me multiple times. I discovered a method called the “aspiration procedure,” available in New York where I lived, when I was researching online.

Before that, I thought abortion meant a choice between the pill or a D&C. Nobody told me there were more options.

At that time I was struggling to pay my $800 rent. The abortion was $1100 (in 2012). It was a total fluke that I happened to have the money, because of video footage I had recently been able to sell. Needless to say, most people can't afford such a steep emergency cost.

It didn't even qualify as a minor surgery. It took about 5 minutes and was mildly uncomfortable at worst. I had been about 4 weeks along. The physician told me that she had been trained to perform this procedure in the 1970s, and that it was globally-available. I remember she specifically mentioned it being accessible in Kenya.

But politically-motivated defunding chipped away at training initiatives in the United States, over a period of decades. She told me that if I hadn't been in New York, not only was there a lower likelihood that this method would've been provided, but that I probably wouldn't have known it exists.

I remember moving through multiple layers of rage about the entirety of it all. The effects of the rapes took many years, and many hours of Vipassana, to release and heal. The blustering ignorance of our governmental institutions still roils. In my personal experience, abortion was so so not a big deal.

And that's just it - this was my personal experience. Deciding to get an abortion had been my personal choice, and the means my prerogative. Getting an abortion was what was right for me given the circumstances at that time in my life.

Everyone who can become pregnant deserves that same degree of autonomy over zir own physical destiny. Everyone who can't become pregnant does as well.

Recent events have reminded me of the quote attributed to Florynce Kennedy (often falsely credited to Gloria Steinem): “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” And I've thought many times about the dedication in Steinem's book, My Life on The Road:

It always makes me cry. I feel so grateful to her, for all of the work she and Flo and their contemporaries did to make society less horrific for the people who've followed. For women like me.

I founded Seeds the next year, in 2013. We've helped people in need in 29 countries since. Though there are obvious man-made shackles still binding us - late-stage capitalism being one of the most pervasive - I've been able to do what I want with my life in a manner and to a degree that women for many thousands of years couldn't dream. And I intend to keep trying to move things forward, until the last of these confines are relegated to history.

If you, or anyone you know, is in need of funds to cover an abortion, you can use the Seeds ecosystem to ask for help, and you can do so anonymously if you prefer.

Those who have the means and the volition can give to 40 local abortion funds located in the states most hostile to them (according to the Center for Reproductive Rights). As ever, you'll receive SEEDS cryptocurrency in thanks.

Though it can seem protracted, it really feels to me like we're in the last gasps of the reign of toxic masc energy that has been harming humans of all genders for millennia.

When we come out the other side, I foresee ecosystems like Seeds - founded with intention, on ideals of kindness and abundance - truly flourishing. I want generous people like you to reap the rewards from that, to the fullest extent possible.

To being on the other side of things,

Rachel