Anna

I was a young woman in my early twenties at the beginning of the 1990s. I had recently been wooed by and proposed to by a man who was significantly older than I was. He encouraged me to quit my job to come and work for him and to move in before we were married (which I did). After we started living together, he wanted us to have a baby right away. I thought I was in love and this was how life was to go.

“I made that choice with the help of my doctors. Not my boss or a big corporation, not the government, not society.”

After getting pregnant, I went to visit my family out of state for the first time in many years. While I was on vacation, my then fiancée told me that he didn’t want to get married, didn’t want to have a baby together, and wanted me to move out (he found someone else).

I was 24, unemployed, homeless, and pregnant. I knew there was no way I could take care of a child or myself at that point. With the help of financial assistance from my family ($200) I was able to safely and quickly obtain an abortion.

I do not regret this decision. I am not ashamed of the choice I had to make; it was the right thing to do for me.

Now that I am 45 years old and the mother of two beautiful teenage girls, I do not lie to them about this and in fact I have been more than open about all the choices I have made in my life. But that is the exact point, I had a choice and I made that choice with the help of my doctors. Not my boss or a big corporation, not the government, not society, just me and the doctor assisting me.