Abortion Love Letter No.1: Dear Midwife
Starting today, I am collaborating with the inimitable Camila Ochoa Mendoza of the Abortion, with love podcast to publish and air a series of love letters, written and read aloud by people whose lives have been touched by abortion, and who have love to express—to their provider, to their support systems, to the pregnancies they terminated, to themselves.
Abortion is love.
We will be publishing a new love letter every Monday, with enormous love and gratitude to artist Idalina Lehtonen for our gorgeous graphics and composer Anton Olsson for the transcendant music you’ll hear on each episode. You can listen to this and every future letter here, or by subscribing to Abortion, with love on your favorite podcast platform. And you can send us a letter of your own, or a response to pass onto any of the letter-writers. (Please remember that these are letters written by individual people, in their own cultural and personal contexts. We believe that everyone’s abortion experiences are valid and should be honored. You may not relate to or resonate with some of the things written in these letters, and that is okay. But we hope that you can recognize the magic and the truth in people honoring their own unique experiences, in their own words.)
Dear Midwife / Love, Hannah
To my midwife:
Thank you.
More than once, you have reached into my body and changed the course of my life. Or rather, you’ve allowed the course of my life to keep moving, keep unfolding, unspooling, through all of its messy, complicated, beautiful peaks and valleys. When you removed my IUD so that I could get pregnant and have my son (my moon and stars). When you provided the abortion care I needed–when you counseled me, examined me, showed me tenderness and respect and love. You protected my health, my safety, my joy, my little family.
As I sit here now, cradling my heating pad, tears drying into salt on my tired face, medications blurring the sharp edges of my pain, I am watching my baby play in his nursery, sunlight streaming down from the window onto his sweet little body as he bangs together his pots and pans, clatter clamor ding ding ding. He laughs and laughs. You made this moment. You made this life possible for him, and you empowered me to become his mother, the mother he needs.
You are, and will forever be, a crucial, beloved, sacred member of our village, the village helping me to raise him.
Thank you for him. Thank you for me.
And thank you for telling me about your children, your abortion, the long winding history of your body and heart and life. Thank you for sharing our workplace, moving through it alongside of me with such honesty and collaboration and kindness. For sharing your family, your wisdom, your love.
Thank you for my abortions. Thank you for my motherhood. Thank you for my freedom. Thank you for my world.
Forever grateful to you,
Your patient, and colleague, and friend for life,
Hannah