I was 17 when I found out I was pregnant. My boyfriend at the time, an abusive man who used to coerce me into unprotected sex and raped me on several accounts, left me the day after I got that positive test. I still haven’t seen him in person since. I was petrified as I knew I had two choices. One, keep my pregnancy and allow this monster to follow me around for the rest of my life, or two, have an abortion. I had no job, no partner to support me, I was and still am in the middle of college education and I had a family who would not be able to support me financially… so the choice was not hard. The process however, was something that still affects me today. For as long as I can remember I have always wanted to be a mother. For those five weeks I carried my baby I felt an enormous emotional bond with it. The abuse I continued to get from my ex partner over the phone only made the whole thing more traumatic, but it was nothing in comparison to the trauma my baby would’ve lived with with a man like that as its father. As I was only four and a half weeks pregnant when I contacted BPAS about the termination, I had a medical abortion which consisted of pills rather than a surgical operation. I spent five hours of that day in A&E with my mum due to the pain which I could only describe as excruciating period cramps. I was told there was nothing more they could do for me other than prescribe more of the pain killers I was already on.
Whilst my abortion story is something I think about daily, it is something I don’t regret at all. It’s not something I wanted but something I needed and I was so lucky that my age allowed me to have my termination via the NHS. I cannot imagine what my life would look like now without it.
