The following is my abortion story. The good, the bad, the ugly. A story that I feel privileged to share because I was fortunate enough to have a choice. As we move through Woman’s History Month, I honor each woman who came before me and fought so that I would have a choice. I equally honor and make a promise to the women who stand before me, and those who will come behind: I will do everything in my power to restore your right to choose.
May we live in a world where women have the right to give birth to their dreams without being forced to mother another’s. Viva las Mujeres!
Ride Responsibly
by NK Gutiérrez
When I was a teenager I remember watching If These Walls Could Talk on HBO. It was a series of vignettes showcasing super stars like Cher, Demi Moore, Jada Pinkett-(before the Smith), and Ellen DeGeneres, portraying stories of lesbian love, heroism, and actively debunking the feminine mystique in a way that simply wasn't being done in film and television at the time. It was brilliant! The show also shared stories of heartbreaking events in women’s lives, including abortion. Clinics being blown up. Vicious protestors shaming women as they walked toward one of the most challenging choices of their lives. Women losing their lives to coat hangers on their own kitchen tables because choice was not an option. This became my zeitgeist. I became terrified of choice.
It was 1980, my mother was nineteen and pregnant with me. A perfect, milky white Mexican girl knocked up by a young Black man in Topeka, KS. Well, actually she got knocked up in Wichita, KS. To add insult to injury, she was the first daughter to go away to college, two semesters in at Wichita State she was one trimester in with me. Shame. They expected better of their Bebé. Just a few years prior, her oldest sister, my tia, came home pregnant at seventeen; she was tucked away in a convent an hour outside our hometown until she gave birth to a baby that she was forced to give away. A few years later their baby sister, my other tia, came home pregnant at fourteen. She was forced to have an abortion and switch high schools. These passed down stories further informed my zeitgeist. They cemented the terror of choice. My mom made the heroic choice to keep me, so it became my inherent duty to prove I was worth the trouble she had gone through to do so.
It was 1996, I was fourteen, excitedly planning for my huge Quincenera that my family was damn near leveraging a house to fund. I was the first granddaughter and my mother’s only child, so the size of the occasion fit the sentiment. My mom had successfully polished her shame into a shining, Blaxican star! I had a “serious” boyfriend with whom I swore I wasn’t having sex. My wise mother put me on birth control anyway. I was totally boning him. By the grace of God, I made it out of high school unscathed and brought no sixteen-and-pregnant shame to my family.
NK Gutiérrez, Quinceañera 10/26/96
In 2002, I was twenty-one. A successful sophomore in college and the first in my family to go out of state on scholarship. I was in a new loving and committed relationship. I was still on birth control . . . and I was pregnant. I was ashamed. Terrified. I had always been pro-choice for others, but . . . ME? I wasn’t ready to be a mother. I was going to Planned Parenthood. I expected the worst: f These Walls Could Talk AWFUL. It. Was. AWFUL. I lost a piece of myself that day.
In 2010, I was twenty-nine. I was in a committed relationship of three years. We lived together. I was in love. I was a college graduate and an artist aggressively pursuing my dreams and planning my first European trip to the Cannes Film Festival. I was BROKE as hell. I was my mother’s most glowing accomplishment. I was still on birth control. I was FUCKING pregnant. I was devastated. I was still in no place to take care of a child. I felt trapped in my own body. HOW could this happen AGAIN??? I had done everything right. I had taken ALL the proper precautions. I was going to Planned Parenthood, again. I was broken.
NK Gutiérrez, Côte d’ Azur (European Adventure)
Pro-Choice or not, no one actually wants to think about giving up life. But to do it not once, but twice? That good time, that great time, suddenly turns into a hate crime.
Hating him, hating “it,” hating me for doing it. Laying there in that cold, fluorescent room and crying as you get vacuumed out by a modern day Hoover . . . Giddyup frosty stirrups, can we ride to a better place? Maybe we can gallop to a land where I won’t have to face a man who’s begging me to not kill his baby.
The suffering, you see, that started with me.
The moment I laid down, thinking I was ready for the “get down.” Fourteen going on forty. Too grown for my own damn good. So deeply fascinated with all that wood. Would I have laid down if I had known then that it would make me a murderer in a hospital gown? I thought I knew what was best for myself. My female ejaculation was a liberated choice I was making for my health! I did it. It’s done. There’s no turning back. So how do I make good on those lives that I snatched? I’m begging, I’m pleading . . . Tell it to me??? Giddyup frosty stirrups, carry me please, to a land of forgiveness where I’m free of my misery.
So I had two choices. I could continue to get good dick—correction, GREAT dick—and suffer in silence. Month after month in my self-inflicted violence . . .
NK Gutiérrez, Toscana, Italy (European Adventure)
Are these flutters or cramps? Eff my nipples hurt. EFFFF my nipples hurt!!! Where in the HELL is my period?? Oh. GOD. Please let me bleed. I’ll never touch dick again if you’ll just do this one little thing for me. I promise. This time I’m FOR REAL! I won’t even think about how good a cock feels. I promise . . . this is IT! Okaaaay fine . . .not even the tip!
Or . . . I could walk in faith while I’m here on this earth, quiet my soul, and unveil my worth. I could finally choose me, a shining star, who’s not meant to be sold and resold like a gently used car. I could choose to choose someone who was willing to wait until we say our first grace as husband and wife, united in life and all that is holy . . . I could wait for a whole man who was willing to wait for a whole me.
I am forty-one. I am FREE. My body. My choice. Ride Responsibly.
NK Gutiérrez, Tulum, Mexico. 40 & FREE