By that time, I already had a nine-year-old daughter. Her biological father wasn’t ready to be a real father when we found out I was pregnant. He offered to take me to the nearest abortion clinic, but I knew from the minute I found I was pregnant that I wanted this child. Despite a lot of hardship and poverty through the years, I have never regretted having her. She’s the love of my life.

It was not so with the second pregnancy. Everything that could go wrong did, from the moment of conception. You see, the sex act was not consensual. I made a mistake and got very drunk one night, and was taken advantage of by someone I knew only slightly. I don’t remember much about that night; just waking up in the morning and knowing something was wrong.

A month later, I started having morning sickness. I knew. I visited the local Planned Parenthood clinic for a pregnancy test, and when it came back positive, I knew I had only one course of action.

At the time that I found out I was pregnant, I had just gotten off welfare and found a decent-paying job. I had moved from a very bad part of the town I lived in to a very nice place, the best we’d ever lived in. Financially, emotionally, psychologically, I was destroyed by the thought of carrying the pregnancy to term.

I went to the clinic alone – the friend I chose to ask to come with me was unfortunately not supportive and the decision cost me that friendship. At the clinic, I had to run through the “gauntlet” of anti-abortion protestors (no escorts available, for some reason).

Despite that part of the experience, the abortion was easy, quick and not any worse than a bad menstrual cramp. The clinic staff was very supportive.

In the nearly 20 years since I had the abortion, I’ve come to realize that no woman has an abortion “just to see what it’s like.” It’s a painful, personal decision, and one that I wished I didn’t have to make. However, I will believe to my dying day that I made the best decision for myself and my daughter.

I’ve also found out that my family history is intertwined with the history of abortions in the United States. Shortly after I had the abortion, I talked to my dad about it. He told me that his mother had had at least one and maybe two abortions after he was born in the late 1930s; the marriage was in trouble and my grandmother did not want to bring more children into it.

Her mother died on an abortionist’s table near the turn of the century. My grandmother’s father died shortly thereafter (alcoholic) and as a result my grandmother was sent, at the age of 11, to be a housemaid. Her two younger brothers became farm hands.

I relayed this story once to a man who was running for the California Assembly on an anti-abortion platform. His response was that being a housemaid or farm hand was a perfectly respectable job. ("For an 11-year old?" I replied. Right.)

Sorry if this rambles a bit. It’s been interesting to put into words, even 20 years later.