Abort Mission - Part I
“I can tell you right now that no one is worse equipped for pregnancy than three dykes in a bathroom. One could argue we were even less prepared than cis men. They looked at the now three plastic sticks and then back up at me. What business did lesbians have being in this situation?”
When a nonbinary lesbian falls victim to the heterosexual advances of a man in black cowboy hat, they immediately forget about it until one fateful Halloween night when they pee on one pink plastic stick…and then two…and then more…and the whole whirlwind sexcapade comes spiraling back to them in the form of two tiny parallel lines.
“Abort Mission” is just that, a mission of identity, ownership, self-love, and bravery. Ly Rosengard’s prose is at once bitingly witty and deeply heartfelt as it analyzes how queer bodies navigate the challenges of intimacy, community, and sexual health within America’s healthcare system.
-Emily
I found out that I was with child on Halloween. I hadn't put any thought toward what an unexpected pregnancy might look like when you're a political lesbian, but a practical slut.
I had just moved from London to New York for a new job. The world was my oyster, or so I thought. When I considered getting a (free) implant from the National Health Service before I left, I decided against it. Just practice lesbianism, was the mantra I told myself. I had vowed no more cis men and was succeeding to a near 100% accuracy, until I went to a day party and accidentally took one of them home with me. What can I say, sometimes your immediate needs outweigh your capacity for an eleven-hour sapphic date – talking until the sun comes up – and the like.
I’d exchanged my blue crochet hat for his black cowboy one, and the rest was history. I insisted we use a condom, despite his protestations, and then it broke. I visably eyerolled. Of course the man who doesn’t want to wear a condom then goes and breaks the fucking thing. Stupid and incompetent.
I was swiftly reminded to be Brooklyn cis man-sober once more. I was pissed, but it does happen. So like on other occasions in my youth, I bought Plan B, got even more agitated thinking of all the other things I could have bought myself for $26, seething that he didn’t even offer to pay for it despite depositing his genetic material within. The only good thing was that the pharmacy was next to my favorite Chinese take out place, Xian’s Famous Foods, so I knocked the pill back with cold Chrysanthemum tea and a slurp of Biang Biang noodles. And that was the end of it.
I have to admit I forgot all about it until I was working from home with my two housemates H and Em one afternoon, sipping on tummy tea. H had said she was feeling a bit sick, and I remember saying something along the lines of: friend, I feel the same way. I’ve been nauseous, I kid you not, for over a month now.
We were sharing a large long table in our kitchen that we had inherited from one of their friends since it was cheaper for us to take than for them to put it in storage. Since I began subletting a couple months ago, we’d gotten close. But that doesn’t mean we looked up from our laptops when we spoke. Most things were just said into the abyss and then we nodded along. This time, they both looked up from their screens.
Wait, for a whole month?
Maybe more, I said.
Are you pregnant lol, they said.
We all laughed our pretty little lesbian heads off. Then the penny dropped.
Wait, actually, maybe.
Quizzical views abounded. I could feel H aging in that very moment, a huge line down her forehead conveying her confusion. They looked at each other, then at me.
WHAT?! Em said, the ‘wh’ sounding like a game time whistle.
I explained the night a couple months before. It didn’t even seem significant enough to tell them at the time. Even though I was still nauseous, I only let the tiniest portion of worry enter my mind. Since it was October 31st and a Wednesday, we were naturally having a Halloween pre-game for the queer night that only happens on Wednesdays because that's the kind of life us lesbians lead. While the gay men get to live it large in one of hundreds of New York establishments dedicated to them every day of the week – and don’t even get me started on the smörgåsbord available for the straights – lesbians are supposed to feel grateful for this one measly school night party. I digress.
I went to the shop to pick up some White Claws and tequila for margaritas. On my way back, I walked past Duane Reed, hesitated, then turned back. I went to the tampon aisle and grabbed two pregnancy tests. I knew I wasn’t pregnant. I’d taken Plan B hadn’t I? It had always done the trick in the past, but I guessed I should just take one for good measure to be 1000% sure. At the check out I avoided eye contact with the cashier, punched in my number for the points and begrudgingly tapped my card, further irritated at the cost plus tax. Just another price gouge for having a uterus. Wonderful.
When I was back home, I helped Em & H finish the Halloween decorations, sticking up a last minute skeleton and some pumpkin bunting from Target. It was minimal effort but it was something. I tried on various outfits, showing them each to my roomies. H and her girlfriend were going as Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker. I didn’t understand the reference, but they held the photo of them up on H’s phone and then posed hand in hand, and I pretended to see the vision. I had no clue how it was Halloween related, but then again Americans don’t really do the scary thing. I guess U.S. culture is scary enough.
On the other hand, I went really spooky and settled on Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop lifestyle brand. I wrote: Goop - This candle smells like my vagina on a piece of paper and taped it to a candle. I found it so obvious that it barely needed further explanation. I wore my deep green velvet suit without a shirt underneath, because I assumed it was something a white woman with Gwyn’s status would wear, and because I wanted to wear a suit without a shirt underneath. That’s what Regina George said Halloween is for.
Just when people started to arrive, I needed to pee and remembered the pregnancy tests. I knew I wasn’t pregnant, so it was casual. I popped my margarita on the side of the bathtub and peed on the stick. It said it needed to wait five mins, so I put it on the sink. But then the bell rang, so I rushed to the front door and proceeded to forget all about it.
Half hour later, a friend went to the toilet and came out holding the stick.
Love the spooky decorations, right down to the preggo test, she said.
Huh? Em and H looked confused.
Oh shit yeh. Pass it here, I said.
How’d you manage to add the extra line?
Sorry, what?
The extra line, the pregnancy one? My friend pointed to the parallel lines stacked on top of each other.
I ran to the bathroom. I hadn’t taken a pregnancy test since I was a teenager, petrified after watching 16 and Pregnant on MTV. My friend had hosted a party involving a large communal hot tub and, since I did not trust any of the disgusting teenage boys in our orbit, I had taken a test. Since then, the only tests I had taken were for COVID. Or Fentanyl.
I fished the box from the bin. I grabbed the instructions, and fanned them out, accordion style.
One line - not pregnant
Two lines - pregnant
Everyone’s conversation at the pre-game seemed to have stopped. My face felt consumed by flames. My first thought was: Fuck, I’m not ready to be on 16 and Pregnant. Keep in mind I’m closer to thirty than teenage at this point…and still in the habit of the ‘omg, I’m so sorry’ text response rather than ‘omg, congratulations!’ when a friend shared a similar result to the one I was staring at right now. Something tells me that however old I am, this will always be my first instinct. Even when and if one day I pay the thousands of dollars necessary to gay conceive, teen pregnancy will always be my immediate fear – thanks, MTV and subpar school sex education.
I locked the bathroom door and peed on two more sticks for good measure. This time, I stayed seated on the toilet. My delusional thought was that if I supervised the sticks this time, they might behave. Come correct, you know? But as I sat there, I watched the lines develop from one to two on both sticks. I texted Em & H.
come to the bathroom
immediately
please
They knocked on the bathroom door. I let them in.
Guys, what the fuck, I said.
I can tell you right now that no one is worse equipped for pregnancy than three dykes in a bathroom. One could argue we were even less prepared than cis men.
They looked at the now three plastic sticks and then back up at me. What business did lesbians have being in this situation?
There was nothing to say. They pulled me in for a group hug. I didn’t even know them that well. I was a mere subletter in their space after all, but we’d quickly bonded, and now we were here, foreheads pressed together in our tiny bathroom, Gwyneth, Kourtney, and a WNBA player I didn’t know, with Lorde playing loudly on the speakers outside, friends and acquaintances taking shots and sipping margs in all manner of unscary Halloween costumes. When we finally emerged from the bathroom, my margarita now long gone, I grabbed a cold cherry White Claw from the fridge. Em & H gave me a look that said are you sure?
What? It’s not like I’m keeping it! I mouthed & gestured.
They nodded as if to say fair enough.
I opened my throat and took a long swig.
You don’t even like White Claws, Em said. She looked disgusted. Let me make you a marg.
I wasn’t too sure why one wasn’t meant to drink when pregnant, but I assumed it was for the health of the baby. But this wasn’t a baby. I’d surely rather have a White Claw induced miscarriage, rather than one that required emotional and personal admin, calling up Planned Parenthood to get an appointment, getting there, then going through with the whole thing. Plus, I’d have to take time off work, and I was saving my days for the Lesbian Volleyball tournament next summer at Cherry Grove.
And didn’t a miscarriage carry less weight, particularly if hard seltzer induced? There’s no way I could be the first, and I certainly wouldn’t be the last. This way, rather than being what those on the right would label a ‘baby-killer,’ I could just be added to the long ass list of people whose wombs expelled the fetus, resulting in a heavier than usual period situation instead. But that would all be far too ‘easy’, and the universe was infrequently that generous to a Leo sun like me.
I looked over at Em who was busy squeezing limes like it was nobody's business.
*****
That night at the club, “Tia Tamera” came on. It was my favorite song to get down to, but tonight, I just couldn’t get into it. As someone who had been–aptly–called a militant feminist, to Doja Cat’s beat I mentally recited everything I knew to be true about pregnancies and abortions: It’s not even a baby. It’s a cluster of cells. It’s super early. It’s nothing. 1 in 3 people with wombs have abortions. You took all the precautions. A condom and Plan B? Gurl* (gender-neutral) you’re good. It happens.
As a former student activist, I had led countless protests for women’s rights, including demos face to face with Christian anti-abortioners wearing body cams and holding giant signs with dead fetuses on them. I’d lost a former friend when I stumbled upon him at the uni society fair where he was sitting with another man behind a ‘pro-life’ table and I lost my shit. All this to say, I knew the facts and figures. The science and the realities. But still, there was something inside me, and that changed things.
The girl I’d been seeing didn’t make the pre-game, but she did make the club. We usually spent a lot of time outside not smoking in the smoking area, but tonight I just wanted to move my body and ideally black out. Pregnant people obnoxiously say they’re eating for two, but that night I was certainly drinking for two. I made sure that we kissed hard and danced endlessly, mostly because we (me and fetus) really just didn’t want to talk. I pushed her up against the wall in the corner. I bit her neck. She bit me back.. We took more shots. She was of course ‘Brooklyn Sober’ so she didn’t, but she bought them for us.
I looked over to see Em at the bar with her partner. We locked eyes. She gave me the NYC ubiquitous you good? nod, to which I raised my beer at her, and she tilted her head to the left with that you sure? kind of look that, while I appreciated it cognitively, had no place in this club. I tilted my head to the other side and gave a look that said I know you’re not meant to drink when you’re pregnant, but that’s for baby health – but this isn’t wasn’t a baby, it’s a cluster of cells that has invaded my body and made me baseline feel like vomiting for months. I smiled and chugged so much Modelo that I let out a burp appropriate for two.
When the lights came on, the girl I was seeing took my drunk ass home, and when in bed waiting for her to come out the bathroom, me and fetus fell asleep. I like to think that she crawled into bed, cuddling me/us and holding my belly. But I can’t be sure. I was out cold.
To be continued…
Ly Rosengard (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, Chinese-English Londoner living in Brooklyn (another one!). Ly is a writer of prose, poetry and recently scripts. By day, Ly is a LGBTQIA+ human rights advocate, by night, they are a writer obsessed with the intersection of mental health & mental illness, queerness, friendship, love, and people power. Ly is currently working on a novel, short stories & a documentary on eroticism, comradeship & the BIPOC queer and trans kink scene here in New York. They’re also working on The Mental, a substack of candid conversations about lived experiences of mental health & mental illness. Ly has been published by The Independent, The Times, Third Place Zine (forthcoming), and published poetry in Chronicles of Pride. Ly has had support from Kenyon Review Writers Workshop (2024) and Tin House (2024). Lily holds a BA in Philosophy & Religion from the University of Cambridge, and an MA in Human Rights from University College London.
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