Luckily I could tell my Mum without fear of being kicked out of home, because she had been a childbirth education worker and was also very sensible and kind. I had to organize to go interstate because in my state, abortions were only possible after appearing before some kind of panel at the hospital.

My mum drove me to the clinic, 4 hours away. My boyfriend had exams – he couldn’t come! For whatever reason, youth and fear I guess, I didn’t ditch him after he ditched me. The waiting room was full of the usual suspects – young women, older women, women alone, women with husbands, women looking afraid, women looking bored, women who looked like mothers, women who looked like kids. Filling in forms, giving blood, getting things checked, interviews, payment and receipt - then finally, the moment of truth: sitting in the final, tiny waiting chamber, paper robe on, personal pad ready to go, feeling utterly, utterly frightened and unreal, like it was a dream.

I had elected to have a local anaesthetic for a variety of reasons – it was cheaper, quicker; and I felt guilty, so I felt that I should be awake to endure whatever horror might be my due. I had a needle and some nitrous oxide, and then I felt, although it was somewhat dulled, every scrape, stick, push, tug, and twist. I felt disoriented, it hurt, and I was scared. When a tear rolled down my cheek, the doctor at the end of the bed looked at me with cold eyes. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” I shook my head.

When I came into the recovery room, I looked at the face of a girl my age who had been in the waiting room near me. That must be what I look like, I thought. She looked different – blank. Then I had tea and biscuits. Went home, lots of pain, lots of tears as my hormones tried to catch up.

My parents divorcing had a lot to do with my decision – that and terror, of course. Family wasn’t particularly sacred to me; that is, it didn’t seem to conquer all or to make everything alright; while money – the need for it, the way it could ruin a family – was a more compelling reason to not put myself in a position of perpetual struggle, disadvantage, uncertainty. Not just myself, but also this mysterious potential child: father had already said he was out of there; I knew my mum would be supportive but she was already managing with three kids on her own – should I do that to her? People like me went to school, to university, had careers: I realize that people like me also sometimes have babies young, and more power to them if it works out; all I’m saying is that this culture (the young unwed mother culture) was completely alien to me, compounding my fear. Would I have to leave school and have the baby then give it up for adoption? What would happen after that? Could I return to a ‘normal’ life?

I missed some exams due to the pregnancy sickness; failed an important test and so didn’t get the marks to go on to university. I took the year again, and finally made it. I’m now 29, and the love of my life is a wonderfully enlightened man who shares my heathen views.

(Interestingly, I ended up moving to the suburb where the abortion clinic was, and lived only streets away, and I used to go there for my Pap smears and Pills. Of course it reminded me of what had happened, and for a while the building seemed ominous and frightening, like the gates of Auschwitz, but over time that faded as life went on. Going in for checkups etc. sometimes got the chance to assist some young girl who was being harassed by the parade of ghouls waving placards out the front by swearing viciously at them. Hey, they condemn me to hell, I call them bitches).

I have two degrees, am working towards a career at last (my 20s were interrupted by depression and medication…and don’t even say it, I was bleak and neurotic before the abortion) and now of course, staring the post-35 baby deadline in the face. The same fear of material privation exists: having had mental/psychological problems that interfered with working, I still fear slipping through the cracks. I have a strong social conscience (I think); and I work in the community to help those who have less. To me, the young women who have baby after baby and live on welfare, letting the psychological and material futures of their children wither and die, are not heroic, nor are they better than me because they kept their babies.

And I simply will not have a child unless I can care for it, and for myself (in the service of it), and give it a life that actually means something. And maybe I would be better at that than I give myself credit for – but it’s not like there’s a population deficit.

Sometimes I wonder what it would look like had I not ended its life; I think about how old it would be, and wonder how I would feel if it was smiling at me etc etc – but that’s what happens when you take one path – you wonder sometimes about the other one. I’m not haunted by this, and I try not to be swayed by those who have condemned me to hell or called me a monstrous murderer. But I do appreciate, and try to keep in mind, that I chose my life over a potential other life, and I have to live up to that and make my existence count.

I sometimes feel a little threatened by women who have babies young and still find their own way, their own identities and lives and even careers. I know they had the guts to do what I didn’t, and for them it worked…but what’s done is done, I can’t make it any different now. So I’m happy for them, and not sorry about what I chose to do.