Morning after pills.
Abortions.
Periods.
Pregnancy Tests.
These are things that only women experience and it is not fair or fun to be ashamed by all of it. I have had to take multiple morning after pills, had an abortion, and obviously, have had my period since I was 17 or 18 in high school. I have taken a couple of pregnancy tests as well. Being a woman is not an easy thing to be. I am a gay Jewish woman who had an abortion. When I had my abortion, I was 24 years old and was taken by my neighbor at the time and who later became my boyfriend, to planned parenthood. I had just started Grad School in NYC and before I moved there, I had been in a verbally abusive relationship that I had to get out of. When I did, I rebelled a bit and lost myself and had sex with a stranger at a friends wedding. Poor choice on my part but I don’t blame myself at all. Unfortunately, he didn’t use a condom and I got pregnant the first month of starting graduate school. The feeling of this whole experience was in a blur. I do remember sitting in the waiting room with some women who were also getting abortions, and one girl said “I hope it’s done soon, I have a date to get to tonight.” I was shocked by this response. I felt so icky and upset about getting an abortion but also knew that if i didn’t, my life would be forever changed and I’m sure would have been great, but I most likely wouldn’t be where I am today helping many children with autism. Because I had the abortion, I was able to graduate with my masters in Dance/Movement Therapy from Sarah Lawrence college, I was able to move into manhattan and experience living alone and have my 20s in the Big apple and learn a ton about myself, worked as a preschool teacher for three years, met my soulmate who is now my wife, started a business where I work with children and families using dance to help them express themselves and more, and move back to California where I got to spend more time with my family, continue my career and become more experienced in working with kids with autism and other special needs, work with the elderly, and overall, live my own life in the way I wanted to. This then allows me to really know myself well so that when I am financially and mentally and emotionally ready to have a child, I will be a great mother who doesn’t have regrets and who will love my child fully and be ready to give my kid the life they deserve and they will be wanted and planned. Who knows what my life would have been like if I didn’t have the abortion and had a child from a guy I didn’t even know his last name but we do know that my life wouldn’t have been what it is now. I also know that I needed to be promiscuous and have sex with strangers to find myself again and to move on from my past. Even though it was an extremely hard decision and a terrible thing to go through, I don’t regret it at all and am beyond lucky and grateful that I was allowed and it was legal to have an abortion so that I was able to live my life to help people more than just my own child and know that I wasn’t ready to be a mother. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to planned parenthood and to the states and laws that allowed it to happen for me and for many people. I hope it stays legal and that people realize it should be the woman’s choice for her body and that it can have huge negative affects on the babies lives if they are born into a world where they aren’t truly wanted.
