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Last year I got pregnant. I was 18 years old and my boyfriend was 17. We’ve been together since we were 13 and we had sex for the first time when I was 17 and he was 16. I was taking a year off between high school and college. My boyfriend was still in his senior year of high school, just having sent out his applications to college. When it happened I thought I was dreaming. We had been using birth control…I was always taught that if you use birth control, you don’t get pregnant.
We were so in love we felt like we could do anything. We lay together at night and we talked about what it would be like to raise a baby together. I would cry a lot, maybe because of the hormones, maybe because I just cry a lot in general. I felt like I was going through something that I shouldn’t be going through. I tried to imagine having to take care of a child when I wasn’t even ready to take care of myself.
I thought about it constantly for the month that I was pregnant. I went to pro-life websites and I looked at girls writing about their regrets about having abortions. I looked at websites where teen girls talked about deciding not to have an abortion and how they have kids now who they adore and couldn’t imagine living without. I cried and I read and I cried and I read.
No one understood why I was so obsessed. I didn’t talk to anyone about it except for my boyfriend, because I knew he was going through the same thing. The difference was that he didn’t see it as a choice that he could make. To this day I don’t know what he would have done if it had been entirely up to him.
I wanted to be put to sleep. I don’t know why … but I also got put to sleep to get my wisdom teeth out, which took 8 minutes. When I got to the hospital I felt so strange. In some ways I felt like I should be going to a clinic, experiencing the protesters like most girls have to. My boyfriend and my mom both came with me; it felt strange walking around a public place with just a little paper nightgown on.
The only other people in the waiting room were an old man and his wife. The old man was in the paper nightgown. I assumed they weren’t there for an abortion. My boyfriend couldn’t come into the waiting room with us. I was worried…embarrassed to be in a hospital gown with sick people when I wasn’t really sick. I guess all pregnant women go to hospitals whether they get an abortion or not, but I still felt out of place.
I wished that it would be a longer procedure, a more difficult one. After a month of agonizing I felt that what happened was too easy. I went in at 8 and was out by 12 and that was only because I had to recover from the anesthesia. I don’t really remember that day…I slept a lot and my dad’s work partner told me to drink wine…she said it would ease the cramping. I didn’t have any cramping. I remember I bled a lot. When I first went to the bathroom there was blood everywhere and I wasn’t allowed to wear tampons. I was in the bathroom with a nurse and she was helping me clean everything up. It was really embarrassing. I felt like I’d peed in my pants or something.
It was strange how fast it went away. One day I was pregnant and the next day I wasn’t. I don’t regret my decision. I would have had my baby a month ago. I started college this September. I imagined as I walked in that first day what it would have been like if I was 7 and a half months pregnant. I would have a one-month-old child right now. I don’t know where I would be living or how I would take care of a child. I’m still a baby myself.
For some people I know the decision is easy. They find out that they’re pregnant and they’re having an abortion. It wasn’t like that for me. I hate when people say that people use abortions as birth control. I hate when they say women do it for convenience. This was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. I thought, I cried, I grieved, but in the end I chose my life over a bunch of cells that may at some point turn into a baby. I’m not sorry for that.
