11.12.2013
Media

Sharleen

I had an abortion when I was 24. At the time, I was a single mother raising a 6-year old son. We had recently relocated to a large city after I had accepted a new job.

Before we moved I had been dating a man, but we broke up and I thought it was over between us. After about six months, I was feeling really homesick and decided to move back to the small town I was from–about 70 miles away– and commute. The day I moved back, my ex-boyfriend asked me to marry him. I was delighted and happy to finally be starting a new life, but a couple weeks later I discovered I was pregnant and it was most certainly not my fiancé’s child. Not only was I not ready for another child, but I was also afraid that my fiancé would not want to marry me. My friend took me to the clinic and I never told my fiancé about it. Although we eventually divorced for other reasons, we were married and went on to have two children together. I am an atheist now, but I wasn’t then, so sometimes the Christian “guilt” was overwhelming. In retrospect, however, I do not regret it; it was the right decision for me.