I was seventeen when I got a positive pregnancy test at the student clinic at my high school. The nurse immediately started talking to me about what I “had to do” meaning abortion, and I initially said no way. I was having my baby.
I am one of those people that always knew she would be a mother. This just seemed like it would be one of those things that would work out in the end. Even with a boyfriend who had already cheated on me…
I told him and at first he simply thought I was lying. Then he wanted a “real” test from a “real” doctor. Fine. I talked to an adult neighbor who was always like a mother to me, and she arranged to have her sister pick me up from my high school (claiming to be my mother) and take me to her family doctor and have him take the blood for the test.
My boyfriend talked me into the procedure. He basically said that if I had the baby he would be there and we would probably be unhappy, but if I had the abortion, we could start over. He said that it was what he wanted, and that if I was sorry that we could have a baby in a year or two.
I did as he so obviously wanted and made the appointment. He agreed to pay for half the cost of the procedure, and my mother was to pay the other half. Of course, he didn’t have the money by the day of, so mom coughed it up and he promised to pay her back. He never did.
The blood test he insisted on had been positive of course…I handed the results to him as we sat in the waiting room of the clinic on the day of my abortion. He never even looked at them.
When we got to the counseling session it became some sort of release for my mother. She talked a lot and I was just sort of sitting there. I really wish I had had the guts to speak up and have my mother removed from the room.
During the procedure I reached a point of panic and asked for my mother. They looked for her, but apparently she and my boyfriend had gone to a local bar to play pool.
I kept asking for her because I was very upset, and when the procedure was over the doctor stormed out and I heard him say I acted like “a baby”.
Three days after all of these events had occurred my boyfriend called me a murderer. Great.
The entire point is….as awful as it all sounds; I felt and still feel nothing but relief. I can’t even imagine what that child’s life would have been like. I am quite sure it would have been absolutely horrible. With a man like that as its father, and someone as immature as I was as its mother, I am positive I did the right thing.
