Like most women, I grew up hearing about how wonderful and natural it is to be a mother, and how every woman should want kids. My mother would fill my ears with how selfish childfree people are, how cold and heartless they are, and how the only perfect love is found in a parent. She always said that abortion is evil, is a sin, and makes women into murderers.
I'm calling bullshit.
At age 19, I enlisted in the Navy to help pay for school. My job was
good,
very high-profile, and once I re-started college, it seemed that
nothing was
going to stop me. I was madly in love with a great guy, an artistic
type who
was willing to follow me wherever the Navy sent me. I married the man,
who
later turned out to be emotionally abusive, substance-dependent, and
who
refused to work and help support our family unit. After a few years of
rocky
marriage he left me.
I thought that nothing could be worse, but I was wrong. I missed a
period,
but at first thought nothing of it. Severe stress can make your periods
irregular, right? Not this time. When my period was absent for the
second
time, I took a pregnancy test, and cried when I saw the results. My
life was
hard enough: being on active duty and up for promotion, in the middle
of
divorce proceedings, and the Universe was making me a mother to the
child of
a man who had just run out on me? There was never any debate, no "what
if?",
no questions. There was only a brief moment of utter horror, then a
firm
resolve to undo this. I was so broke from the divorce that I had to
borrow
money from a friend to go to Planned Parenthood. I never told anyone in
my
chain of command, I never put it in my Navy medical record. Some things
just
aren't anyone else's business. I took a week of leave, claiming that I
needed time to get things in order after the divorce. On Monday I had
the
abortion procedure. The aftereffects weren't that bad; the cramps were
enough to make me want to stay in bed for the day. On Tuesday I got up
and
slowly started putting myself back together.
That was 5 years ago. Today I'm 28, moving forward in a Navy career,
now
married to a man who takes his wife as seriously as she does. We
support
each other's work, and have a great time being together. I asked him
once,
"Would you have married me if I had a kid?" He answered, "I wouldn't
have
dated you if you had a kid." The thought of being without him is
unbearable,
and if I'd kept my ex's baby, he wouldn't be here. There would be only
my
child, and miserable, fruitless attempts to get support from the man
who
proved that he didn't care. There would be no Navy career, only
countless
man-hours lost to daycare problems and sick days. There would be no
self-respect, there would be only self-loathing and crushing resentment
and
hatred of the child that thankfully never came to be.
I'm a stable, happy, productive member of today's society, and part of
the
best Navy in the world. I had an abortion, and I'm not sorry.
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