Making a decision

You have to carefully decide between a medical abortion and a surgical abortion. A surgical would only take about 10 minutes for the actual procedure, but they legally need to keep you in the medical center longer since you were heavily sedated. The pain reliever for surgical abortions also costs an additional $200. It’s a lot more expensive, but it’s about two percentage points more effective. The medical abortion, which I decided to do, was a two-day process. The first day at the hospital, the doctor gives you the medicine mifepristone, which stops the baby from growing. There isn’t a lot of pain, but you may be spotting for a few hours. It depends on your body. I had no cramps or spotting. Then between 24 hours and 48 hours after the first medication, you take four pills of misoprostol. You can take it orally or vaginally. That medication takes about an hour to four hours to kick in. After that, you have really heavy bleeding and cramps that hurt like you’ve been hit by a truck. You’re given anti-nausea medication, and they prescribe you a heavy dose of ibuprofen. You’ll feel very nauseous, with really bad cramps and headaches for about 4 to 6 hours after the medication hits. The pain is really hard to explain. It’s also what makes this process so much scarier. You don’t really know what you’re getting yourself into until you actually go through it. Abortions aren’t something you can really understand through words, it’s an experience that you have to go through to really comprehend. It’s an abortion. It’s completely unique to your own body.