Look at all these beautiful stories! Women and girls of various ages, it brought me to tears reading that I’m not alone.

To start off, when I was 8 years old, my new stepdad came into the picture and started sexually abusing my handicapped sister and I. He decided to rape me after I got my period, I had just turned 11 years old. I hadn’t even been through health education at school yet, but I was already having nightmares that there was an alien growing inside me. I was getting scared because my period wouldn’t come and I felt through the weeks my “stomach” growing so I would stay in my room and punch myself. I did it until my period came back 4 months later and those nightmares left. When it came back, for years I suffered the worst menstrual cramps. I would roll around on the cold floor from such pain. The 3 years of abuse I tolerated has affected my life so much. It led me to spending the past 9+ years feeling suicidal, depression, drugs, putting myself in certain positions to be vulnerable to rape, horrible STDs, bulimia, a lot of loneliness, anger and hatred.

I had my abortion when I was 19. When I found out I was pregnant, I actually thought I had stomach poisoning. I was in so much pain. I couldn’t sleep or eat. I was throwing up bile. My stomach was burning in agony. I went to the ER on the city bus only for them to tell me I was 5 weeks pregnant and they even performed a sonogram to show me a very slow heartbeat. In my head, I was already thinking I HAVE TO get rid of it. I felt so stupid when I left, 5 years later those $1,500 the insurance didn’t cover are still on my credit report. I had just started a hard labor job, working on peoples’ homes, my new boyfriend did not have a job, we were staying with my handicap sister and she was about to lose her section 8 because we were there but we had nowhere else to go. Plus, I am traumatized from my childhood.

I still look in the mirror feeling like that 9 year old girl, feeling so dirty, ashamed, wondering where did I go wrong, why did I deserve this when he had my mom, that’s what she was for. Part of me one day wants to have a daughter, give her the childhood I never got to have and protect her with all my might but the other part of me says that would be selfish to do so in a horrible world where offenders have more rights than innocent children, where feminists are mocked for standing up for our rights, where people use religion to hurt each other, where the deep web exists, where human-trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry.

That is why I am Pro-choice. No young girl, no woman, no living viable person should be forced into this sick world without loving parents to protect them. I didn’t ask to be born, they don’t either.

I’m also very thankful for Planned Parenthood. They were there when I needed birth control, when I needed std tests and treatments, the morning after pill. But especially my abortion. Thank you.