Having a baby made me more pro-choice

I can’t separate my pregnancy and motherhood experience from my abortion experience

I was visiting a good friend when she asked me a question I had been anticipating. As we settled around the kitchen island with a glass of red wine, she looked at me and leaned in. “So,” she lightheartedly started, curiosity in her eyes, “has your mind changed since having a baby?”

She didn’t have to specify. I knew what she meant. I had just arrived in the States for the holidays, and people were curious about my experience giving birth in France. They were also curious about my long-held views about abortion. Most, I assume, would find it too taboo to ask.

I surprised myself by not being offended that she didn’t already know my response. In retrospect, it was a funny question. Of course, my mind has changed since having a baby.

I responded with an imperceptible nervousness, “If you are asking about how I feel about abortion…yeah, I’m even more pro-choice than I was before.”

We’ve been friends for a long time, but I’m not sure we ever know someone well enough to know how pregnancy, wanted or unwanted, can change a person. The thought of having to answer if my views changed about abortion since having my daughter crossed my mind many times.

I often contemplated what I’d say while driving long distances or walking her in the forest behind my house. As the palombe birds lulled the baby to sleep with their rhythmic whistles, I’d slip into deep conversations with myself.

The same year that I got pregnant and had my daughter, some of the people closest to me were trying to have a baby or start a family and suffering through infertility, IVF, and miscarriages. I often carried guilt for what came easily to me and not to others. This particular friend had just endured two back-to-back miscarriages while trying for a second child.

As much as I knew she was an advocate for the right to choose, it suddenly occurred to me that maybe she was questioning that now. Or perhaps she was looking for reassurance.

I’ve lived on three continents, in three countries that differ almost completely in abortion rights and access: my home country, the United States, where abortion rights are largely divisive and used as a political tool; Senegal, one of the countries with the most restrictive abortion laws in the world; and France, one of the most liberal countries in the world when it comes to abortion rights and access.

Despite how different each country’s approach to reproductive health access is—and despite how different each individual’s cultures and lived realities are—the women I’ve met who chose to terminate a pregnancy share more in common than not.

Our borders create the context of our experience, but the reasons why women and girls choose not to carry a pregnancy traverse these borders. In France, I saw what the U.S. could become if we worked toward a female-centered approach to reproductive health care. In West Africa, I saw what was at stake if we continued to move in the other direction.

It’s these women, with their hopes and dreams and insistence to choose what’s best for themselves despite cultural stigma and complex legal frameworks, who have shaped my worldview. Some were girls when they made that choice, some risked jail time or their health for their choice, some weren’t ready, and many (yes, many) were already mothers.

“I can’t separate my pregnancy and motherhood experience from my abortion experience,” I said with a conviction that surprised me. As if suddenly I found the words I’d been trying to find for months.

I thought my views on abortion were set in stone, but in so many ways, my views did evolve. When Roe v. Wade was overturned in my home country, I started to become cynical. I’d shouted loud enough to anyone who would listen, but so many voted against my autonomy—their sisters’ autonomy, their wives and future daughters’—anyway.

If one of the most liberal countries in the world can overturn women’s reproductive rights this easily, how will we be able to stop the ripple effect? But ever since experiencing pregnancy in France, I had something new—hope.

A part of me always knew that I would never fully understand my abortion experience until I had a child.

If I could sum up what I’ve learned, it’s that abortion and maternal care are inseparable parts of the same continuum. Without my pregnancy and birth journey, I am not sure that I ever would have fully grasped that women's and girls’ reproductive health is a spectrum. Throughout our reproductive lives, we can fall at any given point on that spectrum. I am not the same person I was at 23, who couldn’t fathom having a child. And the person I was then is not who I am at 33. They exist in the same body, separated by time and space.

I owe it to both versions of myself to see the world through their eyes.

All of this came full circle for me when I first met the midwife who would end up guiding me through my pregnancy and postpartum journey.

When I arrived at her office with my positive pregnancy test, she immediately sensed that I wasn’t very excited. I was completely depleted. I’d had morning sickness for a month straight. I was losing weight and interest in any of my normal activities. I was just trying to survive day to day.

“Is this good news or bad news?” she asked cheerfully. It wasn’t subtle that she was trying to create a safe space.

She watched me choke back tears. I had been keeping this secret from everyone except my partner for so long that the weight felt too heavy. I explained to her that I was in a happy, long-term relationship. We had the financial stability to do this, even if I had just quit my job less than two months prior. That I had already had an elective abortion, a term they call an IVG in France, a voluntary interruption of a pregnancy. “The good news is, you’re still very early. So, you have a choice,” she comforted me.

It felt strange to have the person that was responsible for guiding a pregnancy be the same person to tell you you didn’t have to go through with it. My mind drifted, you mean I wouldn’t need to go to a far away clinic and pass a crowd of angry protestors? I knew the French health system treated early-term abortion as an essential service—but it still felt surreal.

I told her that I felt so trapped inside my own body that I didn’t feel like my mind was working, that I couldn’t make any big decisions until I felt physically better.

She looked at me with empathy. “Ecouté-moi”, she said. “It’s not because you already have an IVG that you have to choose to have a baby now. And it won’t be because you choose an IVG now that you won’t be able to have a baby later.” Her voice was stern now as she continued, “Women fought extremely hard for you to have this choice, so you don’t have to feel guilty about doing what’s best for you.”

It was like a light switched on. Someone was treating me as if my worth was just as valuable if I chose not to be a mother. After that appointment, I realized that it wasn’t motherhood I was afraid of.

It took a lot of compassion for myself, but I know intimately that the guilt and shame women carry is misplaced, because all of these things are part of the female experience. Limiting our access to abortion services should not limit other women’s access to any other reproductive health services. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Hearing her words mirrored back to me lifted a weight I had been silently carrying. When France gave me a choice, I felt like I could happily choose motherhood.

So yes, my mind has changed since having a baby. I wouldn’t wish pregnancy and motherhood on anyone who isn’t ready. And I am thankful every day I chose not to be a mother a decade ago, so I could choose to be my daughter’s today.