I don’t believe that’s because those abortions are not meaningful to the women who underwent them. Often an abortion can serve as a touchstone, defining or catalyzing other decisions or insights that either reinforce a woman’s commitment to the life path she is on or cause her to change what she is doing. And it’s not that we forget about our abortions, either. Just as an abortion is something no woman wants to be in the position of having to have, I don’t believe that any woman ever loses track of the fact that she has had one. I have yet to hear from a single woman who said, “An abortion? Let’s see...I guess I just can’t remember whether I’ve ever had one or not....”

I don’t believe we are generally so quiet about our abortions because we consider them to be trivial, but I do think there are other reasons for our reticence. First of all, despite the many healing properties of conversation, occasionally there are experiences that are best honored by silence. Certain thoughts and memories are so intimate and private, so powerful and central to who we are that they run the risk of being distorted by all but the most sensitive of dialogues. An experience as personally charged as an abortion can be is an experience that many women may feel reluctant to share in any but the most secure and intimate of settings.

But there’s a difference between privacy and secrecy, a difference between honoring and respecting an experience and pretending it never happened, and perhaps the main reason that women are not talking about their abortions is that the whole subject has become so polarized by the most zealous supporters on both sides of the on-going legal debate. As a consequence, many of us may have felt that if we were to tell our stories, we would not be entering into a conversation but would instead find ourselves thrust naked into an battle. Rather than expose what may feel painful or even sacred to the blame and ridicule we fear we might receive if we were to discuss our experiences and our feelings candidly, we have attempted to protect ourselves with silence, feeling that since we cannot trust our stories’ receptions, they are safer left untold.

Many of us are also aware that whatever we reveal about our own experience may not only be used to castigate us personally, but also to condemn abortion in general. To express sorrow and regret about the decision we felt we had to make can be seen as a proof not only that what we did was wrong, but also that abortion in general is bad; on the other hand, to express gratitude and relief at having managed to escape the life-long repercussions of a child we did not feel equipped to care for can appear equally recriminating. From the outside, our very satisfaction with our decision could be perceived as proof that we behaved callously, and we may fear that even our relief might be used to reinforce the position that it is wrong for any woman to have access to abortion.

It’s a cruel double-bind, and what is lost in the struggle is what I think that many women long for—any chance of a candid, honest, and far-reaching examination of a complex, profound experience. There are as many reasons for choosing to have an abortion as there are for choosing to have a baby, as many reasons for choosing to surrender a baby for adoption as for choosing to raise it. From the outside, some of those reasons may appear as loving and wise, while others may seem short-sighted or self-indulgent. Because abortion—like motherhood—is such a personally meaningful and culturally fraught subject, it’s no wonder we may be reluctant to have our motives analyzed and judged by outsiders.

It’s a shame we feel the need to defend—or even explain—our decisions for having abortions any more than we need to defend our reasons for having a child. It’s a shame that saying, Because I wanted to is not as adequate a public expression of our motives for having an abortion as it is for having a child. But it’s an even greater shame that we don’t feel free to examine our motivations more deeply and more openly.

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