4A
NEWS / WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
PREGNANCIES (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
Activists gather outside Aid for Women in Kansas City, Kan., Saturday to protest the abortions performed inside. Aid for Women is one of two abortion providers in Kansas City, performing abortions up to about 15 weeks of pregnancy every Wednesday and Saturday. The poster in the bottom left depicts an intact
TAE'S STORY
The unborn child's heartbeat sounds so fast and so loud coming from the speaker in the doctor's office.
Aside from the image coming in and out of focus on the sonogram, you can't tell she's pregnant. She's 16, 100 pounds and one hell of a first baseman — her stomach as flat as ever.
Tae smiles at her mother standing beside her bed.
In that moment, everything is OK.
It doesn't matter that her ex-boyfriend, the baby's father, had left her for someone else before she knew they were over.
It doesn't matter that she has just finished her sophomore year in high school and is four months pregnant because, contrary to what her boyfriend said, pulling out doesn't stop you from getting pregnant.
It doesn't matter that her own father wants her to have an abortion.
It's an anti-abortion. Christian hospital, the nurse tells them. No help for them here, at least not if abortion is what they're looking for.
"This is a pointless visit," her dad booms from the other side of the room, where he's standing, gritting his teeth against the sound of the fluttering heartbeat.
932 dilation and evacuation abortions, the procedure used on Tae, were performed in Kansas in 2008.
KANSAS DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT
"The Kleenex are beside you to wipe off your stomach. We're all done here." The nurse gives one more meaningful look at Tae and walks out.
Taic, her mother and her father have barely crossed through the sliding glass doors before her dad pulls out his cell phone, dials Planned Parenthood and schedules an appointment for an abortion the following week.
--pri what we need
"Is this what you want to do?"
When they arrive at Kansas City's Planned Parenthood, they walk past a pair of women holding anti-abortion signs on the sidewalk.
Tae fidgets in the waiting room, upset and confused by her father's behavior.
A woman calls her name and she walks back for her appointment, alone.
Tae learns from the nurse that she's too far along for the abortion pill. She has to have a procedure. A pill will induce contractions. Expanders will help her dilate enough for the extraction. All told, it will take about four days.
The nurse schedules the abortion for next week and is about to leave to get the
A door opens in Ta'e's mind. She shakes her head no.
The nurse puts down her pencil and looks Tae sternly in the eyes.
"It doesn't matter what your dad wants.
It's your body."
The nurse tells Tae she has to leave, that they can't perform an abortion on an unwilling patient, no matter how you vounge.
Tae walk out into the lobby, unable to hide her smile.
"She said it was my choice. And I don't want to have an abortion," she tells her father.
Her dad's face turns a dark shade of red. He storms out ahead of her.
--muscles can tighten and get back to normal. The pills make her legs and arms cramp up and spasm.
During the next few weeks, her dad brings in the cavalry. Her godsister's mother. Her mom's brother's ex-wife. Anyone and everyone her dad can think of to dissuade her from keeping the child.
Her dad even takes her back to Planned Parenthood a second time. And for a second time, she leaves making the same choice.
After the second visit and a fresh round of pro-abortion lectures from family friends, Taë decides to give John, the baby's father, one more call.
She puts him on speakerphone, her mother standing silently in the corner.
"What is it, Tae? I'm with my girl."
"John, we need to talk about this baby. I need to know what you think. I mean, do you care? It's part yours. You do have a say."
Silence. Then...
He says it so suddenly, so forcefully that Tae's mom sucks in a breath through her teeth.
"Fuck it."
This is new; he's not denying it's his this time.
Her mom steps toward her, but Tae dashes upstairs. She locks her door before she collapses onto her bed, heaving sobs so deep she can hardly breathe.
"Fuck you. Don't call me with this bullshit anymore. Just get it over with." Click
"Kill it. I don't care," he says.
The baby's dad doesn't want it either. Fine.
Click.
Her dad doesn't want the baby.
The decision is hers, but among those she loves, she's the only one who wants to keep the baby.
--muscles can tighten and get back to normal. The pills make her legs and arms cramp up and spasm.
But if she's going to abort, she wants it her way. She wants the fetus to remain whole.
Fine.
On June 30, Tae returns to Planned Parenthood for a third time.
She walks back to the nurses' offices, alone, goes through the same questions and gives the same answers.
All except one.
The nurse silently leaves the room, returning just a few minutes later with another nurse, an IV and a plastic cup.
"Is this what you want to do?"
In 20 minutes, the doctor comes in, and Tae puts her legs into the stirrups so he can have a better look.
They start the IV to sedate her. Tae takes the pill.
"The only reason I feel guilty is because I don't feel guilty about it."
She can't feel a thing while the doctor inserts the expanders into her vagina - double the normal amount so the fetus can come out unscathed.
He's done in five minutes, but he says it will be four days until it's time to extract the fetus.
The nurses walk her into a waiting room, where she sits, alone, while the sedation subsides.
That's when she feels the baby kicking and the nurse tells her it is a death spasm.
Tae is doubled over in grief, her tears creating a growing dark spot on her jeans, when her dad comes back to get her.
--muscles can tighten and get back to normal. The pills make her legs and arms cramp up and spasm.
Minutes later, her mom helps her into the back seat of her dad's Chevy truck. Her mom's boyfriend rides shotgun. She slides in next to Tae and puts her daughter's head on her lap.
At 2:30 in the morning on June 2, Tae wakes up screaming.
I am going to die, she thinks
Pain like she's never felt before sears across her abdomen.
They connect her to another IV — probably Fentanyl for the pain — and place her legs in the stirrups again.
Planned Parenthood is a half-hour drive from their home.
It's the only word Tae can manage.
Tae is still screaming.
She rushes into a back room; the doctor and his team of nurses are waiting for her in their green scrubs.
Speed.
She can't feel anything, but she sees the doctor's arm, scooping. She hears the suck of a vacuum.
The doctor numbs her cervix and the pain subsides.
"Was it a boy or a girl?"
"Looks like a girl" the doctor tells her. Tae passes out.
It's all over in five minutes
Her vagina is sore for the next two weeks, but it's summer. No school. She stays home playing Skipbo and Rummy with her mom.
She has to take tiny white pills so her
Throughout the summer, Tae thinks of that moment in the hospital, right before she passed out.
A girl. I would have named her Tae — the pseudonym she asked be used to protect her identity in this story.
--thrown a rock at her head, leaving a gaping gash in her forehead. He's kicked her in the chest, sending her flying across the room and gasping for breath.
Today, she has a 3.98 GPA as a KU sophomore with plans to attend law school after she graduates in 2012.
She spends her days juggling a 15-hour class load and her nights watching The Food Network with her boyfriend of four years. He doesn't know about her decision, even though they started dating only a year after the abortion.
She doesn't think about the pink lines or the waiting room or the pain very often. And when she does, she feels gratitude toward her father.
"If it weren't for him I wouldn't have done it, and I'm really glad I did," she said. "I wouldn't have a successful life."
Five years after the abortion, Tae has just one regret.
"The only reason I feel guilty is because I don't feel guilty about it," she said. "You shouldn't regret anything you do in life."
KATIE'S STORY
First, a hairbrush strikes her square in the arm. Then he hurls a full can of baked beans - it hits her in the ass.
Running around the basement of his aunt's house, Katie tries to dodge the onslaught of canned goods and blunt objects Drake throws at her.
Forcibly prevented from taking birth control, Katie stops having a period within the first month.
From KATIE'S STORY
Drake wants Katie to go out with him, score some crack, beg for money. Katie just wants a night off.
He picks up a butter knife and uses it to slice open her forefinger.
He grabs a jalapeno and takes a bite. He holds Katie down so he can squeeze the juice into her eyes.
It burns worse when she cries.
She's trying to wipe the jalapeno juice from her eyes when he punches her in the jaw. Then the arms. Then the chest. He hits her everywhere, until Katie is a sobbing lump on the floor. He shuts the door quietly on the way out so as not to wake his aunt.
So ends another scene of abuse in the three-month barrage that has become Katie's relationship with Drake.
In that time, he's stripped her down and gagged her in search of hidden crack. He's
She tells herself she can't leave. He knows her phone number. He knows where she lives. He knows her adoptive father works nights — the perfect time for him to hunt her down and kill her should she abandon him.
No matter what, she can't pass out. He said he'd leave her there, wherever she fell, if she did.
She lasts three months in his aunt's house. Forcibly prevented from taking birth control, Katie stops having a period within the first month.
One night, while working her way toward the house, begging people for money as she has at Drake's insistence since August, she stops. In the middle of Kansas Avenue in Kansas City, Kan., during a frigid, early-November twilight, she stops. And she turns around.
In her childhood home, away from Drake, Katie can finally put the crack pipe down without fear of an attack.
Katie enters a nearby café and asks the waitress for a telephone. A customer sitting nearby lends her a cell phone. She calls her adoptive mom. She wants to come home.
Drake calls Katie two days after she escaped his abuse, his addiction and his rage. He declares his love for her, his regret for his actions and his promises for a better future.
She has an appointment at Planned Parenthood that day with her mom. She knows she's pregnant and wants to see about getting an abortion.
She would not bring a baby into an abusive relationship. It wouldn't be fair to the child.
Katie hangs up the phone.
And she would not let herself be tied to Drake the rest of her life. It wouldn't be fair to herself.
She had decided long ago to have an abortion if Drake ever got her pregnant
Katie and her mom walk into the clinic and wait 10 minutes before the assistant calls them to the back.
The doctor at Planned Parenthood is the man who facilitated Katie's adoption into her new family as an infant. He administers a urine test. It's positive.
As a favor to the family, he agrees to do the abortion right then and there, something that would become illegal two years later. Kansas now requires a 24-hour wait period before a woman can have an abortion.
Katie sits on the exam table and waits while the doctor sets up.
A few minutes later, she feels a small pinch in her stomach — the doctor tells her she's feeling the vacuum sucking the fetus out through a tube. That's all she remembers from an abortion that lasted only five minutes.
Her mom writes a $400 check while Katie watches in the lobby.
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