One Woman’s Story Of Self-Managing Her Abortion In An Anti-Choice State
Managing your own abortion is not a crime in Ohio, but a politically motivated prosecutor might believe Julia should be punished for what she did.
SOMEWHERE IN OHIO
It’s a pretty short drive to the polling site from the cabin where Julia has been self-managing her abortion. Julia took the last of her abortion pills the day before, which she believes have ended her unwanted pregnancy. She still has some minor cramping and is tired from the whole ordeal, but she feels reasonably OK — well enough to go vote on a ballot referendum that could help decide the fate of abortion rights in Ohio.
Issue 1: A Preemptive Attempt to Control Abortion Rights
Issue 1, a ballot initiative to raise the threshold to alter the state constitution from a simple majority — the standard in Ohio for over a century — to 60%, is a preemptive attempt to block a pro-choice constitutional amendment that Ohioans will vote on in November. “It comes down to control,” says Julia, who is being identified by a pseudonym. “They want to control us. They hate women and they want to use this to mobilize voters.” She takes some satisfaction in knowing she induced an abortion all by herself — a small act of resistance as Ohio Republicans actively undermine democracy in order to roll back abortion rights. “I think it scares them that women could self-manage an abortion all on their own,” she says. “Once they realize that we don’t need them, they panic.”
The Risk of Self-Managed Abortion
A few days prior, Julia was frantically rummaging through her closet, looking for the abortion pills she had ordered weeks earlier. After two extremely stressful hours, she found the mifepristone, the first pill in her self-managed abortion regimen, and downed it with a glass of water. Soon, she hoped, she would no longer be pregnant. Finally, I can get this over with, she thought, letting out a small sigh of relief. She told only a handful of friends what she was doing, texting them via the encrypted messaging service Signal and inviting a select few to stop by the cabin she was renting to keep her company. She brought some small dog waste bags to hold all of her used menstrual pads, which she planned to burn later to avoid leaving any evidence at the rental house.
Julia had to be this careful: A politically motivated prosecutor in a deep-red county could attempt to argue what she’s doing is a crime.
The Anti-Choice Environment in Ohio
Hours before Julia took that mifepristone pill, a mom in Nebraska had pleaded guilty to a felony charge for helping her teen daughter self-manage an abortion at 29 weeks pregnant. Similar to Ohio, self-managed abortion is not explicitly illegal in Nebraska, although Nebraska did have a 20-week abortion ban in place when the teen self-managed. The mom faces up to two years in prison. The teen pleaded guilty to one felony charge of concealing or abandoning a dead body, and was sentenced to 90 days in jail plus two years of probation. A photo splashed across newspapers and media outlets showed the young woman crying as a bailiff took her away in handcuffs.
Abortion is legal through 22 weeks of pregnancy in Ohio, but that doesn’t make the state a pro-choice safe haven. Ohio is notorious for some of the most extreme anti-choice legislation in the country. Cincinnati is the birthplace of the National Right to Life, the country’s oldest and largest anti-abortion organization. Ohio was one of a handful of states that attempted to ban abortion at six weeks in 2019 — a restriction that went into effect for a few months after Roe v. Wade fell last year. The ban has been temporarily blocked in court and awaits a ruling from the Republican-dominated Ohio Supreme Court.
Ohio is also home to some of the most radical anti-choice elected officials, like the lawmaker who just last year argued that pregnancy from rape is “an opportunity” for women. Or the state legislators who in 2019 introduced a bill that threatened physicians with murder charges if they didn’t “reimplant an ectopic pregnancy” into a woman’s uterus — a procedure that does not exist in the medical field. And then there’s the Republican state attorney general, David Yost, who went on Fox News and insinuated that the story of a 10-year-old rape victim who was forced to leave the state to get an abortion may not be real. Just weeks ago, Yost signed onto a letter with 18 other state attorneys general to President Joe Biden’s administration, claiming that their states have the legal right to medical records of their residents who travel out of state to get abortions.
The Legal Gray Area
Self-managed abortion is a legal gray area in Ohio. It’s not specifically banned, and most of the abortion-specific laws contain immunities for the pregnant person. But that doesn’t mean someone couldn’t be arrested, charged and thrown in jail for managing their own abortion.
“There’s no law that explicitly makes self-managed abortion illegal in Ohio,” said Jessie Hill, an attorney who litigated against the six-week abortion ban and a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland. “However, there is a lot of legal peril around self-managed abortion because prosecutors can use other kinds of laws and often laws that don’t even directly apply to threaten and prosecute people who are managing their own abortion.”
It’s often rogue prosecutors, religious attorneys general or anti-choice lawmakers ginning up support ahead of election season who make it their mission to go after women like Julia.
‘I’m Very Ready To Not Be Pregnant Anymore’
Julia had rented a small cabin a few towns over because she knew she wouldn’t be able to take care of her young son at home while she was passing the pregnancy. And home, a farm in rural Ohio, came with a lot of work that she wouldn’t be able to keep up with while self-managing. She packed the essentials: menstrual pads for the bleeding; Imodium, anti-nausea medication and a heating pad for the cramps and inevitable pain; her computer and phone charger since she planned to work when she could; blue sweatpants and a pink sweatshirt to wear while curled up on the couch; and lots of underwear. She had already taken her mifepristone pill, so she packed the remaining four misoprostol tablets she plans to take in a day or two.
“I’m very ready to not be pregnant anymore,” Julia tells me when I arrive at the cabin. Her boyfriend, Alex, greets me at the door and offers a drink and a snack, like I’m a friend coming over to hang out on a normal weeknight. The cabin is small but spacious and has a sprawling back porch. When I drive up, there are several “Vote Yes on Issue 1” signs dotting the neighbors’ lawns — an indication that the neighborhood is likely not pro-choice.
Julia and Alex have only been dating for a few months, but Alex teases her like they’ve known each other for years. “I’ve never seen her sit still for this long. She has way too much energy, in the best way possible,” says Alex, who is also being identified by a pseudonym. And from what Julia tells me, it’s true. Growing up on a farm and now living on her own, she prefers driving a tractor to watching Netflix. She can fix almost anything with her hands and she loves to take care of her animals: several horses, two dogs, a cat and a goldfish. She rarely sleeps more than four hours a night, staying busy running a small business and being a political activist in her community. She later laments that she didn’t think to bring a kayak to use in the lake nearby, seemingly forgetting for a minute that she’s about to be bent over in pain for the foreseeable future.
“She never stops. She just gives and gives and gives,” Alex says. “She’s got a fierceness about her.” Julia’s wearing a green and white polka-dot sundress and her blond hair is down. She looks like someone who’s about to host friends for dinner, not someone who’s in the middle of self-managing an abortion. But her cramps haven’t started yet. “I don’t think it’ll…
