Free A Heart for Freedom by Chai Ling

matter-of-fact, as if accustomed to this kind of operation. The room was cold. With no anesthesia, she inserted a long tube into my body, and I felt the pain of cutting and heard the sucking sound of a vacuum. I was in agony, but I couldn’t move or cry out. Next to me, an empty bottle began to fill with pinkish white foam. I felt the blood drain from my face, and my heart was in shock. As I felt I was about to faint, I heard the woman’s harsh voice.
    “Are you okay? If you can’t do it, I will leave and come back later.”
    “Oh, please don’t leave,” I begged. “Just finish it.” I could not imagine having to go through this procedure again. Clearly not pleased, she looked at my face carefully and then continued for what seemed like a century before the noise finally came to an end.
    When she left the room, I looked at the bottle by my side. It was filled with redness.
    Half an hour later the woman came back and told me I could go. I managed to walk out of the room and saw my father in the lobby. When the woman told him the procedure was finished, he nodded and started walking. I followed along behind. Pain and shame engulfed me. We went back to the bus and rode the two hours home without saying a word.
    That evening, the pain became even more profound. I lay in bed, listening to my father’s angry outbursts as the tears ran nonstop down my face. I was mad at myself for giving in. I was mad at Qing for making demands. Now I was paying the price. And it was my family who would bear the shame.
    As smart as we Beida students looked to the rest of China, we had no knowledge of how to protect ourselves from the most basic risks in life. We spent all our waking hours learning and preparing for tests, and we had no sex education at home, in high school, or in college.
    When we had studied the reproductive organs in a high school biology class, all the girls blushed and looked at the floor, while the boys stopped their silly acts and paid rapt attention. The classroom was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I was simply too embarrassed to remember anything we were supposed to learn.
    Even if I had known everything about how reproduction works, there was simply no place to acquire protection. In China, couples could not purchase contraception unless they were married. Sex was a subject nobody talked about; yet young men and women were thrown together on college campuses, hundreds of miles from home and away from their family network of support. Disaster was bound to happen, and it did. Although Chinese society was puritanical in its expectations, it left a vacuum for how to prepare for and deal with our youthful emotions.
     
* * *
    Qing did not learn about the pregnancy or the abortion until I was back on campus. He was sorry and treated me tenderly. We talked it over and hoped we could put the pain behind us.
    I soon became busy with my transition from the geology department to the psychology department, and time flew by. A year later, after the memory of the pain and shock had faded, an innocent hug and kiss caught both of us by surprise and led to my becoming pregnant again. This time I was even more upset. I blamed Qing, but inside I was angrier with myself for allowing it to happen. I wrote a letter to Qing’s family and told them. His father came to Beijing, and we were all embarrassed and upset. There was no discussion of any options—unlike America, there were no options. Under the one-child policy, unmarried couples were not allowed to have children. In addition, pregnant couples would be expelled from the university and sent home, where they would suffer social disgrace and be assigned to meager jobs. That would be their future. All the years of study, preparation, hope, and dreams would be gone. Qing’s father was well aware of the consequences. He took me to a nearby hospital, and this time I was given anesthesia before the abortion. I never told my own father what happened.
    The second time around left a