When I was 21 I had my first abortion. I was madly in love with the guy, but he wasn’t reliable and already had two kids he didn’t support. I was unemployed and partying my nights away in my first apartment. His mother and he talked me into an abortion and it only made the decision easier. It was Martin Luther King Jr. Day 1992.

We were $50.00 short when we arrived at the clinic.

So he went next door to the bakery and shoveled snow (it stormed the night before) and earned the money we needed to get it done.

I cried the whole day, and all the way through the abortion. I cried for two months on and off, but then I stopped crying and I made peace with my decision.

Two years later I had moved from the Mid-west to the East Coast and was working, in the ultimate bachelorette pad, in a relationship with a guy who was madly in love with me and having the time of my life. We were being safe with over the counter birth control but that spring I discovered I was pregnant.

Instantly I knew I wasn’t ready. He begged me to keep it and was so heartbroken when I refused to continue the pregnancy, he moved out. He and a friend went with me to have the abortion and that same week he moved out. I didn’t cry this time.

In July 2006, two little girls came into my life as foster children placed with me through the state. Three years later I gave birth to a son and shortly after the adoption was finalized for my two little girls.

Ironically my daughters were born the same years I had abortions. I always said my children found there way to me through another vessel. They’re now 22 and 20 years old.