“Dad saved me from abortion in the last moment”

Viky Berbec is now a mother of two and recounts how she was almost aborted

In the year when communism was almost over and while there was a law prohibiting abortion in most cases, my mother fell pregnant with her third child and decided to get a clandestine abortion at a woman from her village. By divine intervention, my father happened to find out from my grandmother and, in a veritable inner turmoil, got on his bicycle and went desperately looking for my mother…

When he found her, he begged her not to do that, because he wanted so much a baby boy in the home, since they already had two girls. He even threatened to inform the authorities about the illegal abortion if need be.

So, one spring month, I came into the world as the third girl of the family. As my father’s much-wanted “boy”, I was called Ionuț (Johnny) in the first years of my life.

My childhood was different from my sisters’, because, in my first school years, my parents found out God had given me a most precious gift: that of plastic art and, later, that of religious inclination.

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How the abortion of twin girls feels after 30 years

“If I had thought for just one moment that ‘solving’ this meant giving up a life, I would have paused for a moment!”

I remember very well my first abortion and my last one!… also the other ones, but not specifically. All sorts of moods, situations, people; but no one around me. Loneliness and mortuary-like coldness! Hospital, tiled walls, cold metal tables.

At first, I didn’t understand what was happening. First of all, I was amazed by what was happening. You feel nothing. At least I didn’t feel pregnant. I just felt that something stopped: 1 week, then 2 and 3 weeks with no menstruation… nothing else. The courses and student life, while the tension at home was heavy like the concrete! I walked into the house and felt a stinging and burning inside. I felt hunted, stalked with perversity. I felt watched, felt like my physiology was so important. No, I don’t think I know how to describe the sensation in words.

Total hostility, like I had done something to THEM! As if I were no longer the daughter, respectively the granddaughter.

After all the sermons, all the years of “talks” in which I was told that “everything, but everything at home is taken care of! You come home: good or bad, right or wrong, we find a solution together”.

Yet, this together might have also meant: “Come home, or else…”

Even now, 30 years later, I have the same bad feeling. It was not the pregnancy that scared me, but my own folks’ reaction to it. They considered it an abomination!

I think they would have protected me with claws and teeth had I killed someone. But it felt like I had shot dead their own lives and turned them to dust. And I could not understand it. I only felt rejected and saw their repulsion towards me, made evident every day! My own mother. And my grandmother. Father didn’t know.

One they I was told: “You did it, you get out of it! And sooner, until it becomes visible!”

And that was it.

From that moment, I ceased to be a child. It was a virtuous woman’s repulsion thrown like a soiled cloth at head of the sinful woman… who refused to repent. Who was unashamed and risked the understanding that a new human was coming into the world. Who might even have unashamedly rejoiced at that thought!

She was a whore who needed to be scared! And I did get scared!

If I had thought for just one moment that ‘solving’ this meant giving up a life, I would have paused for a moment! Had somebody told me: “Girl, do you know what you are doing? It doesn’t matter how you got here. Now it doesn’t matter anymore! What matters now is what you decide, how you protect your baby… How you fight” I did not have that chance. There was no one to tell me that.

And I admit I did not have maternal instinct, either. To protect! I did not think for a moment there was a life in there! (As a matter of fact, there were two, as it turned out.) I might have gone to Father, who had always wanted many children…

But he wasn’t supposed to find out! Not as much for my shame, which did not exist (the virtuous of the family saw the matter differently from how I saw it.) It wasn’t my shame as much as it was their failure.

So, when they threw at me that I should solve it before it started to be visible, I found myself alone in a situation that my body could not feel and my brain and logic could not digest, for lack of complete data. I did not even know whether the “problem” was real! And how people knew it and I did not?

I don’t know how to explain it. I felt so revolted inside. My revolt had to do with patience, violation of privacy, fear and misunderstanding.

I could not understand what was the great evil that I had done. I did not understand why I had to hide the fact that I loved a man whom I understood they did not want and did not like… rationally or involuntarily.

I would lock myself in my room and get scared at any step I would hear on the stairs. I knew then that Mother came accompanied by a spiteful wave. My throat was dry and my eyes burned, I could barely breathe. And so the days went by: one week, then one week more…

I also worked while studying. Work was ok, but I could not focus on it anymore. As for the courses, nobody cared whether I was focused or not.

I remember a work colleague gave me some details. I did not know a woman had those things in case of an “accident”, when she wonders whether to give birth to her child or not… Apparently, everybody knew somebody who could “fix” it. And now abortion was legal, without the restrictions imposed before 1989.

She explained that the closest service to our work was Polizu Maternity. An iron gate: you enter the courtyard and then work your way to the destination. She also told me what was the fee.

“My love” came with me at the Polizu Maternity and the specified sum of money. So I appeared there one morning at 08:00. The place was packed with women in my situation. A whole corridor full of us!…

There was an entrance door. All the women walked with their heads up through that door and… most came back heads bowed, shuffling their feet. They would return to the ward where I waited – some feeling relieved, others deadly quiet. Some of them were even able to make jokes about it and tell what was inside: “It’s so modern! Not with the curette, but with an aspirator. In 3 minutes you are done and won’t feel a thing…”

I could not quite believe you don’t feel anything, since some of them could not even move in their beds… I could see the beautiful October sun and equally beautiful sky through the window.

I wondered when it was my turn to go. I thought maybe their expert eyes told them there was no need to do it in my case… but they called me. I went in. I entered the room, which was obscure. The doctor told me to get on the table.

It was then that I awoke! I saw the table, the hideous stirrups, the machine and the staff who were looking at me grinning when they saw I had not taken my clothes off.

“Girly, do you even know why you are here?” “I don’t”, I said honestly. I meant that I did not know for sure whether I was pregnant or not.

And the man examined me and… yes. He immediately introduced the tip of the aspirator into me and I started to feel how something separated from inside in a sound of watery aspiration which seemed like Alien’s breath. And I started screaming because I could not stand the feeling of burning inside. He had forgotten to give me an anaesthetic, a simple injection. He was in a hurry and I interrupted his “production” flow. It was like abortions on a conveyor belt! I could not even realize what was going on! There could be only a sole purpose on that table! Out! For other options, I should have been in a different room.

I felt like meat at the slaughterhouse! I had that feeling all the time – any time it happened naturally or induced by my own free will. It really hurt then and I can still hear the snorting of the machine, the obscurity of the room and the coldness of the table I was laying on. “How about I die right now and right here?” I thought. They must have had a container where to put us, too, if they could not succeed in whatever they were doing to us.

In the meantime, somebody was inside me, looking for something. And I heard the nurse: “It’s done, it passed”. She must have seen the body of my child passing through the aspirators hose and falling in the collection recipient.

I was explained what to do, what not to do and what to take. I don’t remember. I had just started to feel the smell of blood and that doctor looked like a huge Mengele torturer in a student camp.

I went out on my own feet with my clothes in my arms and returned to the ward where some women rejoiced and others did not, while others told stories about spicy relationships. I wished I could not hear anything. I wished I were at home, in my bed. But there was no home and no bed for me to return to after that day.

I went home. After some time, my relations with the family improved somehow and I was treated a little more humanely. They might have seen that I had solved the problem!

A few odd weeks followed, with malaise but without fever (lucky me!). Yet, something was burdening me. In the meantime, I had an appendectomy and they asked me if I suspected I was pregnant. It was in November, one month later. No! what? What pregnancy? I was afraid they might tell about it to my folks.

I had regular medical checkups until before Christmas. They saw me twice and told me I was all right. I was given three kinds of antibiotics for the local surgical intervention… and that was it. I wonder why the expert women in my home had not seen by that time how much cotton gauze I used and how unwell I was. I was livid and had shivers.

Then December came. December 24.

I was returning home by the tramway from my potentially future mother-in-law, thinking my folks must have gathered to decorate the Christmas tree. It was difficult for me to get back home. My calm had shattered and I could not pretend that nothing had happened. The tramway was as crowded as any working-class neighbourhood tramway. At one end of the vehicle stood a man with a newly-born lamb which could traditionally be caressed for a small fee, as a lucky New Year charm. There were mothball-smelling coats and a cold, somehow sulphur-like light in the tramway. And a strong orange smell!

A visibly pregnant woman sitting on a chair by me had peeled an orange. Oh, my God, how wonderful that orange could smell! I could feel the fresh fruit’s coolness in my palms, even though I had my gloves on and held tight to the bars so I did not fall! It reminded me of the tangerines described by Romanian writer Ionel Teodoreanu in his masterpiece, “At Medeleni”. That fruit had something sensual in it. Between sin and pleasure…

They had already gathered at home. They had just installed a big green Christmas tree… The heavy smell of cabbage rolls filled the air, while the fir tree smell could be felt discreetly.

“I shall be with you right after I change my clothes”, I told them. I had horrible cramps and thought I had had too much to eat while helping my potential mother in lay prepare her cabbage rolls and Christmas steak.

“Are you coming yet?” “Yes. Right away!” I get into the bathroom, thinking maybe it shall pass… And it did pass – but not as I had expected.

I looked and I saw that something had exploded and brownish blood was flowing… and when I put my hand down there, a piece fell in my palm, feeling… like meat! Fringes. At a closer look, similar to a rooster ridge. Oh, my God, then the realization!

I pulled and it came out! I held pieces of my child in my palm. I called my mother, it didn’t matter anymore, it was like my mind was erased. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t flush down the toilet what I held in my hands…

My mother came in and I put it into her hand. She didn’t get it for the first few seconds. Then her system shut down, too. But her reaction didn’t matter anymore. For a few seconds, I cynically hoped they would all find out what I had done and I would be free!

But no! Let us hide everything! I thought the same, it felt OK, as I was too tired and scared to react. I don’t know what my mother did. She threw it out of the window or in the trash.

The point is, after five minutes, the bleeding started. I filled the basin, then the tub. Overnight, I thought I was dying. It went through the bed, I could hear my blood dripping on the floor under the bed!

I don’t know what happened in the rest of the house. I don’t know how they celebrated the Christmas Eve. Or whether they did. I don’t know what Mom said. I think she said exactly what she had to say.

There was no room for anything else because death was around the corner. On that night, I almost died. I didn’t feel any pain. Had no fever. Just bleeding. I honestly don’t know why I didn’t die! My blood flowed all night!

I had this fixed idea that I shouldn’t fall asleep. I knew that when you’re asleep, the hemorrhage is much stronger. I lay still and I could hear the dripping. I realized it had seeped through all the layers I of clothes that I wore, it had seeped through the mattress of the bed and it was dripping on the floor. I lay completely still. If I moved, I felt a river coming out of me. And I ask myself again why didn’t I die on that night.

At some point, my grandmother came and told me to pray to the Mother of God to get me through this ordeal. It was the night when, for everyone, Jesus was born. And I… I was… I couldn’t even think it through. Even now, almost 30 years later, I can’t think it through.

I just thought that I didn’t have the right to pray to the Blessed Virgin, to say anything to her, to even think about her! She was the Virgin Mary! She’s an example of virtue and purity! I am just a sinful little fool, who’s paying for my stupidity! And let me get this straight: I was somewhere in an assumed chaos out of which I could hardly think, speak or even breathe! And I was supposed to think of the Mother of God! I felt ashamed in front of the Mother of God. Not for what was happening to me.

I was ashamed that I had not talked to her before I entered that iron hospital gate. Why didn’t they tell me to pray to the Mother of God then? WHY? Why didn’t someone explain to me then that there is more to this miserable, sordid life of ours from here, with assumed little murders?!!

If only I had known, if only a little bell had rung, a doorbell, a horn… Something! Maybe I would have woken up!

I hadn’t been a saint and I did not pretend that! And I own up to this! But, in that case, I don’t think I would have done what I did! As I know myself now, I think I would have fought! Anyway, I couldn’t care less what anybody said. I only cared what my father said. And, on top of it all, if I had gone to my father instead of my mother (actually I didn’t, they barged in on me and I LET THEM!), I believe things would have been different.

Dad would never have accepted it!! I don’t know what my life would have been like – hard at first with twin girls (one I had lost in the bathroom, but maybe she had also died in October, when the abortion was made and her sister went through the hose). But I’m sure my father would have remained by my side.

On Christmas Day, another doctor, who was on call, had to fix what the other had broken while being fed up with the queues of women waiting in line at the slaughterhouse. The first one didn’t realize I had twins. I should have thought! But I didn’t have all the facts. That’s no excuse. I’m not writing for excuses.

Honestly, I thought I would eventually get over it somehow. NO. I’m not over it. I still feel that burning inside and out, I can feel the little pieces of flesh torn off me, and I can still feel the remains of a little human body in my palm. I won’t be able to forget it unless God lets my mind get astray. I cannot forget. I just chose not to think about it every day.

What else is there to say?

That I couldn’t watch little kids for years.

That I couldn’t listen to Christmas carols for years.

That it took me years to realize that “the love of my life” wasn’t really the love of my life. That he loved me the way he could. He loved because the world looked at us, at him with me beside him. He felt like having won a trophy. When it was infernally difficult for me, I was completely alone. No human being could be near me, because those who could have been there didn’t know what was happening to me. In fact, they solved just a part of the problem… they weren’t near me… As for the others, all the best!

At some point it felt so bad that I wanted to kill myself. The idea was to leave for good and somehow punish them for all their empty words! Because I took responsibility for what I did, but they didn’t.

I don’t know if God forgave me. I pray to Him all the time.

But he sure gave me a break.

For which I thank Him! And I thank my confessor, whom I found much later and who taught me to find peace in the prayer: “God, have mercy on me…”