As usually follows with girls like I was, I married early to the first man that came along offering to not hit me and to love me unconditionally (or so I thought). Little did I understand relationships, love or a man can control a woman through her biology.

At seventeen I was having sex with him and making promises he demanded to never have an abortion if I became pregnant, even though he refused to use birth control of any kind and I had no way to access the pill. I was living with him soon after and was pregnant within a few months. That was in 1982.

By 1986, I had three children, was a high school drop-out, had no driver’s license, no money, no family, had moved at least ten times and been homeless nearly as many. We were living in yet another homeless shelter, this one providing little apartments in a large building for families like us. I was refusing to have sex with him out of fear of becoming pregnant again. But one morning I woke up completely naked and knew that the “dream” I had the night before was anything but. Even before I bought the pregnancy later in the week, I know I was pregnant, I could feel it. I knew my body well.

Determined to leave him this time and not be trapped by the vulnerability of pregnancy, I pulled together the courage to talk to the shelter director who talked my husband into taking me down for an abortion. He wasn’t happy, but the intervention by a third party put him on the spot and he complied. Of course he never paid the bill, but I was on the road to being independent.

Once I left him in the early nineties I became wild and experimental for about two years. I was angry, confused and overwhelmed and making up for the “sowing oats” period that I never had. I became pregnant twice, once with a one-night stand which I aborted within six weeks; it was an easy quick procedure. The other time with a long-term boyfriend with whom I was careless one afternoon – voila! I could pinpoint it to the day we had sex with no protection.

Of course he too like my ex-husband had attempted to use the pregnancy as a way to trap me into a married relationship with him, by telling everyone about it, therefore I guess guilting me out of making the decision to abort. He also told everyone we were getting married (regular course of events at one time eh?).

It didn’t work, even though I was late along, I managed to get a friend to drive me to where I could abort. I bled a lot, but I can tell you I felt emancipated even more than the first or second time. I also swore that I had grown up enough to at least be more responsible with my sexual activities. I know I’m fertile like crazy, so I have to be extra careful. I can remember his friends who were “in the know” about the abortion saw me and tried to guilt me saying, “I can’t believe you did it, and not even consulting R…. first!” and such.

I don’t regret my decisions.

Once I left my ex-husband he never supported his three children as he barely did while we were together. The other man who tried to trap me with pregnancy is presently in prison for 6 years as a repeat offender batterer. I was never at the end of his hand, but I might have been if I had not had the option of abortion in order to go my own way.

I am a businesswoman now and also attending college; my children are over their teen years and I may soon for the first time in my adult life, begin to earn a middle class living. I have spent twenty years of my life raising my children alone and in poverty. I struggle to go to college and struggle to survive. One more child might have broken me. My children know poverty like children in this country should never know.

No, I certainly don’t regret the painless, trouble free abortions I had, not for a minute.