I got pregnant at 15. At that age, keeping it was not an option for me. Neither was giving it up for adoption – any child I choose to bring into this world is one whom I will take full responsibility for. I am so grateful that my mother has always been passionately pro-choice, for I had to turn to her when my boyfriend stopped returning my calls after I told him I was pregnant and needed his help to get an abortion (he was just a kid, too). She arranged everything for me.
Those days moved nightmarishly for me. After the procedure, the doctor left the room and I wept with the agony only a female can know. The nurse held my hand as I cried. I vowed to myself that I would never be on that operating table again. And, thanks to EC (condoms break), the diaphragm, the cervical cap, and now the IUD, I have not had another pregnancy in nearly 20 years.
If the goal is “saving babies”, why is it that anti-abortionists are anti-contraception, as well? Pregnancy is 99.999% preventable if you have the knowledge and the available options; I am living proof of that. If birth control education and devices were as ubiquitous as tap water, think how many abortions would be avoided! Abortion is a tragedy, to be sure, but in a country where tens of millions of children go hungry each day, where millions of children live with the daily threat of death and violence, where millions of children are abused, neglected, and thrown away, where too many children are left to fend for themselves because their single parent is toiling all day to barely make ends meet, I just can’t get worked up over the plight of the unborn.
The threat is very real. If Bush is reelected, he WILL send us back to the days of back-alley abortions, coat hangers, dumpster baby epidemics, and other desperate measures women will feel forced to take to rid themselves of an unwanted pregnancy. We CANNOT allow that to happen!
