Bonus Pod: Hannah’s Abortion Story

This week’s special bonus pod features the abortion story of Hannah, a full-spectrum doula, an abortion doula, a childbirth educator, and a social worker. 

For more information, check out That Aged Well: https://pod.link/1446333312

Transcript

Jennie 0:59

Welcome to rePROs Fight Back. Hi rePROs. Welcome to a special bonus episode of rePROs Fight Back. I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and my pronouns are she/her. It is hot in DC right now, and it's gross, and I don't want to be outside. So, I'm trying to not go out at the moment. But also at the same time, like my nose started running out of nowhere. And so, I don't know if like something is in the air all of a sudden that's like bothering my allergies extra bad at the moment. I went to bed last night and like my nose was like running like randomly throughout the day, but I didn't like feel stuffed up or anything. It was weird. And then I woke up with like really stuffed up head and like just like wasn't feeling great. So, I don't know if I like caught some sort of summer bug that seems to be going around or if it's my allergies. Anywho, so I just stayed home to stay out of the heat today, which has been nice. I have been feeling a little better as the day has progressed. My head isn't quite as stuffy, my nose is running a little bit, but I don't like have that like brain fog and like front of my face hurting anymore, which is nice. But yeah, boo to summer illnesses. Yeah, I'm trying to think. I just talked to y'all, so I feel like I don't have a ton to update on. I did, so I had told you last time that I got my lovely new rePROs Fight Back tank top. It's so gorgeous. I love it. I cannot wait to wear it. I just washed it, so I'm like probably gonna wear it tomorrow. And my mug came, so that was really exciting to get my "fund abortion, fight evil" mug. It's really nice. I missed the old mugs we used to have that we used to give away to guests on the podcast. They were like this really, they were like big, bigger in size versus this is a more petite mug, which- they look great, but I mean I missed the like big mug that was like great for like reheating soup and things like that. Like it was perfect. But anyway, these have better designs on them, so that is also fun. I think with that, I'm just gonna jump right into this week's episode. Like I said, I don't feel like I have a ton of updating that I want to do at the moment, but I'm really excited for this week's bonus episode. You know, earlier this summer we did a number of episodes with abortion storytellers sharing their stories. I have one more storyteller to share with y'all today. And Hannah was so wonderful talking to her and getting to hear her story. And I just again want to say how thankful I am to We Testify. I worked with them to get connected to all of the storytellers. We Testify is just an amazing organization working with abortion storytellers. So, if you have a story you want to share, they have like a guide to help you learn the best ways to share your story. They also you can apply to be part of one of their cohorts of storytellers where you get extra training. They're really wonderful, and I am just so grateful to work with them for these episodes. So thank you, thank you, thank you to We Testify, and in particular Kenya. You were such a huge help through this whole series. And I am so grateful to you and to everyone of the storytellers who came on the podcast to share their stories. I had such a wonderful time talking to everybody, and it was I am always just so deeply grateful and honored when they come and share their stories. It's such an important service that they are doing, and it's just received with such a warm heart and a lot of thankfulness. So thank you, Kenya, and thank you, all of the storytellers who came on in the last couple months. So, with that, let's go to my conversation with Hannah. Hi, Hannah. Thank you so much for being here today.

Hannah 5:06

Hi, happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Jennie 5:09

I'm so honored that you are coming on the podcast to share your story. But before we get started, would you like to take a second and introduce yourself?

Hannah 5:18

Yeah, so my name is Hannah. I use they/them pronouns. Currently based in Dallas, but I'll be moving to the East Coast shortly. I am a full spectrum doula, an abortion doula, a childbirth educator, and a social worker. And I'm actually moving to the East Coast to start my journey to becoming a midwife. So, I am all of the things reproductive justice and repro work.

Jennie 5:43

Oh, that is so amazing.

Hannah 5:45

Yes.

Jennie 5:46

Can't wait to hear. Okay, so you are here today because you would like to share your abortion story uh with me. So, I will let you get started in the way you would like to begin.

Hannah 5:57

Okay. Wow, so I actually had my abortion 10 years ago in July, but this will be the very first time that I've ever spoke about it, I guess, in a fully public space. I only started talking about thank you for having me. I only started talking about it about a year ago, and I think unknowingly, it was due to so much shame and so much guilt over the decision, and also it was such a part of such a difficult moment and difficult period in my life that I think I wanted to repress it and suppress it, and now I mean, thanks to organizations like We Testify, which is why I'm here in the first place, I have really begun a deep intentional healing process and what it means to talk about it. I'm a Scorpio, I pride myself on being very private, but I think sometimes that has harmed me in the past and has kept me from being in community, and especially in places when I need it. So, I'm really excited to be here and talk about it and do a little bit more processing with the space because it was so long ago at this point. It's a 10-year-old abortion, and it still feels like I had it yesterday, just given where I am in my healing process.

Jennie 7:20

I feel you so much on the- I am a Pisces, so I feel all of the emotions. But my go-to is to like curl into a little ball with my like feelings or not wanting to talk about the trauma or things that have happened. So, yeah, I feel that.

Hannah 7:39

Yeah, and it's it's one of those things where I'm a writer, so I have written in a journal or some type of notebook probably since I was about nine or ten years old, and I'm 31 now, so I have over 20 years of notebooks and journals about my personal life, and I wrote very briefly on this in my journal when I was thinking about coming onto this today, and I wrote very little and wrote brief information about it, almost informational, like a little one-page fact, because I was I think I was so afraid to dive into what I thought about myself, what I thought people would think about me, and it has been eye-opening to know that I've received nothing but positivity since coming out with it in a way. It feels like another coming out for me in a lot of ways, but sure, yeah. I'm like, where do I start? I was I can start with like the logistics of it all. So I was a senior, about to be a senior in college. I was living in Chicago at the time, and I had just gotten out of a long-term relationship, and by just I mean, I think I found out when I was pregnant. I so I had my abortion in July, I like mid-July, I think two weeks before I started school. So, like August something is when I started school, and then yeah, I was in this period of time. It was weird, like none of my friends were really in the city quite yet. Folks were were transitioning, coming back. We were about to start our senior year, and like we had to come early for a bunch of senior amazing things, and it was supposed to be a year of celebration. Um, and I started it off like this. I found out I was pregnant about the beginning of July, right after the 4th of July weekend. And I had just gotten out of a relationship a week prior after finding out I was pregnant.

Jennie 9:33

Oh wow.

Hannah 9:33

The person that I was in a relationship with was someone I had been dating for about four years at that time, and we were in an abusive relationship. I think a lot of abuse on his end, verbally and physically. And then I think toward the end, a lot of reactive abuse from my end of breaking up and getting back together and breaking up and getting back together and doing all these things. He was also a serial cheater, and but I was in college and I didn't know. Can I cuss? I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.

Jennie 10:07

Like I feel you, or you didn't understand the scope of like all that was abuse at that point. I was not at all. I was in an abusive relationship young as well, and like I didn't know like all of the emotional stuff that that was until I started doing this work, and I was like, so I didn't realize it at the time because that was not how abuse looked in my head and how it was like always portrayed. Yeah, so like I started doing this work like decades later, and I'm like, oh, oh, that was that was bad, and I got lucky.

Hannah 10:40

Yeah, I feel very lucky and feel very grateful that I made the decisions that I made during that time because I think every day, like I could have an almost 10-year-old at this point, and I probably straight up would not be alive, and that child would probably be parentless on both sides because there was no way I would have survived something like that. Um, I think it took we broke up a like formally, formally in 2016, but it wasn't until 2018 before I started to realize like, wow, that was an abusive relationship. And I yeah, I was very much one of those people who I hadn't come out as non-binary yet. I had just started to come out as queer, which was which happened in our relationship, and that's when I would cite the abuse to be starting, is when I was starting to explore my my queerness and my my sexuality, is when he started to become more verbally abusive and even physically abusive. But I was one of those people that was like, oh, it was only physically abusive once or twice. So, like, does that count? Is cheating like a part of that? Like all these different things that I was just trying to justify to myself over and over again. And so it was one of those instances where I broke up with him and tried to immediately take him back, and he would didn't go for it this time, and I was a mess. And then a week later, I was pretty regular at that time. I didn't get my period, and I was hoping that I was pregnant, was hoping that I was pregnant because I was hoping that it would be an opportunity for us to get back together, as like crazy as that sounds. And I was pregnant, like, yeah, like about a week or two later, and I reached out to him immediately, went to his house, and he said that I was using it as a like a fake thing to try to get back together with him, that he didn't believe me, and told me to leave him alone. And so, I thought about it for like another day or two, thinking about I'm the one of the first people in my family to go to college. Many of them didn't graduate high school, and so this was an accomplishment that felt beyond just me, like finishing out this last year. And I had had dreams for myself that I was starting to realize were deeply repressed, but it was as simple as that. I knew that I didn't want to be maybe not consciously new, but like embodied in my body that I didn't want to be tied to a person like this for the rest of my life and the rest of this child's life. And I also I almost said selfishly, which I think is still some things that I'm trying to unlearn, absolutely, but I wanted to still be this fun, like young 20-something that was just coming into their queerness, that was just coming into like what it meant to be an adult and to have values and dreams and morals that were own, my my own. And it truly felt like one of the first choices I've ever made for myself that was just for me and not for because I want to make my family proud or because I want to make other people proud or do the things that they wanted to do. I always tell people over and over again, because I work with a lot of young people, I never wanted to go to college. I wanted to just go to New York and like do community theater for the rest of my life and like work in a restaurant. But my family was very dead set on you're going to college, you're gonna get these different types of degrees and opportunities that so much of us did not get. And I was, I don't regret my choice at all, but it it this felt like one of those first choices that I was gonna make for me, even if I didn't feel that or know that at the time. I think I-

Jennie 14:34

Yeah, yeah.

Hannah 14:34

Yeah. So the process was so easy, thankfully and gratefully. I was lucky to be living in Chicago at the time, like I said. There was a Planned Parenthood at the time, this was 2016, so there was a Planned Parenthood like every ten blocks or so, or at least in like every other neighborhood in Chicago. And so it felt like there were options that I could go to and still feel discreet and still feel private. And so I just went to my local Planned Parenthood in Edgewater, Chicago, and the appointment took less than two hours. I walked in, which was another godsend. And so many folks have to wait for an appointment and have a 24-hour period, those types of things. And because I was only, I think, seven weeks, seven or eight weeks pregnant, I was able to do a self-managed abortion. And the process was very straightforward and very easy. And so I'm grateful for the logistics of it and like the simplicity of the process. But as I said earlier, I was in an abusive relationship and at the time had a lot of friends who I would say were fatigued by the back and forth of my relationship and probably a lot of frustration at my willingness to always take him back, especially given what they had witnessed. He was deeply homophobic, he was deeply transphobic, and so many of my friends at the time were queer and trans, and they just could not comprehend and understand how I could be with a man that was just like awful from every single angle, and just didn't feel like that he had any redeeming qualities. I really try to be- when I describe him, to not have him as like this one-sided, like evil villain in my life, but it did feel that way many a times. Like, there was very rarely positive from that. But so it was like I physically there weren't people in the city at the time that I felt like I could go to to talk to about what was happening to me. I grew up in a very, I'm Black and Mexican, so I grew up in a very Catholic-esque household. I didn't attend church on a regular basis, but the teachings of the church were very much involved in my daily life without me even realizing it. I went to a Catholic university, and so it was it was some of these things that were just like being reinforced on a constant basis, and so I absolutely knew I could not share with my family at the time, or yeah, anyone could come and like fly to see me. My grandmother was coming to Chicago on a regular basis, like to come and visit and hang out, and so I just felt like I couldn't share that with her. My friends felt like I don't know if they would understand this choice that I was making, and I think I didn't realize that there was just so much stigma surrounding abortion. I think at the time I had not at least consciously known a person who had been like, yeah, I had an abortion or many abortions, etc. And so I truly felt like I was the only person going through this. And so I got my miso and mife, and I went to my apartment and I stayed holed up in my apartment for about eight days. No one checked on me because nobody was in the city. Nobody checked on me because I didn't reach out to ask for help. And so while the logistics were really simple and easy, the emotional impact of it was pretty detrimental. I had I felt really isolated. Oh, I'm tearing up a little bit. I felt really isolated and felt really alone in that process.

Jennie 18:28

I mean, that's what the silence does, right? So, you feel like nobody else is going through it, it's just you. Being in an abusive relationship cuts you off from your friends and family because maybe they see it, so you cut them out, or the abuser works to cut them out of your life, and so you lose your support network. I grew up Catholic, I went to Catholic school K through eight. I always talk about I had sex ed from a nun. Yeah, like that stuff, it just gets in your bones, and as much as my brain, I've worked to unlearn all those things and to combat all that stigma, there are still things around my personal choices that I would never judge anybody else for. But that internal shame and stigma— it is still around. There are still times where I feel it and I know better, and I would never judge another person, but myself, because of all of that came in, like and still like yes, I host a podcast where we talk about sexual and reproductive health, right? talking to somebody about my sex life or something, like, oh my god, like no, we don't have those kinds of conversations, and I feel like that's something I never noticed until I had like a friend like point it out to me. She's like, do you know, like we've never had those types of conversations? And I'm like-

Hannah 19:57

Yeah.

Jennie 19:57

Oh, yeah, I guess not. That is one of those things that I've never been able to like completely shake off.

Hannah 20:07

Yeah, that's so interesting. I had a conversation just a couple weeks ago with somebody that I know, and I have a a very, very close friend who is beyond a best friend to me, is definitely my person. We've known each other for over half our lives, like I think since the beginning of high school, or something, maybe probably when we were about 13, and I was talking to somebody about this person, and they had asked me, like, what have you never talked about with them? And I ended up talking to my friend about this, like, we've never had conversations about sex. Like, this is a person that has seen me through every single has probably watched me take a shit. Like, I'm not like you know, that type of intimacy. Yes, but like when it comes to sex, I have always been so like, oh my gosh, no. I mean, my introduction to sex was don't get pregnant because-

Jennie 21:00

-or you get this horrible disease and die.

Hannah 21:02

Yes, or you'll have a child because there's no that's the only option, right? There's no nope, there's no other like route there. If you have sex, you will get pregnant and then you will be a parent, and then what are you gonna do? And I come from a legacy of teen parents. My mom was a teen parent, my grandma was a teen parent, my great-grandmother was 14 when she had her first child, and so it's like all my family wanted was to make sure that I graduated high school, that I didn't get pregnant as a teenager, and that I made it through those processes, and so it was so much pressure on me. And I remember getting a book again from my grandmother, who I think I was probably getting boobs or something like that. And instead of asking me questions about what's going on with my body, I came home from school. I think I was in the second grade, came home from school with a book that said it's okay to be normal. It was a whole entire book about like sex and reproductive body parts, and then a sticky note that said, "Google if you have questions." So, there was no entry point at all for me from the moment that I started to like puberty and to have even any type of sexual desire to have a conversation about that. I think also at the time it's like I'm getting an abortion and like I can't even come out to my family at this moment. I feel such deep queerness that has felt repressed, but now I can no longer repress it. Otherwise, I will drown in it. And I was like, well, dang, I'm two for two at this point. Like, I don't what am I supposed to do? Like, this this is a lot for somebody to take in. And so, I felt like my values were being stripped away from me. I think later, especially now in this in this time that I'm in, now that I'm 31, they were never my values. They were just pushed onto me, and I felt desperate to hold on to them because I deeply care about my family and I deeply care about my family legacy, and I care my ancestors, both the future and the past, are proud of me. And it took me a really long time to realize that this is a way that they can also be proud of me, which is by living in my truth. So I yeah, I was incredibly depressed, but I went through my senior year acting like nothing happened, and of course that depression got bigger and bigger, and it led to actually a suicide attempt that October of senior year. But after that attempt, I realized that I just had to make so many different changes in my life, and so I literally put that abortion in a box and I wrapped a cute little bow on it and I put it someplace else, and I was like, I'm gonna deal with this queerness because this queer, like if I... I can't do both, and I think the unfortunate piece of it is that I never went back to talk to myself about the abortion; I never told my friends what happened; I never told my family what happened until 2025. So, nine years later, and that's only because of We Testify, I was invited to a Black storyteller retreat. I initially said yes, and then I was like, I'm not going. There's just no point. It's it happened so long ago. Like, who even cares about it? I also think that because my abortion process was so easy, I wanted to make space for folks who deeply struggle. As I said, I'm an abortion doula here in Texas, and living here in Texas has opened my eyes to the just sheer amount of difficulty it is to even talk to somebody else about an abortion. It feels like we all live underground, and I don't say that high hype, you know, like as a hyperbole. And there are laws that are literally in place that help enforce and ensure that folks keep quiet about these processes. And I talk to my clients and to people in my community all the time. Like, abortions didn't just go away, they're now impossible to get and more dangerous to get because they have restricted so much access here in the state. And I think a part of that was like I feel like I can't do my work in an open way. Like I said, I became a doula in 2018, and I was in Chicago in this like incredible open repro world, and it was just incredibly difficult to come down here to Texas and just be like stripped away of that identity, but also just stripped away of that empowerment of just being able to talk about it. I definitely see that as a privilege, and I absolutely took it for granted when I was in Chicago. And so, I just knew that if I didn't speak about my own experience, then like why would I be doing this work and encourage other folks to share their experiences and be open? And so, thanks to We Testify, I was able to really start to articulate what was happening to me and also just navigate some of the healing process that came with that. But I slowly started to tell my friends. I mean, immediately after I left the retreat, I came home and I told my grandmother, hey, I actually lied to you, I wasn't at a work retreat, I was at this retreat, and then she shared her own abortion story in conjunction, and I was like, holy shit, oh my god, like I know another person who's had an abortion that I know personally, and I've known my whole life, and then told my mom, and my mom shared a similar story, and so I was wondering how many people in my lineage and in my my life and in my family who weren't able to share those experiences, but wondering if they felt relief as I did, and then like the shame drowned the relief. But like, I think after receiving that abortion, I think I only felt relief. I was able to finish college, which was so important. I went and got my master's in social work and became a social worker, I became a doula, all of these things, like those were just even surface level accomplishments, whatever they don't mean as much to me as maybe they mean to my family, but like being able to make all of these different choices and pivots in my life would never have happened had I not had that abortion. And so I think when I think about it, I only feel relief. And it was such a relief. Other folks were like, oh yeah, that is normal, or thank you for telling me. Like, I didn't even need a celebration, I just wanted an acknowledgement that this was something normal that happens to people. I told my friends and they were thankful. They were like, can you imagine having a child with that person now, knowing who you are 10 years later? And I'm like, correct. That's the celebration that I needed was: you made the right choice for yourself, and that any choice that any person makes when they have an abortion is their choice, and it's the right choice for them.

Jennie 28:18

Oh, that just feels like such a good ending. I just, you know, you hear people's stories and it helps chip away that stigma that we are all just awash-in. It is everywhere, and it makes people feel so much shame and guilt and things that often people when I talk to people who uh who share their stories, like they're like, that wasn't mine. That that was like pushed on me. Like I felt this other way. And storytelling does such a great job of breaking away that stigma; helping people see why we need like access and access in all of its ways. So not just access to a building, but like the ability to afford it, to be able to go and get one and easy easily located. Everybody's short story should be like yours, where you're like: it was just like a neighborhood over; I just went in, I walked in; I got the care I needed; it was life-changing. Like this is what this is what it should look like.

Hannah 29:26

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Aside from, and which is why I think I became an abortion doula is because I wanted to also fill that gap of the lack of emotional support that I received.

Jennie 29:38

Yes.

Hannah 29:39

I think that there are so- there, like I said, all I think I really felt during that time was relief, but it was stamped down by all of these other feelings and like socialized values and all of this other shit that was just tumbling on that I couldn't really feel the relief fully, and not everybody feels relief. That's not what I'm saying, but right, I think that there should be space for folks to feel whatever that feeling is fully to the fullest extent, so that it can not disappear per se, but I am a big believer that when we— again, my Scorpio-ness— like, if I sit in that feeling for as long as I possibly can, for as long as it takes, like it will eventually become easier to breathe around that feeling. It'll become easier to move through life, like with that feeling inside. I think some folks in my life who I've learned have had abortions do feel grief, especially for folks who like clients that I've worked with that have gotten abortions in the past and then struggle with like infertility per se, that there is like some some grief there. But my job is to make sure that they can feel all the expansiveness of whatever feeling that is, so that we can move forward and move through and learn how to live with that feeling. But I'm like, people have abortions for all kinds of things for all different reasons, and every single reason is legitimate. I don't know if you've been seeing this like thing, I think, on Twitter of some influencer couple that chose to have an elective abortion, because they found out that the fetus would have would be born with Down syndrome. And it's been such an interesting conversation about like just choice in general, and we don't have to get into you know like disability politics and all of those different things and how we care for disabled folks and disabled children, but it has just been very interesting to see like where folks' caps are. And again, I think that in order to see like a fully free world like that gives folks choice, is that we cannot give opinions in that way about folks' choice, no matter what we think about it, right? No matter what we believe in, that does not that does not determine like legally what people can do and like what should what they can and should do, which I think is unfortunately what is have what happens in those conversations. But yeah, I just I feel really grateful. I feel a lot of relief. And every single time I talk about it, I feel a little bit more free, a little bit more able to just expand into my own world and be proud of what I have accomplished since I got that abortion and hope that other folks can feel that too.

Jennie 32:36

Well, I'm so grateful that you chose to share your story with us and hopefully can add a little bit to that relief of sharing it one more time.

Hannah 32:44

Yes, thank you.

Jennie 32:45

And I'm so excited for you to go and go to midwife school. Like that is so amazing.

Hannah 32:51

Yes, thank you.

Jennie 32:52

Congratulations.

Hannah 32:54

Thank you, thank you. I'll be a Certified Nurse-Midwife in four years. So, hit me up in a few years.

Jennie 33:02

Congratulations, best of luck, and thank you so much for sharing today.

Hannah 33:07

Thank you for having me.

Jennie 33:09

Okay, y'all. I had such a wonderful time talking to Hannah. I hope you enjoyed it again. Huge, huge, huge thank you to Hannah, but also to We Testify, and in particular Kenya. Y'all have been just such amazing partners in making this happen. I am just so grateful. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And with that, I will see everybody next week for our regularly scheduled episode. If you have any questions, comments, or topics you would like us to cover, always feel free to shoot me an email. You can reach me at jennie@reprosfightback.com, or you can find us on social media. We're at rePROs Fight Back on Facebook and Twitter, or @reprosfb on Instagram. If you love our podcast and want to make sure more people find it, take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform, or if you want to make sure to support the podcast, you can also donate on our website at reprosfightback.com. Thanks all.