I was 23 when I had my abortion. I was on the pill but forgot to take it all the time so it wasn’t effective. I had been with my boyfriend for about 10 months when I found out I was pregnant.

I had always known since I had started having sex in high school that if I had ever accidentally gotten pregnant I would get an abortion, it was a no brainer. I told my boyfriend that my period was late and he said he was pretty sure I had just had it a couple weeks ago. So I put off taking a pregnancy test for about a week and then when I started feeling nauseous I called him and said I was going to go buy a test. When I saw it was positive I called him and he was really upset about it, I think it affected him more than me. I felt kind of numb about it, not really emotional at all but more just annoyed that I had to deal with it. We never discussed actually having a baby in a serious way, it was very automatic to get the abortion. At first I didn’t want to tell our parents but he wanted to be able to talk to his parents about it and ended up convincing me to also tell my mom. She was disappointed but supported my decision. His parents also felt bad for us that we were going through that but felt we were making the right choice. I googled nearby abortion clinics and found one about 15 minutes away that was a walk in clinic. It was $500, my boyfriend gave me cash the night before I went. It was weird the last few days before I went to the clinic knowing I was pregnant but wouldn’t be soon. I’m really thin and I could definitely see a tiny bump even though I wasn’t very far along. Also my boobs were bigger and everything smelled so strong. It was a weird feeling like I was getting a glimpse of early pregnancy. I went to the abortion clinic by myself while my boyfriend worked, I wasn’t nervous at all and honestly felt relief and excitement for the ordeal to be just over with. I chose the pill abortion, the tech did an ultrasound and never offered to show it to me, just told me I was about 6 or 7 weeks. I had to speak to the doctor and wait 24 hours to come back for the medicine. She was super nice and understanding, she said it was a stupid and inconvenient law to make me wait 24 hours because “no one changes their mind”. I came back the next day, took my first pill there and was given another to take the next day and a prescription for vicodin. Taking the actual abortion pill was pretty miserable. Within an hour I had what felt like the worst period cramps of my life x 100. The pain lasted about 5 hours, I just curled up in bed with a heating pad, doubled up on the pain meds and watched movies until it was over. I’ve never regret my choice, and if I was faced with another unwanted pregnancy I would do it again, but I’m now on the Nuva ring for birth control and am much more careful about using it properly.
That was a year ago and I’m still with my boyfriend. We don’t really mention it often, just an occasional “we could have a baby right now.. how weird” accompanied by a “thank god we don’t”. We want to get married in a couple of years and probably plan to start having kids when we’re closer to 30. The only positive things to come from getting an abortion are the facts that it made us closer to go through that together and brought up a lot of conversations about the future. It also is a little comforting to know that we are both fertile and most likely would be able to have a child together when we are ready.