My mom had me at 16. My dad was 21. They were never dating. He proposed when I was born. She refused, and he left. My mom got in to college, and when I wasn’t with my grandparents, I was living with my very young mom and her college roommates. At home with my mom, I was constantly exposed to partying, drugs, random men, and people who should have never been around a young child.
After college, we moved to the projects. From the ages of 6 to 9, I was molested by a neighbor, who told me he would kill my mom if I told anyone. Eventually the abuse amounted to one instance of me being violently sexually assaulted. My mom was arrested in front of me for attacking the man who abused me, and I developed PTSD. Around this time, my mom got married to a man who was secretly physically and verbally abusing me – he would choke me, throw things at me, make up strange lies about me misbehaving, call me sexually derogatory names, and he conditioned me to be anorexic. I was a very messed up and very lonely little kid.
It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that my mom was neglectful and abusive – and longer to understand that she was a kid and was also abused. When abortion access became all-but-illegal in Indiana, my mom broke down and told me that she had five abortions from the time I was born until my sister was born when I was 12, including an abortion of very much wanted identical twins shortly after I was hospitalized for being raped.
I am so grateful that my mom, with all of her problems, had the foresight, maturity, and resources to seek out abortions when she could not care for me like she should have. Had a new baby – let alone six new babies – come in to our family when I was younger, the abuse and neglect I was enduring would have deepened.
Abortion enabled me to save my own life. Abortion prevented more children from being neglected and abused. Abortion enabled my family to grow and heal. My mom and I are both lawyers now.
