We were grateful that science was able to give us the facts we needed and grateful that a physician was there to support us in our very tough and personal decision.

In early December of 2006, a confluence of events caused a long-held dam to burst around my and my closest friend’s experience with our abortions (mine being 23 years earlier, in 1983, when I was 19).

Barbara's story.

I was with my now husband, then boyfriend. I went back and forth between a diaphragm and spermicide. I was very faithful about using birth control.Still, I wound up pregnant.

In the 1920s, my maternal great grandmother became pregnant for the third time. She did not want to raise a third child,  so she went to her ob/ gyn, who performed an abortion after my great grandmother promised to never tell anybody else.

I think I am like many thousands of women who have had abortion and it was a normal part of their life. There are many of us who are just not going to have big dramatic stories.

And that is how it should be.