First I am so glad a place like this exists for people like us to share our stories. Thank you so much for your time and devotion to this cause.
This is my story.
I had turned 19 and was in the second year of my first real relationship with my high school sweetheart. I had just been accepted to all the universities I had applied to, and I was at the point when I was ready to leave my childhood and sweetheart behind to head off on my great adventure. I had loved him truly when we started having sex, and am lucky to have very positive experiences with sex, but as university approached I started to drift away, though he still clung hard. I was off the pill trying to break up with him, and had sex with him out of pity. I couldn’t stand to hurt someone, and to make them cry. I have to say this is the only thing I do regret, I wish I had the balls to have just walked away from him, but he needed me, I thought.
I got pregnant, I remember taking the test at work, but I already knew. My period is whack and never regular, but I could just feel it as if there was something different inside me. I phoned my therapist and cried to her asking her to help me; I wanted an abortion, no doubt about it, never thought twice. She referred me to the Morgentaler clinic in Toronto where I went about two weeks later and had it done.
I didn’t tell anyone as I was a little messed up and in turmoil with my mother already, she was abused as a child and took a lot of it out on me. The clinic suggested I have someone come with me, as I lived an hour away, so I told the father. I was such a jerk, but I felt the right to be. I told him I don’t care what he wants or thinks, and I don’t want to hear what he has to say but I am getting an abortion tomorrow and I asked him to come and take care of me. He agreed and I still don’t know what he thought about things.
I feel so blessed to live in Canada and have the right to a FREE abortion. I thank the gods for Dr. Henry Morgentaler every time I hear a kid whine, or baby cry. His clinic was peaceful and safe and at the time I remember how easy it was. I thought it would be a fight, like the one you see raging in public, but it wasn’t. It was surreal and calm compared to the violent situation some would have you expect.
I now felt honoured to have been there. Henry Morgentaler went to jail and fought the government for my right to choose. I am now married and my hubby and I are childfree and will remain so until we are old and rocking in our chairs. We have so many adventures ahead, that there is no time to slow down enough to have kids.
I feel on the extreme end of the scale when I say I would have an abortion daily if it meant not being pregnant. I really don’t care about the fetus, and I feel if I do I should also have to think about war, become a vegetarian and give up my car and chocolate. Life is about death and rebirth, what sucks is when a pregnancy destroys the lives of successful people with so much potential. I like OTHER PEOPLE’S kids, but I won’t do things for someone else anymore, that is what got me into this whole thing in the first place.
