Gagged: How shame and silence meet in control of women’s bodies

When we do not take into account a woman’s reason for choosing an abortion, we strip her of her agency and voice. For abused women, it is simply another form of tyranny.

In 1985, then-US President Ronald Reagan implemented the Mexico City Policy. It blocked US federal funding for foreign NGOs that shared information or counselling on abortion and sometimes birth control and became known, by its opponents, as the global gag rule. It reflected in macrocosm the kind of tyranny that often occurs in the lives of abused women. In 1985, I had been with my abuser, Scott*, for two years. One night, not long after I had stopped taking birth control pills because they had started to make me feel severely nauseous, Scott insisted we have sex without protection. My period had just ended, but I knew my body and could feel a specific cramp that indicated I was ovulating. Scott told me I didn’t know anything about “how this works”. He made me doubt what I knew. He made me believe he knew more about my body than I did. He argued and yelled. He gripped my biceps and shook me until I finally agreed out of fear. Six weeks later, as I stood in my doctor’s office, I prayed she would tell me I wasn’t pregnant. I could hear her voice, but I was staring out of the window. I lost myself right there in the examining room. I was in the clouds, flying high, flying fast, heading north in my mind, past Loon Mountain and Saint Johnsbury, into Canada. I wanted to be anywhere but in my body.