When I was 16 (going on 17…!) I lost my virginity to a college guy. I don’t remember even really know what was going on but the next thing I knew I was pregnant. This was 3 years after Roe v. Wade and I had no idea at all what was happening to my body.

I decided on denial and kept it hidden, hoping somehow nature would take care of it. I didn’t know about sex, I didn’t know about pregnancy and I didn’t know about abortion. By what I now know to be “deliberate error” my parents found out. My mother vomited and asserted I was raped (which in today’s rightly evolving definition in fact I was!). My father softened and took over (in a kindly way) and scheduled an appt. for an abortion with Planned Parenthood. We were Catholic and this was very hard on my mother. Not so much for me as I wanted my life to go back to normal. I was grateful to Planned Parenthood for teaching my father and I how to talk to each other before the abortion, forcing us to frankly face my reality – which we did together. It shaped our relationship until he died. But the abortion itself was hard. It felt a bit like a second violation – I hadn’t been to a gynecologist so this was really my first time. I wasn’t prepared for it and likely due to hormone surges I felt very depressed about it during and some time after. Then, from the Catholic point of view it took years to forgive myself. Then, almost miraculously, I woke up to myself and realized had I NOT had the abortion, I would have delivered a baby into a world where it wasn’t wanted or planned for, I would have plummeted into self loathing and the course of my life would have been dramatically and permanently altered from what it is today. I do not regret the decision – I regret feeling guilty about it for many years. I believe, too, Abortions should be LEGAL and INFREQUENT.