VANCOUVER—One was a teenage dance student when she got pregnant. Another was about to launch her career and didn’t want children. Yet another compared learning her fetus wouldn’t be viable due to the death of a loved one.

These are the stories of people who decided to have abortions for a variety of reasons. For these women, listening to the recent renewal of the abortion debate has triggered a mix of emotions and memories.

On May 15, Alabama passed a law criminalizing abortions at any stage of pregnancy, except if the pregnancy poses a serious health risk to the woman. Other states have approved bans on abortion once a heartbeat is detected, which can be as early as six weeks of pregnancy — a stage where the woman may not even know she’s pregnant.

Earlier in May, two BC Liberal Party MLAs, Laurie Throness and Rich Coleman, spoke at rallies for opponents of abortion in Victoria on the steps of B.C.’s legislature.

In Canada, abortion was decriminalized in 1988. However, according to the National Abortion Federation, every province and territory covers the cost of abortion at different stages of pregnancy. In B.C., the provincial health plan covers the costs of abortion at hospitals and clinics up to 23 weeks and six days.

The number of abortions have declined between 2011 and 2017, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Based on mandatory reporting from hospitals and voluntary reporting from clinics, 109,000 abortions were reported in 2011. In 2017, 94,000 abortions were reported.

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Star Vancouver spoke to a handful of women about their personal experience with abortion. Some are speaking publicly about their abortions for the first time, because they say they want to break the shame and stigma that have stopped so many other women from having the same conversation. These are their stories.

Jacqueline Willcocks, 37

Willcocks was 16 when she had an abortion at a clinic in Calgary — the city where she was born and raised.

The abortion is not something she has shared publicly until now, but has thought about for a long time.

“I know the exact day that I went in and had my surgery, I remember that date every year when that day comes around, I know how old the baby would be, the child would be an adult now … every woman goes in for a different reason, not every woman has to go through a moral issue with it, but most do. They make their decision for the betterment of their life, for their children’s life,” said the mother of two who today lives in Vancouver.

At the time, Willcocks was a student ballet dancer training six days a week to become a professional dancer — taking any time off would have ended any hopes of a career in dance, said the 37-year-old yoga instructor.

Pregnancy was never in the plans for the young dancer, but even using two forms of birth control, she still became pregnant. “I knew at 16, I wouldn’t be the kind of mom — I just didn’t have enough life experience in me — to be the kind of mom that I wanted to be to a child.”

When she decided to have an abortion, she had the support of her mother and then boyfriend, though she acknowledged the toll it had on him. The care she received was the best she could have asked for, she said. “No one was mean to me, no one bullied me.”

At 23, Willcocks gave birth to her first child. In the seven years between her abortion and becoming a parent, she graduated from high school, travelled, developed a career and lived on her own. Those experiences prepared her to become a more “confident” mother later on.

She has been watching the debate on abortion with anger.

“I just feel really angry about the ban,” said Willcocks. It’s a “painful” experience when she sees activists protesting abortions.

“There’s so little empathy, so little compassion for what the women are going through in that moment anyways. And then to have to fight and to have to go through such abuse in order to make a choice about their body and make a choice about their lives, it’s so cruel to me.”

Since her decision, she’s been torn between feeling as though she’s committed a sin and feeling as though she’s been given a gift.

“My gift is that, again, how good of a parent I can be right now. I have two beautiful, thriving children. I have a really close family, and that was the gift I gave myself by having an abortion, as controversial as that sounds.”

Kerry Armstrong, 58

When Kerry Armstrong was in her early 30s she had an abortion for medical reasons. But it wasn’t without a roadblock.

It was 1992 and she and her husband were living in Dawson Creek, B.C. Around the three-month mark of her pregnancy, the ultrasound results showed that her fetus would not be viable, and her obstetrician scheduled an abortion for the next day.

Armstrong already had one child, and this was supposed to be her second. She was devastated that she would need to end the pregnancy.

“It was the same (emotional toll) as the death of my brother and the death of my friend. It was the same grieving process, the same shock and the same physiological response to grief,” she said.

But the operation was delayed by community members who sat on the hospital’s board of directors, she said.

“I was called and told the board had cancelled the surgery.”

“I think they had a kind of belief system around it, and they decided that that (abortion) shouldn’t happen in their hospital, so they cancelled it.”

Her doctor then had to challenge the board’s decision, she recalls, which required sending and receiving documents from the women’s hospital in Vancouver. This was before the era of email, and the official communications were sent by courier and took several days.

“It was a solid five days of waiting ... another few days and then they would have had to induce a delivery rather than do an abortion. Every day counted in terms of the danger to me,” she said.

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Eventually her doctor got the go-ahead, Armstrong got the abortion, and she recovered with the support of friends and family.

According to a Vancouver Sun newspaper story from March 1997, local health boards were restructured in 1997 and the then NDP government purposefully appointed board members who supported abortion access. The paper reported that prior to the reforms “an estimated 100 anti-abortion activists were sitting on elected health boards, and they have at times challenged the NDP government’s pro-choice policies.”

Today, hospitals in B.C. are governed by larger regional health authorities, which do not have the power to intervene on abortions.

Armstrong said she has only shared the story with a few people, but after the recent news around abortion rights, she felt both “disgusted” and “threatened” and wanted to come forward.

“It’s shocking that it’s back again in the news ... if I was going to enter myself into a starvation diet to protest, this would be the issue,” she said.

Julia Santana Parrilla, 30

Three years ago, Julia Santana Parrilla was alone when she found out she was pregnant for the first time at 27. Her partner travelled a lot for work and instead of excitement, she felt conflicted about the pregnancy.

At the time, she was in debt and getting her master’s degree, so raising a child with a partner who constantly travelled made parenting seem impossible.

“I had a little goodbye ceremony … and that really kicked in my grief ... the grief was not about grieving that little embryo, the grief was around grieving my sense of self because there is so much shame around pregnancy terminating,” said the graduate student who is studying public health.

Santana Parrilla used medication to end her pregnancy, which is termed as medical abortion. She received an injection in the arm to stop the fetal growth and was sent home with some pills to insert vaginally to encourage her body to miscarry. The procedure was so “laborious” and “intense” on her body that she used cannabis for pain management. She’s now had two abortions.

After speaking about the experience with friends, she’s convinced that speaking about it is the antidote for misrepresentation, and she even started a website for people to share their abortion stories.

“When we don’t share our stories, it’s very easy to have the narrative and rhetoric around something be reduced … (that’s) very much the general narrative around abortion is today and has been.”

The recent debate on a person’s right to abortion has made her feel “infuriated.”

“These policies position us as unworthy of personhood and love. It also erases the complexity and multiplicity of our experiences, reducing us to irresponsible people who need to be taught a lesson … I also fear the effects of this on a global scale. Even here, we have to stay vigilant.”

Leita McInnis, 31

Leita McInnis was nearly finished her bachelor’s degree when she found out she was pregnant. She was 27, in a healthy, long-term relationship, and three months away from starting her practicum.

“My education didn’t get paid for by my family, so I had basically taken all of my 20s to get my degree and I was right at the end, got my dream practicum, was ready to go and do it, and was like ‘Oh f---.’ ”

McInnis did some research online, found a clinic nearby, and within about three weeks she got an appointment and had a medical abortion, paid for by government health care. She then spent a few days resting at home, and continued on with her life — she completed the practicum and it led to a job right away.

“Not only did I have my partner at the time, but my friends were very supportive, and my parents … they were very proud of me and very supportive,” she said.

She has no guilt and no regrets.

“Either way, I wouldn’t have had that baby … I don’t want a child, and I definitely didn’t want a child then. I think that history has shown us that just because you take away peoples’ access to abortion doesn’t mean … that they carry pregnancies to term.”

McInnis was upset by the conversation around exemptions for rape and incest and the laws in the United States that restrict access to abortion even in those cases. She fears it splits the conversation into those who deserve abortions and those who don’t.

“All people who are capable of getting pregnant have the right to abortion, no matter the circumstance. Whether you have children, whether you don’t, whether you’re in a loving relationship or not. It’s not only as a result of violence that women should feel comfortable and safe accessing abortion,” she said.

Originally from Alberta, McInnis, said it’s important that people in Canada are aware of abortion rights, especially since Alberta premier Jason Kenney recently appointed an education minister who previously worked in anti-abortion advocacy as president of the Red Deer and District Prolife Association.

“I think a lot of people are not paying attention to this because they can’t imagine abortion (rights) being reversed in our life time,” she said.

“I personally think that it’s extremely serious and it could very well go in that direction.”

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