I was depressed to the point of suicide.  But my way of killing myself was to meet up with men I didn’t know well.  I couldn’t find a job.  I had failed to get into grad school. My father told me he had wasted his money on me and my mother wanted me to just ‘go away’ somehow.  Meeting men was like Russian Roulette.  If I met a good man,  I might escape my life.  If something bad happened I might be dead. I was completely irrational and even stopped taking birth control for the first time, but I didn’t know why.  Of course I got pregnant, more failure. A month later I got a job which I would have lost if I were pregnant. I only justified getting the job because ‘i was sexy’.  I had no confidence. I was still drinking heavily and it took over a year, with the good people at work, for me to stop hating myself and others. Play the part and become the part.   I still don’t know how I recovered. I had no emotional stability when I got pregnant and the year following – not able to give or share love.

Twice I took friends to clinics.  I won’t forget the 12 yr old girl that was raped in a car by 3 older boys and then tortured socially for ‘killing her baby’.  I am haunted by the Catholic Hispanic woman that didn’t have food and diapers for her 1 year old.  She was emaciated, didn’t speak English.  Her husband beat her often according to her friend that brought her to the clinic. She feared for her life if he knew she was there.
She was crying so hard.  She was so scared, trapped.  Adoption was not an option and she could not provide for her current child. Why do people want to force troubled women into giving birth? It’s clear that orphanages and foster care are at capacity in this country.  Even 1 child in an orphanage is too many.