In March of 2020, Natalia learned she was pregnant. Her initial reaction, she said, was to make it “go away,” but as days went by, she came around to the idea of having a baby and began feeling attached to her preborn child. Her boyfriend, however, didn’t. Eventually, Natalia took the abortion pill and was traumatized by what happened.
The abortion facility gave Natalia envelopes of the abortion pills which she would take alone at home, though they never gave her an ultrasound to see how far along she was. Told to begin taking them that night, she didn’t listen. She held onto the pills for three weeks along with the hope that her boyfriend would change his mind. “It never sat right with me,” she told March for Life UK. “I never wanted to take them.”
“I wanted my baby’s father to be like, ‘No, it’s alright. We can keep it,’” she said through tears. “It is so sad to say it now but I was doing anything to kind of please him. I never thought about my child…” Her boyfriend had threatened to leave her if she kept the baby and she was scared. Coerced abortion is common, with one study reporting that 64% of women who had abortions said they were pressured to do so.
Looking back, Natalia thinks she was about seven weeks pregnant when she was given the pills, and 10 weeks when she took them. The abortion pill is approved for use in the UK through 10 weeks of pregnancy.
“I remember the time. it was like 5 a.m.,” she said. “When it first started happening, it feels like you’re being stabbed in the stomach. Somehow, I get in to the toilet and that’s when I passed my baby.”
Through tears, she continued:
And I looked down and I — I saw him. It wasn’t like a heavy period. It was like a baby! And I looked down and I just looked up and I just — I can’t look anymore. It’s a child!
Natalia fell to her knees and without thinking, flushed the toilet. She went to her bed, where she remained — alone — for three days, bleeding through her mattress. She said she was “just trying my hardest not to think about what just happened.”
See Natalia’s full story here.
