I had an abortion and I can't get over it

What this looks like

You had an abortion. You may have been certain it was the right decision and you’re still grieving. You may have been ambivalent and the ambivalence has become its own weight. The political framing on both sides doesn’t fit your actual experience. The pro-choice spaces don’t have room for grief. The pro-life spaces don’t have room for the decision being right. You’re alone with what’s actually happening.

You can have made the right decision and still grieve it. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

What you’ve already tried

• Telling yourself it was the right call
• Telling yourself it was wrong
• A therapist who handled it politically rather than personally
• Avoiding the date
• Marking the date
• Telling no one
• Telling someone who handled it badly

The grief hasn’t resolved.

Why this is its own thing

Abortion grief has been politicized to a degree that has eliminated cultural space for the actual experience. The pro-choice script says “no regret, no grief, no second-guessing.” The pro-life script says “you killed a baby.” Neither fits most people’s actual experience, which can include relief, grief, certainty, doubt, anger, and quiet over years, all at once.

You very likely came up with particular hopes or fears about being a parent that the pregnancy and the decision activated. You may have made the decision under conditions you wouldn’t have wished for: a relationship that wasn’t ready, a financial situation that couldn’t support it, a body that couldn’t carry it safely. The right decision under the wrong conditions can produce a long grief.

You may have absorbed both political scripts and tried to make your experience fit one or the other. The fitting has been making the carrying harder. Your actual experience is rarely either script. It’s your specific experience, which has room for the decision being correct and the grief being real.

For the broader grief framework, see I’m grieving . If you also had a miscarriage or other loss, see I had a miscarriage .

The grief is real. The decision being right doesn’t change that.

How we work with it

In strategic therapy we let your grief out from between the two scripts that have been holding it. We work it as the specific loss it is for you, with the specific conditions you made the decision under, and we stop asking you to defend either the choice or the grieving. What you’ve been carrying alone gets carried inside the room with somebody who isn’t trying to fit it into a position.

Your grief stops needing a political home. It gets to be the size and shape it actually is.