10/26/2017
I don’t regret my decision but I wish I never had to make it. I’m mad for putting myself in that position. I should have been on birth control or at the least using condoms. I wish I had been in a place where I could’ve comfortably kept the pregnancy. I wish I hadn’t hurt my boyfriend with my decision.
I wish it was as black and white as the world thinks it is. We are not religious at all but it is already hard enough for my boyfriend and I to cope with my decision. I don’t need society to demonize me for making the hardest decision of my life. The decisions a woman considers and ultimately makes surrounding pregnancy, abortion and adoption are not easy regardless of the situation.
It was a week before my 20th birthday when I got a positive pregnancy result. I was home alone at the time and had been feeling sick the past couple of weeks and when I got nauseous from something I had cooked, I decided to take a pregnancy test. I took two and both came back as positive. My boyfriend got home an hour later and I just stared at the ceiling until then. We had been living together for 4 months at the time and had been dating on and off for 4 years so our relationship was not perfect but we were working on it.
I told him as soon as he got home and we were both very quiet for what seemed like forever. Eventually he said “This may be a dumb question but you want to keep it, right?” to which I said “I don’t know”. His preference was to keep the pregnancy regardless of the obstacles we would face. I would’ve loved to keep the pregnancy but I knew that we were in no position to have and raise a child which he understood and said he would support any decision I made.
I had an appointment about a week later at Planned Parenthood that confirmed that I was 7 weeks and 1 day pregnant, a few days later I was in the waiting room for a medical abortion. The entire appointment took about 6 hours which I don’t remember much of because of the sedatives but most of it was waiting.
I’ve always wanted to have kids but when I do, I want to be ready. I grew up in a broken family with various financial and relationship issues and knew that I didn’t want anything like that for my kids. When I really have a kid, I want my only reaction to be overwhelming joy and excitement.
It’s been just over a month since the procedure and my boyfriend and I have both had some confusing emotions about it. I’ve since gotten on birth control so I know that when we become pregnant in the future that we will be 100% ready for it. I don’t regret my decision because it was the best one I could’ve made at the time but I don’t think I could ever make it again, regardless of the circumstances.
