In my early twenties, I told my friend and next-apartment-over neighbor Joyce that I was going to have a surgical abortion.
She—a young, new mother of twins—didn’t question my decision and was as relaxed and normal about it as I was. She offered to drive me there and back, and wait for me in the waiting room during the procedure. She offered to pitch in a little cash. She wound up doing all of those things. She also checked in on me the night and the next day after my abortion, including with offers of food, but wasn’t pushy about it. A couple weeks later, she asked how I was doing and listened to me as I told her.
Those things might not sound like much. By all means, they are basic kindnesses many of us do or have done for our friends in everyday life in other situations. But those things are some of the very best things you can do for a friend who is going to terminate a pregnancy, and any of them can go a really long way.
Have a friend thinking about or planning to have an abortion, and want to help them? Here’s a brief rundown of the ways you can help, and some things that aren’t so helpful.
Talk less, listen more.
You want to lead with their feelings, their frameworks and language, and their needs. You probably have your own feelings about abortion in general, about any of your own experiences with it, and may even have your own feelings about their own choice or their abortion. But this isn’t about you. It’s about them.
How they are feeling and thinking about their pregnancy, their abortion, and anything that has to do with either of them is what to center. You don’t want to treat their abortion like it’s hard or sad if they aren’t treating it that way, nor do you want to act like this is the best thing ever for a friend who’s having a hard time with it. Pay attention to what they say and do, and try and match their vibe.
That can sometimes even involve holding space for them as they work through their own feelings to find out what they even are, which can run the gamut from being overwhelmingly negative to very positive. Active listening with a dose of support is the way to go here: listening to what they are saying, and reflecting it back to them to help them clarify their feelings and feel supported in them.
For example, to a friend who talks to you about absolutely wanting to choose abortion and knowing it’s right for them but still feeling like that isn’t okay because they grew up anti-abortion, you might say: “I hear you saying that you feel conflicted about this, but still want to move forward with it for now: I can understand that.”
To a friend who is sure and positive about their choice, but is being pressured by someone else to make a different choice, you might say “You’ve said many times to me that you can’t think of a better choice in this situation. I can see why you feel that way, and I think your view of this is what matters most.”
Tell your friend that you love and support them, and that you support their decisions. Because we all live in a world where while the anti-abortion faction may be smaller, it still tends to be louder and can have a tremendous impact on how anyone feels about abortion, even people who really want or need one. A lot of people don’t know that what anti-abortion folks frequently say isn’t factual (including a good number of the people saying those things in the first place!), and even when we do know that the things they’re stating as fact are anything but, the strong emotional negativity and social stigma anti-abortion people and platforms have created can still pack a powerful punch. But as with so much else, what the people we care about most and are closest to think tends to be a lot more influential, so your statements of support carry even more power.
Ask what they need and want instead of assuming.
Again, we want to center the person actually having the abortion if we’re being there for them. We may know or have a sense of what we’d need, but that may or may not be what they do.
If and when we ask and they are drawing blanks, that’s a better time to suggest some things you think they might need, want or otherwise appreciate.
You can start by suggesting things that you know are in your wheelhouse or capacity. Maybe you’re a great cook: you could offer to make them a couple meals they can easily heat up or eat as-is for after their abortion. If you’re not, you can offer to get their favorite takeout, instead. If you have a car, you could offer any needed rides, be it to get medications, to get to a clinic, or as a standing offer to be on hand for a ride if they need any aftercare. Sometimes figuring out what you don’t want can also help you clarify what you do want, so that’s another way making suggestions can help someone who isn’t sure what they want or need.
If it’s within your capacity to be the kind of person who can say, “If you think of anything, call me and I will do what I can” and deliver, you can also end with that.
Executive function can be tough when we’re stressed: if you can help with that, offer.
When you’re trying to process your feelings about something big, or do something a lot of people have strong feelings about, or something you may be scared about, staying focused on practical things can be much harder. An offer of help with that kind of stuff is a great offer.
I’m talking about things like a checklist of things that a person needs to do, schedule, arrange or acquire for before, during and after abortion. Can you help make it and help manage it? That help might be nbd for you, but can make the whole experience much, much easier for the person at the center of it. Making phone calls that you are able to make for someone else is another similarly great offer, as is gathering all the directions and warnings for medications, or creating a note or file with all the important warnings and phone numbers in one place. If you’re someone good at organizing, this is a great place for those skills.
Do’s and Don’ts
If you are going to be with them on the day of their abortion, ask them if there is anything they absolutely want you to do and anything they absolutely do NOT want you to do. What sets any of us off into an emotionally bad place is so individual, and how we all feel about abortion, and whatever circumstances got us there, is also all over the place. This is another situation in which asking rather than assuming is the way to go.
Don’t commit to anything you’re not able to do.
It’s not helpful to think someone is doing something for you and only to find out in the 11th hour that they aren’t coming through. Sometimes it’s downright catastrophic. With some kinds of help with abortion—like rides or offers of money to help pay for it—if that help falls through, an abortion may fall through, too. Given that timing is everything when it comes to abortion, and that missing one or an important part of one can mean someone who wants or needs an abortion just can’t get one, period, it’s vital to only offer some kinds of help that you absolutely, positively, can and will follow through with. If you want to make sure your friend knows you care for them, instead of overcommitting, offer what you are actually able to deliver, or something pretty low-stakes, and then just be generally great around all of this, before, during and after.
Don’t try and be a superhero.
You are only human, and that includes the many limitations being human comes with. If your time, money, energy and abilities aren’t boundless, you won’t do anyone any favors if you act like they are. If you really, really, really want to help, or the person getting an abortion doesn’t seem to have anyone but you, it can be really tempting to offer anything and everything, but trust me when I tell you that whatever your actual capacity and abilities are, offering them to the degree that you can is enough.
No one can be all things to one person, period, and very much so in this context. If they need more than you can offer, you might be able to instead help them build a support network, or help them connect with quality help and other resources (check the list here for some places to start). Sometimes we can’t even actually do anything practical a person needs, but that’s okay. Everyone having an abortion also needs some kind of kindness, care and emotional support, and you can express those things with words alone, too.
You may find that you have limitations specific to helping someone with an abortion, too, especially in the current state of things where help can mean taking legal or other risks. Your friend isn’t going to be helped if you agree to take a risk you aren’t actually okay with and either back out, or wind up wanting to process your feelings with them about the risks you’re taking when they’re the one getting the abortion.
Is any kind of abuse involved? Seek out qualified help.
If your friend might not be totally safe at any point before, during or after their abortion because of an abusive partner, family member, or some other kind of abusive person or group, again, I want to remind you not to try and be a superhero. It’s easy enough to make a mess of challenging situations when abuse isn’t part of the picture, but handling abusive people, or trying to get someone safe from it single-handedly, or with a group of people who do not know what they are doing, is a very bad idea. If you haven’t been through it yourself or aren’t trained and backed up properly in this kind of intervention, you can wind up unintentionally putting your friend in more danger, on top of endangering yourself.
Abusive people are dangerous, and they tend to only be intimidated or de-escalated by a very specific kind of person with a very specific kind of training. Getting out of abuse or even just staying away from an abusive person is also often a lot harder than you might think, and isn’t something just anyone can help with well. This is one of those cases where just wanting to help often just isn’t enough.
The best things you can do for someone in this situation are to find them some local DV/IPV victim-help organizations (if you don’t know how to do that, you can always come into our direct services and ask us to help you) and help them get any help they want connecting to those. In the event that a provider is involved, let them know that they can tell an abortion provider about it so their provider can engage the systems all of them have in place to deal with dangerous people.
Don’t hover.
Make sure you’re giving them the space for themselves and for rest that they want. This can be another place where it’s really easy to project our own needs unto someone else. But whether it’s a surgical or a self-managed medical abortion, abortion can be pretty exhausting as a physical process alone, let alone anything emotional. Between the stress that often precedes and accompanies it, even if and when someone is relieved to be having one, and what the end of even a very early pregnancy can ask of our bodies, what a lot of folks want after and around an abortion is just peace and rest. You can find out how much care is enough and how much is too much by just checking in with them, including before you come over anywhere throughout the process.
When should you stop checking in with them? Unless you have to stop because of a limitation or need on your end—in which case, you should clearly communicate that—when they ask you not to do it anymore is when to stop.
Respect their privacy like their life depended on it. Because it might.
In our world at the moment, depending on where they live and what the policies there are around abortion, the quality of their life certainly might depend on it. Unless they ask you to tell someone else for them, or you’re close to someone else they have also let in and given you permission to talk about it with, keep their abortion and anything about it to yourself. If you feel like you need support for yourself with any part you’re playing, ideally that’s something to share with someone who needs to keep what you share with them confidential, like a therapist. If you don’t have one of those, talk only to people you are 300% sure you can trust with the information you want to share, and do your best to keep things like your friend’s identity confidential.
If and when you can’t be completely supportive or helpful, get out of the way.
Sometimes having your own feelings may mean having feelings that keep you from being able to be emotionally or otherwise supportive. Maybe that’s because you had a bad experience with abortion yourself, because it’s in conflict with your own belief system, because you have your own judgements about some aspect of the choices they are making, or because you have some direct involvement in or attachment to their pregnancy. Whatever the reason, if you think or are sure that you can’t be helpful and supportive, just own that and let others (hopefully) step in. Again, it’s okay to have limits and certainly to have your own feelings. You’re a human being. It’s something that will happen quite regularly. But in this case, it’s really important to make sure that you aren’t making your feelings your friend’s problem. They are who needs to be centered in this.
