I didn’t exactly have an abortion. I did have to have an abortion procedure that saved my life. If that procedure had been illegal or otherwise unavailable, I would have died 2 days after turning 17 for nothing.

I wasn’t a particularly naive or ignorant teenager, but I found myself in a relationship with a boy in a gang who threatened me constantly, making me do things I didn’t want to and ended up pregnant. I didn’t want a baby but he said he would kill me if I got an abortion. When I told my mother she took me to the doctor. During the ultrasound he seemed confused by what he was looking at and had to call in another doctor. They finally realized that I had miscarried but my body hadn’t expelled it and I was massively hemorrhaging internally. I had the procedure right then without any anesthesia or really much drugs at all that I remember.

It turned out that the zygote had never attached to the umbilical cord. Even if I had wanted a child, it never would have become viable. If the people that want to outlaw all abortions had their way, I would have just bled internally to death. For nothing.