Elise Krews and her Abortion Story
Photo from the Pennsylvania Capital Star
At the end of my sophomore year at Centenary, I found out I was pregnant. I wasn’t expecting it. I was actually just trying to get my required immunizations for my Module to Ecuador, which left in the middle of June. I’d been looking forward to the trip as an opportunity to further untangle myself from an on-again, off-again relationship with a man who stalked me and was emotionally and verbally abusive. As I walked to my car after receiving the news, I knew with certainty that I did not want to be pregnant.
I grew up in an environment that wholly supported purity culture. As a child of Southern Baptist parents, we were raised in church communities with plenty of purity balls and promise rings but no sex education. The message we did receive about sex was that having it before marriage was shameful. So, if you had an abortion, it was something you did not discuss with anyone.
This is why I felt uneasy asking my family for support while navigating my abortion care. My life had already been shaped by complex reproductive decision-making. I was adopted as an infant because my adoptive mother had struggled with fertility. I was also familiar with the complexities that adoption adds to family dynamics — both for myself and for my biological family that I maintained contact with. Because of my parents’ reproductive experiences and my religious upbringing, I feared telling my parents would mean that they would try to influence my decision heavily. I remember feeling incredibly alone in navigating the logistics of locating money, making appointments, and processing what was coming next. I had friends supporting me logistically. Still, I struggled to find the social and emotional support I needed because of how deeply embedded abortion stigma is in the South. For many of my friends, I was the first person they knew to share their experience about abortion openly.
Although I was fully informed and sure of my decision, I was required by law to have two separate appointments at least forty-eight hours apart due to a mandatory waiting period. I would later learn that these regulations were a part of Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws, which had been chipping away at abortion access over the last several years. I happened to live in town, but in the waiting room, several people talked about how far they had driven to be there.
After paying for it myself and scheduling the two appointments, I went to the (now closed) Hope Clinic that was across the street. The first appointment was for counseling, where they reviewed the information with me that did not have to be medically accurate. For my second visit, I opted for an in-clinic abortion (also known as surgical abortion). While I was in the waiting room, people were chatting as they were waiting and sharing their own reasons for what brought them there. Purity culture had painted a very narrow picture of why someone would have an abortion: they were irresponsible, selfish, hated children, or without faith. The stories shared in that waiting room unraveled these assumptions. Some women already had several children already and knew they couldn’t care for another, people whose birth control had failed, and women who did want a child but did not have the economic means or social support needed to care for one. What struck me was the love and compassion that went into the decisions they made, intertwined with shame and guilt, and for a brief moment, this waiting room provided a place where those decisions were affirmed. After my abortion, I went on my Module to Ecuador, removed myself from that relationship, and moved to Nashville, where I work at our local Public Health Department in the Bureau of Health Equity.
In conversations about abortion, we often lose the nuance of the range of feelings that a person can have. This can be especially true for those who are also processing the impact of purity culture, religiosity, stigma, intimate partner violence, or even just the ending of a relationship. We also lose sight of the social and economic constraints that shape the “choices” people have available to them that can shape these feelings. Conditions such as unlivable job wages, limited social support, minimal parental leave policies, high rates of maternal and infant mortality, lack of affordable housing, and inflexible learning environments make abortion more complicated than simply being pro-choice or pro-life. Reproductive Justice, a framework coined by Black women in 1994, instead frames abortion as a human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.
The fall of Roe v. Wade has changed the landscape of abortion access, but what that means is very different from the reality of pre-Roe. Medication abortion access has expanded since the 70s, meaning the need for less reliable abortifacients is much lower. Abortion is safe, yet legislators continue to move toward criminalizing pregnancy outcomes in states with some of the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality. This has already translated to pregnant people being charged with miscarriages, being medically neglected, and increasing efforts to establish fetal personhood. Ultimately, this will translate to even higher rates of incarceration of Black, brown, poor, disabled, and pregnant people who use substances.
Abortion clinics will be much further for many people than ever. Now more than ever, we must protect and support each other. I would encourage you to have conversations with people in your community now, so that if you or someone you know becomes pregnant, you have a sense of who you can ask for social, logistical, or emotional support. We will also need to prepare for the reality that many will continue pregnancies that they would not have otherwise. Regional and local abortion funds can support navigating access to care. Additionally, if you are employed, I would encourage you to explore if your employer has any additional support in place as a response to the Roe decision.
Centenary has an obligation to step up and provide support to students absent elsewhere in Louisiana. Comprehensive sex education is not required within the state, where most Centenary students are admitted from. A full spectrum of contraceptive methods, including but not limited to condoms, Plan B, oral contraceptive pills, vaginal rings, IUDs, patches, injections (Depo), and dental dams, should be not only be available but also freely accessible to students. If needed, this may require establishing an agreement or partnership with a healthcare entity to provide these resources. Finally, Centenary should ensure that the existing student health insurance plan maximizes access while minimizing costs to these resources.
In light of the new bans and restrictions, there will be people who continue pregnancies that they would have otherwise chosen to terminate for various reasons. Ensuring comprehensive resources, clear policies, and practices that support pregnant students in continuing their education is critical.
