At the abortion clinic, they don’t let anyone go back with you. The waiting room is filled with people wanting abortions, people supporting the people wanting abortions, and people judging the people wanting abortions. You pay up-front. You wait. You get called back. You get blood tested. You wait. You get an ultrasound. They ask you if you want a picture of what you’re getting ready to get rid of. You wait. And then they send you to the shame room, and you wait some more.
I never thought I would be at the Planned Parenthood in Overland Park, sitting in the shame room, waiting for the doctor. They don’t call it the shame room, but that’s what it feels like. It’s a room with no windows, uncomfortable chairs, and uncomfortable silence while you wait with other people just like you who have come this far and not caved under the pressure of dozens of protestors and politicians and pastors airing their self-righteous judgment about things that are none of their damn business to begin with.
A Black woman was already in the shame room when I was led to the door. The only sound in the palpably tense room was the metal door scraping open and then slamming closed behind me. I sat in a chair with arms that pinched the sides of my thighs. I could see her ankle boots. Her jeans. Her handbag. But not her face. I didn’t raise my gaze high enough to get a good look. But out of my peripheral vision I could see her head bowed, her shoulders slumped protectively, her fingers fidgeting with the tassel of her handbag.
I sat in the shame room, my thighs aching from the pressure of plastic bars pressing into my flesh. And I couldn’t help but reflect on the reason why I was here in the first place. That was the point of the shame room, after all. To make you stew in your decisions for an hour while the state-mandated waiting period passed.
A Hispanic woman came in not long after me. She sat in a chair, crossed her ankles, fidgeted. The tension pressurized with the weight of another woman’s shame. I longed to crack a joke, break the tension, minister to my fellow abortion-seekers, but I lacked the courage and my throat closed up on me when I tried to fight past my own selective mutism. The shame room roared with the blower of the too-cold air conditioner, hummed with the electricity of the fluorescent light bulbs in their fixtures, and rasped with the breathing of three resolved women.
A door opened an indeterminate length of time later. The doctor, a middle-aged Black man, came in and took his place in the adjacent room. A thrill of relief coursed over me, followed an instant later by the nerve-jangling anxiety of dealing with the immediacy of a new, unknown experience. What was in store for me? Was this it? The moment of truth?
The Black woman went first. She went into the room, closed the door, didn’t come out again.
The doctor called my name next. I went into the room, closed the door, sat down beside him. After an hour in the shame room, I expected nothing but judgment, but when I looked up at him, there was nothing – nothing – but kindness and compassion. He explained the process of medical abortion, the risks, what to expect, and asked me if it was what I wanted. I wondered how many people chickened out at this stage, how many people internalized the shame room until it was a gaping vacuum in their chest. I certainly felt it. But the patient nonjudgment of the man in front of me was like a key that unlocked my heart, giving me the courage that I’d lacked earlier. My throat relaxed. I said yes.
He directed me out another door, out of the shame room, to an exam room, where I waited. There was a curious absence of shame in the atmosphere there. The exam room, though not exactly the kind of place where one should feel totally comfortable, felt safe to me. I’d been given a guiding hand out of the shame room and now waited nervously for the object of my quest.
When the doctor came in a short time later, it was with a medicine cup in one hand and a white paper bag in the other. He sat down, asked me once more if this was what I wanted. I said yes, and this time I meant it with my whole being.
“When you’re ready,” he said as he poured a small cup of water, “you can take the mifepristone.” I felt no pressure, only patience and understanding. Still, I wanted to make sure I had the courage of my convictions. I reached for the medicine cup and tossed the pills back like they were a shot of whisky, chasing them with the water. I felt the medicine begin to work almost immediately, tingling in my veins, but it wasn’t so distracting that I couldn’t focus on the doctor explaining the contents of the white paper bag. Misoprostol, to be taken up to 48 hours later, when I was ready to expel the pregnancy. A self-care checklist listing what was normal and what was cause for concern. A pink piece of paper to take with me to the emergency room in case I soaked through more than one pad in an hour, giving specific information on the procedure I was undergoing. He handed me the paper bag and I said, “Thank you.” He smiled softly and nodded and pointed me in the direction of the main waiting room, where I could rejoin the friend who’d driven me here.
As I walked toward the door, I saw the nameless doctor head back down the hall, a wingless angel gone to rescue another abortion-seeker from the shame room. I emerged into the waiting room, found my friend and hugged her, and we made our way out of the crowded lobby, through the doors, past the protesters, and into the car. As we headed out onto the highway, relief coursed through my veins alongside the medicine that was already doing its work. I felt tingly and slightly nauseous, but I knew that the hard part was over. I could get back to Columbia, a two-hour drive from the Kansas City area, and rest after the marathon round-trip travel.
But even as we made our way eastward, the shame room was a scar on my being. Miles separated me from that place, yet I felt like I hadn’t fully left it. That feeling lingered all throughout the day and into the next morning, when I went to another friend’s house, took the misoprostol, and within half an hour proceeded to have the worst period of my life. I had curled up in Susan’s bed with a heating pad on my abdomen. I don’t remember passing out from pain or emotional exhaustion, but that’s what happened. I woke up a couple hours later, feeling no pain, needing to change my pad, and seeming lighter in body, mind, and spirit. I was no longer carrying the shame room in my heart. It was gone, along with the pregnancy. I could breathe again. Life could go on.
A version of The Shame Room was originally published in print in Quills & Pixels 2021, a peer-reviewed publication of the UALR Writers’ Network at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Reproductive rights are human rights. Please support the rights of people to control their own bodies, decide if and when to have children, and receive unbiased and accurate education about reproductive processes and options by donating to Planned Parenthood or supporting a local abortion fund.