Abortions were not legal where I lived in 1972. Luckily, in some 13 states they were legal for certain specified reasons, such as the physical and mental health of the mother or in cases of incest or rape. My oldest brother lived in one of those states, so I could go to “visit” him and get a legal abortion. Women were still dying from illegal abortions in those days.

The hard part was telling my mother, who was aghast. But she didn’t want her good girl star student pregnant any more than I wanted to have a baby. She made arrangements for “counseling,” which involved talking to a minister and telling him that I wanted the abortion and wasn’t being coerced.

I should backtrack here. I had become sexually active a year earlier, with my high school sweetheart. We waited until we were both 17 to give each other our virginity. We never used any kind of birth control – I guess I thought we were invulnerable. Or impregnable.

Anyway, we – that is, my mother – cooked up a cover story about how I was going to visit my brother for a week as kind of a reward for making the top ten and earning a scholarship. He took me to the clinic and I’m sure everyone there thought he was the father, even though he was 14 years older than I – and gay.

The method used was vacuum aspiration. The doctor injected my cervix with an anesthetic, and then they hooked up the suction pump. The injection hurt only a little, the suction just felt weird. It took maybe ten minutes in all, and I was told to get up and go to the recovery room. I fainted when I stood up, but I recovered quickly. Afterwards the drugs they gave me to contract my uterus caused some cramping. I was relieved but still a little sad. Through it all and to this day, I know I made the right decision. I’m not one bit sorry.