Abortion was a word that put fright and horror in people like the name ‘boogieman’ was supposed to in children.

For Illinois being so liberal, I was stuck in a small town with strict conservative thought processes. My friends and family never did bring the word up or how they felt about it, because like everything else, it didn’t matter and they could just pretend it never existed or happened. Until it did. I was with a mentally abusive man and I hadn’t been using birth control but the ‘pull out method’. One time he decided he wasn’t going to use that method but instead faked it. Weeks later when I couldn’t stop throwing up I took a test and two lines showed up. I was panicked and felt trapped. I knew I financially couldn’t support a child nor was I in the mental state to. (I had just been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and ptsd) When I brought up abortion to him he and I fought until I told him with or without his help an abortion would be happening. I’ll never forget walking into the clinic and paying for the pills. Being as poor as I was, I was lucky I could pay for the procedure. But I knew if I couldn’t afford 400 for the pills, I certainly couldn’t afford a child and that child would suffer. With so many children rotting away in orphanages and the horror stories of foster care, I resigned from the idea of adoption quickly. I had never felt a worse pain. And because it was a small town and a friend I trusted who ended up not being trustworthy, the whole town began to know of my ‘miscarriage’. I was too sashamedto say it was an abortion. I am telling my story because no one should ever have to lie or cover up their abortion and call it a miscarriage for them to be understood. No one should have to plea with their boyfriend or whatever else at the time to get the abortion. A child is a choice of a lifetime. I went on to have one more abortion and through that my resolve strengthened and the chains of shame were no longer shackling me. I have since been the keeper of many abortions women have had because they came to me after hearing the slut shaming and other cruel things about me in abortion. They know I know the struggle of the choice, and the guilt that town and many towns similar bring. I also, in my own time, chose to have a little girl who is now two years old and I am happily expecting another. :] It is a woman’s right and woman’s choice to determine if and when she is having children, and it is not a matter of ‘not having sex if you don’t want it to happen’. I hope my story reaches out and touches at least one person and let’s them know they’re not alone.