I was 48 and married. Our daughter had just started her first year at college.

I was too old for birth control pills, and after my IUD had spontaneously, and painfully, come out, I was back on the diaphragm. I’d never liked using it, so I resorted to a kind of rhythm method, using nothing when I thought I wasn’t ovulating, and the diaphragm when I thought I was. After two years of this, surprise, I got pregnant. There was no way I was going to have another child at this advanced age (when this putative child would have been 16, I would have been 65 — I’m not the kind of person who could do this). Fortunately, abortion was legal and safe, although I had to find another gynecologist, since the one I’d been seeing seemed unwilling to be helpful. I have no regrets whatsoever – the abortion is the best thing I could have done.