I am now in my mid 60s with two grown daughters.
I found myself pregnant when I was in graduate school in social work, in a relationship with a Vietnam veteran who’d been injured and had signs of what now would be called PTSD. I was taking the pill, we were much in love, but no way were we considering marriage. I got an early pregnancy test,
so I was 7 weeks from LMP when I had a safe, illegal abortion by a doctor in a rural town nearby. I never for a moment felt any guilt about this, just tremendous relief, and a feeling of having my life back.
13 years later, I was married with a toddler daughter, my husband was unemployed, we were struggling financially, and it was a highly stressful marriage for many reasons. I was using the diaphragm but became pregnant.
I was devastated, my first strongest reaction was weeping because I didn’t want to give up the full focus on my little girl, who was barely walking, I wanted to have another child, but it was entirely an awful time to do so. I had an immediate and sure decision to terminate the pregnancy, which was again when I was no more than perhaps 8 weeks LMP. Again I felt only a huge relief and happiness really, I never for a moment felt an embryo that is maybe half an inch long is a person.
Nor have I ever been happier than when I was pregnant with my two daughters.
I thought by now there would be many more contraceptive choices, and that there would be universal sex education, and certainly there would be fewer abortions than there are with this social combat aiming to block women and young girls from having the freedom to make these decisions.