In 1970 I was 19 years old and a college sophomore.  My sweetheart had just been drafted into the Army and was about to leave for basic training at Fort Knox, and probably go from there to Vietnam.   I thought I was invulnerable, of course.  A few weeks after he left I was shocked to find out I was pregnant.

This was before Roe v. Wade, and safe abortions were hard to come by.  Luckily I found a minister near campus who counseled me and helped me obtain a legal abortion.  I flew to California for a top-quality procedure in a hospital, and I was able to follow up with medical care when I got back on campus.  We both borrowed money from friends to pay the bill (about $1000 including plane fare, which was a huge sum at the time) and it took us about a year to pay the loans back.

That was the first time in my life that I took full responsibility for myself.  I asked myself what I wanted my future to be, and what I needed to do to make it happen.  They were hard questions and even harder answers.  But facing the problem was a huge turning point in my life.  I learned from it that I needed to be the one in charge of my life.  From that came everything:  my college degree, my career, my eventual happy marriage and family – and most important, my knowledge that living by my own judgment is really what it means to be moral.