Telling someone

Disclaimer: This note cannot be used as a legal guide. Though we should be under no obligation, legal or otherwise, to tell someone about an abortion, check with your local laws and regulations regarding abortion disclosure. You can refer to our directory in YSM as well as these useful trackers from the Center of Reproductive Rights and Women On Waves for more information.

Deciding to share

Once we feel secure about our decision to have an abortion we may feel like informing people in our lives who we feel are going to be supportive. It is not our job to convince anyone that we’ve made the right decision for ourselves.

If we do decide to tell someone, it’s important to reflect on our expectations about what we want to get out of the conversation. Do we want to feel supported? Is this person going to be able to help in the way we need? How might this person react?

If we are struggling with the idea of sharing, that’s valid - it is all about focusing on what makes us comfortable and safe. We should take as long as we need to go through this note and work through the exercises. We’ll be here whenever we are needed.

Setting up the conversation

The most important part of telling someone about our abortion is to freely communicate our wishes. Sometimes we can become overwhelmed when trying to talk about difficult topics, and we tend to forget what we want to say. Preparing points that clearly explain our decision might help us stay on track and focus on what is important to us.

We can’t know exactly how someone will react, so it may help for us to plan and imagine the reactions we think they might have and how we would respond to them.

Working through these questions may help us decide whether or not we want to tell a specific person about our decision.

• What’s the best thing they would say or do?

• What’s the worst thing they would say or do?

• I would feel most comfortable telling: _________ because: _________

• They would probably think or say: _________

• How would I respond to them?

• I would feel least comfortable telling: _________ because: _________

• They would probably think or say: _________

We may be working through these questions and have some worries. That’s natural! If we are worried about what people will say, we should tell them what we need. Exercising our needs first makes sure that the people we are speaking to understand us and our choice.

Some examples are:

• “I really need you to listen.”

• “I need you to understand my choice.”

• “It would help me if you could...”

• “I want to talk to you, but I need to know you won’t tell anyone else.”

• “I need to be supported.”

• “I need to speak about it.”

• “I’m worried that you will judge me (or get upset), but I want to tell you something.”

We need to listen to ourselves if we feel uncomfortable at any time, as any negative reactions may throw us off. If we start to feel like our heart is racing and we’re getting an anxious pit-in-our-stomach feeling, know that it is okay to put the conversation on pause, breathe for a second, and come back in a couple of minutes. It may also be helpful for us to have some tactics to manage the anxiety of telling someone. We currently offer a Managing Anxiety course with Bloom, which you can sign up for.

Once it’s over, it may help to find someone who we know will be encouraging and then text or call that person to decompress and process our feelings.

Having a plan in place may help us prepare for how to approach someone and take in their response. If you are worried about a violent reaction, have someone else there who can protect you and have an exit plan ready.

Telling a partner

For clarity, ‘partner’ is used here to mean whoever we are in a relationship with, not just the person we conceived with. Though we may feel a responsibility to discuss our abortion with our partner, it is important to remember that at any stage of the decision making process,, we may not be under legal obligation to do so. Check on the useful CRR and Women On Waves live trackers for abortion law and the legal obligations for sharing information.

Telling a partner can be a particularly challenging thing to do. For instance, they may have certain reservations about our decision to have an abortion. It can be difficult to potentially go against the wishes of someone else but when considering something like this, our own happiness, health and comfort should be most important to us.

Before we initiate the conversation, the first thing to consider is if we feel safe in the relationship. If we do, we can think about whether or not we’ve had any conversations about pregnancy and parenthood previously. We could consider what our partner has said about these things. It might be a relief or it might be a shock to them, and this might help how we plan the conversation.

If we think that our partner (or anyone we choose to share with) will disagree with our decision, we should discuss it at a time when we can both be fully present, and allow ourselves to be heard.. No one likes to hear: “we need to talk”, so we should let our partner know what the topic is and what it means for us to be sharing.

Another way to help us articulate our decisions and thoughts is by using "I" statements - we have chosen this for ourselves and are involving them by sharing with them through mutual respect. While it’s important that our partner knows that we will be respectful of their feelings, it’s also vital that we allow ourselves to feel our emotions too.

Some couples come together in this situation and some pull apart. The best situations happen when both people can talk honestly about how they feel and listen to each other without blaming or hurting each other.

Unsafe relationships

If we are in a relationship where we feel unsafe, how we handle the discussion may be different. Most importantly, we need to make sure we have a safe, planned way to address the conversation. There are some safety plans we can create online to help us. If we feel unsafe but still need to discuss the decision, this should be done in as neutral a location as possible where a third person, who we trust, knows where we are. Our safety is the most important thing, and we deserve the right to decide for ourselves what we want, and have others accept that.

Teenagers

In many countries, a parent or legal guardian of a minor (under 18) must be notified or give consent if their child wants to have an abortion, place a child for adoption, or seek medical care.

If we are under no legal compulsion to tell them but decide that we still want to, it could be helpful to plan ahead and imagine what they might say or think.

It may be good for us to involve a parent if:

• We would feel safer if they knew

• We need their advice

• Not telling them could hurt our relationship with them

• Not telling them could make us feel bad or dishonest

• If there is a potential risk involved by not telling them, for example, we could be at risk of violence by not sharing the information.

• We may potentially need their help with money for a doctor, transportation, support, etc.

When deciding whether to tell a parent, it’s also important to ask, “if I cannot tell a parent/guardian, is there someone else I can speak to?”

Depending on age and personal circumstances, sometimes the people we confide in may be obligated to report our pregnancy to higher authorities. This is most likely the case if we are under the legal age of consent and it comes to the attention of a mandatory reporter (such as a teacher, religious official, medical professional, etc). For information about whether our country requires that our parents be told before an abortion, check on the live and updated trackers for abortion law across the world, and ask a local clinic or family planning agency.

Telling family members

Even if the decision is clear to us, abortion is a complex issue and we can never predict how our family will react - they could be angry, disappointed, confused, shocked, and hurt or happy and satisfied that we made the right decision for us. That’s why it may be helpful to work through the exercises in the section titled ‘Setting up the conversation’ so that we may allow ourselves the time and space to plan how we’ll speak about it, and ensure we have the support we need.

Processing how the conversation went

While everyone hopes that the conversation goes well, unfortunately this isn’t always the case. Those around us may react strongly to the news and might need some additional time to process everything. In these cases, it’s easy to feel guilty or wonder how we could have approached the conversation differently. However, we need to remember that we can’t control how they react; we can only control how we choose to respond.

It takes a lot of courage and strength to open up about our abortion to anyone, at any time. As we go forward, it’s important to remember that while we can’t dictate or define the reactions of others, we have agency in our choices and self-care going forward.