I’m one of those rare women who have had an IUD fail. It was May my junior year of college. My boyfriend and I had just relocated to California for summer jobs when I figured out the highly improbable: I was pregnant. I was in a strange city with a brand new job, and suddenly this bomb dropped. I went to planned parenthood, and they tried to find the strings for my IUD to remove it. They couldn’t find them. Because I had an IUD, the doctor needed to make sure I didn’t have an ectopic pregnancy. I had to undergo the probing style ultrasound that some states now require for a women to get an abortion. Mine was necessary for medical reasons and I still felt violated. I can only imagine how women who don’t need them at all feel. I was lucky, and my pregnancy was not ectopic, but I did not want it. I was about to start my final year of college, my boyfriend and I had only been dating for just over a year, and bringing a child into the world at this point was just not an option. I had an in-clinic abortion. I missed only one day of work. I had to go back in later to get my IUD removed because, against all odds, it did not come out with the termination. Sometimes I feel like I should feel bad about my abortion. I don’t talk about it much, and many of my family members don’t know. However, I know that I made the right choice. I was not ready to be a mother, and our life would not have been a good one. This abortion freed me. It made it possible for me to follow my dreams and career. I will someday gladly be a mother, but I am happy that I am not one yet.