Adelle LaRue Settle didn’t want an abortion, but she needed one when life circumstances made it impossible for her to have a baby. Here, she shares her story with Dogwood special correspondent Bonnie Fuller.
I was completely distraught after I had my abortion.
I believed it was the right choice at the time, and I stand by that choice. I have no regrets, and every decision that I was able to make after that has led me to a wonderful life, including having a daughter.
But at the time, when I was 31 and had just started a new job as a lawyer with the federal government, it deeply impacted me because I didn’t know if I was ever going to have the opportunity to have a family. I didn’t know if I was giving up my one chance to have a baby. You never know what’s coming down the line. It was a very painful experience.
I’m originally from Ypsilanti, Michigan. After I graduated from a small liberal arts college in Michigan, I moved to Alexandria, Virginia, and I’ve been in Virginia ever since.
I worked for a few years and then realized that since my goal was to help pass legislation that would make the world a better place, I would need to go to law school and become an attorney.
Right after graduating from law school, I had just gotten my first job as a lawyer in a federal government agency. I had been in a relationship with a man for about four and a half years, and we were living together.
It was a good relationship, but I knew that we would never get married because I wanted children and he definitely did not. I had been on the pill for birth control, but because I was getting migraine headaches, my doctor had told me to stop, so we were using condoms and spermicide. I unintentionally became pregnant.
I knew that something was weird because I was having to pee so much more often, and then my chest started to feel tender. When I didn’t get my period, my boyfriend and I bought all different types of pregnancy tests at the store to make sure that we would get an accurate reading.
They all were positive.
I was absolutely stunned. And I was in a very emotionally complicated situation.
It was something that I wanted so much, but the pregnancy was at the wrong time and with the wrong person.
My boyfriend was adamantly opposed to me continuing the pregnancy. He did not react with kindness or grace. He told me that if I decided to have this child, he would do everything in his power to escape paying a penny more than mandated child support.
And I believed him. It was very painful.
I think he was really scared about what this was going to do to his future career and his life. Becoming a parent was completely incompatible with his goals.
Abortion paved way for family stability, career ambitions
For my part, I very much wanted to be a mother, but I also wanted to be with a partner who was equally as excited to have a child as I was, and I wanted to do so in a financially secure and responsible way. I didn’t know how I would be able to manage on my own. I was a new federal employee, and we didn’t have paid family leave yet—that wasn’t a thing. I would have to accrue time off, but I had just started my job.
Plus, I had just incurred a ton of law school loan debt, and my salary would only have covered rent and daycare, with nothing left to live on. My whole family was in Michigan, and I didn’t yet have a core community of friends I could rely on as a support system.
So I made a choice that I would terminate this pregnancy, then I would end this relationship and seek out a future where I could meet a man who wanted children as well.
Getting an abortion was complicated because at the time, Virginia had a law requiring you to get a sonogram (to see the beginnings of the pregnancy) and then to wait 24 hours before getting an abortion.
A number of abortion clinics had closed because of other regulatory requirements, so it was difficult to get an immediate appointment for the procedure. I didn’t want to wait and remain pregnant for any longer than necessary. I was able to get an appointment at the Washington, DC Planned Parenthood location and have an abortion when I was just six weeks pregnant.
Having an abortion isn’t pleasant, but the staff were very kind and respectful. A medical provider did an ultrasound and reassured me that everything looked normal. The doctor explained that the abortion would not cause any lasting harm and that I wasn’t ending the possibility of being a mother at a future point.
My boyfriend went with me to the clinic, I think mostly just to make sure I did the termination. He paid for it, which was the least he could do.
I grieved over having had to have the abortion for about six months, so I didn’t have a big breakup in me until the next year. But finally I gathered myself up, found my own tiny one-bedroom apartment in DC, and started life over again.
It was scary because I didn’t know if I would ever meet a man who wanted to get married and have a child. But after a couple of months, I began dating and met a wonderful man. We both had similar values and goals, including wanting to get married and have a family.
He proposed six weeks after we met, on New Year’s Eve. We had dinner at my favorite Washington, DC restaurant, Rose’s Luxury. We went for a walk after dinner, and he proposed in front of the US Capitol building.
We got married on March 1 in Red Rock National Conservation Area on a cliff overlooking the valley, and I got pregnant with my daughter two months later.
I had told my future husband about my abortion experience within a couple of days of our meeting, and he thought it was all OK. He reassured me that he wanted children. When I found out that I was pregnant, I was over the moon. We got engaged on New Year’s Eve, and my daughter was born on Christmas Day.
I have always really cared about kids, and ever since I was a teenager, I wanted to work to make the world a better place. I found my mission when my daughter was about 3 years old.
I heard a story on NPR about a little boy in a New Mexico elementary school whose mother had forgotten to refill his lunch money card. When he went through the cafeteria lunch line, the lunch lady took his tray away and threw the food in the trash. This happened in front of all the other children because he had no money on his card to pay for it. Instead, he was given an ‘“alternative”’ sandwich that was two pieces of bread with a slice of cheese in it.
When I looked into this, I was horrified that “lunch-shaming” was also going on in our Virginia public schools and that children here were going hungry when their parents couldn’t afford to pay for meals and they had lunch debt. Kids in my state were being traumatized and being punished and going hungry because of their parents’ finances.
I’ve worked now for nine and a half years with Danica Roem, my state senator, to get numerous legislative bills passed so that no child in any of our public schools, from kindergarten to 12th grade, is ever denied a meal today, whether they can pay for it or not.
It really makes me feel good that thousands of Virginia kids are eating breakfast and lunch at school every day.
My daughter, who is almost 12 now, is very proud of me too.
A mismanaged miscarriage shaped support for Question 1
Now, after my daughter was born, I did get pregnant again two years later—it happened unexpectedly while I was using an IUD, which are considered to be 99% effective at preventing pregnancy. I didn’t know that I was pregnant because I felt confident in my birth control and wasn’t looking out for any symptoms, plus my periods were very light because of the IUD.
However, while I was at the office one day, I started bleeding profusely, and I suspected that I might be having a miscarriage. What else could it be? When I got home, I took a pregnancy test, and it was positive, so I went to a hospital ER because I was bleeding so heavily.
The doctor there confirmed the miscarriage and sent me home to “let nature take its course.” It would have been nice to have been offered additional assistance there, like a D&C procedure.
Editor’s note: A dilation and curettage procedure would have stopped Adelle’s bleeding.
So I went home and was bleeding so much that I passed out and fell over on the bathroom floor. In retrospect, I should have gone back to the hospital. But I thought that I could tough it out. Luckily, I didn’t die.
Editor’s note: Heavy bleeding after a miscarriage results from retained fetal material, including retained placenta. The uterus will keep contracting and trying to expel the material, which leads to heavy blood loss. Without a D&C or D&E (dilation and evacuation) procedure to evacuate the contents of the uterus, a woman can die. Since states began passing abortion bans, multiple miscarrying women have died when doctors and hospitals delayed providing D&Cs because the procedure is medically the same as an abortion.
It’s because of my abortion and then my miscarriage that I want every citizen in Virginia to vote yes on ballot Question 1, the Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment, which is on the midterm ballot.
READ MORE: Virginia nurse who nearly died after a miscarriage speaks out about Question 1
Editor’s note: If passed, ballot Question 1 would amend Virginia’s constitution to establish “the right to make and effectuate one’s own decisions about all matters related to one’s pregnancy.” and “prohibit the state from prosecuting or penalizing a mother or another individual from receiving or aiding in a miscarriage, stillbirth, or an abortion.” Third-trimester abortions would be allowed if the fetus was not viable or to protect the physical or mental health of the mother per a physician’s judgment.
There are so many ways that this amendment to our state constitution would protect women and also the medical providers who are supposed to be giving them reproductive healthcare.
I want to make sure that doctors are not facing any kind of legal (or civil) penalties for providing that care. I want them to feel confident in offering every single option to women who are experiencing a miscarriage, for example, like I did. Because if women like me are bleeding profusely and a doctor doesn’t feel safe offering procedures like a D&C or D&E, I don’t want to see women potentially losing their lives.
If my bleeding had been a little more severe, I might not have lived through my miscarriage, and I would have left my 2-year-old daughter. As it was, my heavy bleeding lasted for several days before it stopped.
When I heard that the Supreme Court had struck down Roe vs. Wade, I cried and cried. Then I dressed up in a red dress that looked like a handmaiden’s dress from “The Handmaid’s Tale” and I took a picture in front of my house with my head down, just looking miserable.
I felt like I was in mourning for my life, my daughter’s life, and the lives of so many other women that were going to change for the worse because of that decision. Politicians are never going to better decide what happens to our bodies than we, as women, are. The choice should be between me and a doctor, not me and a politician.
I was able to obtain an abortion, and it meant that I am able to be here now as an amazing mom, to love my family, be a productive member of society, and advocate for kids so they don’t go hungry.
I feel like it’s important for me to speak out about passing ballot Question 1.
Listen, Virginia is the last state in the South where women can come—from all over the South—and get an abortion (past 12 weeks of pregnancy). In North Carolina, abortion is legal until 12 weeks and six days.
It’s terrible that you have to leave your state to get healthcare. How would men feel if they had to leave their state to get a colonoscopy?
Life is complicated, and nothing about having a family is straightforward and easy.
But the decision to vote yes to Question 1 on your ballot is straightforward and easy, because it leaves options open for everyone.
READ MORE: Virginia ballot questions: 3 constitutional amendments voters will decide this fall
