My name is Tatenda Mtisi*, I am twenty-two years of age and studying Pharmacy at the University of Zimbabwe.

I was eighteen, still giddy from having made it to university, when it seemed like all I had achieved and hoped to achieve would be brought down by two pink lines on a pregnancy test. It had taken missing my period for the third month in a row for me to finally start entertaining the thought that I could be pregnant. I wasn’t willing to imagine what it would mean if I was actually pregnant. I had a silly feeling I could will the pregnancy away. The father, Simbarashe*, was losing interest in me and could not secure a job because he had no connections. My mother is a single mother who is raising my brother and I all by herself. She had suffered a lot of heartbreaks for me to break her heart by prematurely becoming a mother. I had also started my first year for a Pharmacy degree at my dream university and I could not imagine having to let that go. So, when I turned out to be pregnant I knew there was no way I was keeping the baby.

The first thing Simbarashe thought of saying when I told him was how I was not a virgin when he slept with me. He insisted on this even though we both knew it was not true. I realized then that this was my body, this was my future and this was my baby. Simbarashe could walk away if he wanted, which was what he was doing already, but I could not simply walk away.

 I had to deal with this.

So I talked to my ex-boyfriend who was a nutritionist, he knew a thing or two about these things or so he said. The pills, called cytotec, were very expensive. I tried to beg him to lower the price or give me on credit but he said his hands were tied. These pills, he explained, were gotten from the pharmacy with a prescription why they were insanely expensive.

I don’t know how he did it but Simbarashe found the money and gave it to me. I was to secure the venue and then tell him about it. I was living with my mother in Mabvuku then, that was the only venue I could think of. By a stroke of luck my mother had to visit her village for a week so I had a venue.

On the day the abortion was to be done Simbarashe did not show. When I called him he pretended like he had forgotten but he was never a good liar. He hung up on me and sent a message instead-he was already in Kariba and had forgotten we were supposed to do it that day and he was sorry. I was on my own. I have never felt so lonely in my life, I felt like the whole world had turned against me. It was as if I had done this alone.

It didn’t make it easier that there was need to ‘open the way’ so that the pills could be inserted inside me. Even though Simbarashe had clearly lost interest in me, and I hated him for abandoning me, I wished he was present to do the ‘opening’ but I had to settle for my ex-boyfriend. I hated myself in that moment. Here I was just turned eighteen, pregnant, on my own and being penetrated by my ex-boyfriend so that I could get rid of my boyfriend’s baby. The thought made me laugh and cry at the same time. Where had I gone wrong?

After the pills had been successfully inserted clots of blood started coming out of me, I was vomiting and had diarrhea. I had been told to expect this but I have also been told that even though it’s simply bleeding for a few days for most women things could go wrong.

And they went wrong for me. Very wrong.

When my mother came back four days later, I looked and felt like a ghost. I was losing a lot of blood by the hour pads alone could not hold it in-I had resorted to sitting on the toilet seat instead. My palms were white and I was thin with bones protruding everywhere. In as much as dying scared me I was not ready to come clean and risk going to jail. The ex-boyfriend had also made it clear that his name was never to be mentioned in any of this.

There was also pretending like everything was alright to my mother which was a job and a half since I wouldn’t stop bleeding. The house was in chaos and smelled of sickness. I could barely stand to clean it. My mother was suspicious from the second she walked in so it didn’t come as a surprise when she came into my bedroom holding out the pregnancy test. It had been in the plastic bags we kept used pads.

“Tatenda Mtisi, please explain this to me,” she ordered, her nostrils flaring in anger. I stared at her in silence until she swore under her breath and said “Well, things are about to get very bad for you. Pack your things.”

I felt a different kind of sick settle in my stomach.

She knew Simbarashe, I had introduced them, so she called him unleashed her wrath on him and then told him to come collect his wife. My life felt like it was slipping right through my fingers, in those days I stopped living, I was just being. It is faint in my mind, but I remember my mother dragging me and my bags out of the house, I remember seeing Simbarashe for the first time since he abandoned me. It had been days but he already looked different to me. He wouldn’t look me in the eye and I was to find out when we got to his home in Chitungwiza that he had a girlfriend his family knew and approved of who was not me so being with his family was even more difficult.

On seeing me, his parents volunteered to take me to have my womb cleaned but they made it clear I was not welcome. After I recovered and was regaining my health I started visiting my mother often to beg her to take me back. It was difficult to get my mother to come around but after a month of groveling she reluctantly took me back. We are still learning how to trust each other again, my mother and I. Some days are harder, some days it is like nothing ever happened.

I feel that I am no longer the girl I was before I had the abortion and I am not even trying to be. My mother says things like that do that to you. I don’t regret aborting the baby, I couldn’t offer it anything, the father didn’t even want to be with me. I feel that even though it was done in a dangerous way I owned my body and made decisions over it. I wish though there was a way women could abort without running the risk of losing their lives. How many people have to die before the law allows women to have abortions? Is it better that women are dying and going through unimaginable pains aborting illegally than giving women the protection and freedom they need? Shouldn’t be women given the power to decide when it comes to their bodies?

Story written by Kudzai Parutu, SA Activist, University of Zimbabwe

*names changed for the person’s protection.