Ever since I was young, I knew that I wanted to be a mother. I have always been drawn to children, and I couldn’t wait until I had my own. I was in a committed relationship for three years and we talked about being together and how we wanted children, but we never talked about the right time for us to have kids. Then in April 2020, my period was late. I was on birth control so I normally got my period at the same time every month and I knew something was wrong. I ran to the closest Walgreens and bought a pregnancy test. When it resulted a positive reading, I felt as though my whole life flashed before my eyes. Even though I have always been so excited to be pregnant, and be a mother, all I could think was, “I can’t do this. I can’t have this baby. I am not ready to be a mom.” I never imagined I would feel so much fear to find out that I was pregnant. I wanted to be excited and happy. But I felt so far from happy.

I went home and told my boyfriend. I had no idea how he would react, but he truly handled it better than I could imagine. We both decided that this wasn’t something that we wanted right now and abortion would be the best choice. We weighed each decision which was a painful process. We knew we could have a baby, that we would make it work, but we also knew it wasn’t something we wanted at this point in our lives.

The hardest part for me was realizing that abortion could be a choice for me. Having a child didn’t have to be “can I bring a child into this world, can I be a parent right now?” Instead, it could be, “do I want to have a child right now? Is this the right time?”

After the abortion, I felt numb for a little bit. I didn’t feel relieved, or happy, or sad. I also felt very alone. I wanted to be able to talk to people about what I was going through. I did talk with a few friends and quickly realized that abortions were way more common than I thought. With time, I started to feel like myself again and could see that we had made the right decision. I did feel a little sad for some time knowing that I did have the chance to be a mom and decided against it. I had a hard seeing people my age having children and the happiness that a child can bring. This is something that I definitely want someday, but having the ability to choose that timing has been such a blessing.