Abortion saved my life and I will not stop fighting for the right to choose until that choice is given back to us.

On Friday, June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. On Thursday abortion was legal, and on Friday it suddenly was not. On October 11, 2022, when I was sixteen years old, I found out I was pregnant.

I was shocked and utterly devastated. I was young and unprepared for everything that came along with motherhood. My mom wanted me to keep the baby, and at the time I couldn’t imagine being a mother or even knowing the first thing about taking care of a child. I didn’t want to be a single mother at sixteen years old. My life had not even started yet.

Now you can imagine how horrific it was to find out that just 3 months and 17 days prior to my need for an abortion, abortion was made illegal in my home state. This filled my entire body with rage. All it took to take my constitutional right away was a couple of fucking men without the slightest clue of what it is like to have a uterus and to carry a child.

Fuck you Samuel Alito. Fuck you Clarence Thomas. Fuck you Neil Gorsuch. Fuck you Brett Kavanaugh. The list could go on and on but most importantly, fuck you Amy Coney Barrett. How can you be a woman and yet support stripping the rights of everyone with a uterus?

For anyone who needs an abortion, like me, to now have to travel hundreds of miles just to have a perfectly normal medical procedure, was insane to me. The nearest clinic in a state that had abortion still legalized was 279 miles away from me in Illinois. I had to travel that distance just to obtain a simple medical procedure. Abortion is healthcare, and I will preach that until the day I die.

I was around five weeks along when I decided the best decision for me to make was to get an abortion. It wasn’t an easy decision in any way. Almost a year later, I still feel the grief. Abortion is not spoken on enough, always portrayed by the media as a “dirty word” or “shameful” and it makes people like myself feel alone through it. The grief after is real. Some advice: Don’t ever let anyone say you are not allowed to feel the loss just because of the circumstance. No one knows your situation or your reasoning but you. And you should never have to justify it to someone who has never been through it.

One good thing I didn’t expect from the situation was my family’s overwhelming support. I had been scared to speak to anyone about it, because I was ashamed in a way. I needed to talk to someone though, because keeping it to myself was suffocating. I ended up telling my siblings one on one. I got a similar response from each of them. They would support whatever I chose to do. There was no judgement, they just wanted me to be okay. A special thank you to my brother and his girlfriend for taking so much time to research funds for me, call as many places as it took to get an appointment, and drive me to Hope Clinic for Women. My brother’s girlfriend was my savior and I will forever be grateful. Abortion saved my life and I will not stop fighting for the right to choose until that choice is given back to us.