Three Children, Two Abortions

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At this point in my 52 years, filling out the forms at the doctor’s office feels like writing a memoir. Any past surgeries? Why, yes. So many! Here we go, in alphabetical order, to the tune of “Twelve Days of Christmas”: one adenoidectomy, one appendectomy, two D-and-C’s, one frenectomy, one hysterectomy, one inguinal-hernia repair, one meniscectomy, one Morton’s-neuroma repair, one trachelectomy, one vaginal-cuff-dehiscence repair … and a partridge in a pear tree. That’s 11 surgeries, eight of which were related either to my children’s births or to disease of my postpartum reproductive organs. We’ll get back to that.

Then comes the inevitable question: Number of pregnancies? Followed by: Number of live births?

Five and three, I write. Five pregnancies, three live births. But these numbers do not tell the whole story, either about my health or about the gap between births Nos. 2 and 3. And it is in the delta between all these numbers (along with the answer to the question left out—namely, how many of those pregnancies were planned?) wherein everything I hold dear about resides: a woman’s right to choose what’s right for her, her family, her body, and her life at the time she finds herself pregnant, whether