Sonya

I was nineteen years old and dating a man who was five years my senior. I had just come back from a year of studying abroad, and thought that I was mature and knew everything about life. This, as it turns out, was not the case. After two months together, I became pregnant, and problems ensued. I started doing poorly in school due to the sickness and the constant debates over whether to keep the child. I decided on an abortion because I did not feel physically or mentally ready to bear a child and give it away, or bear the child and keep it. The abortion occurred in December, and though it ruined my holiday season, as I was in quite a lot of pain for a couple of weeks, it saved my life. I was not ready to bring a child into the world, and every day I am grateful that I had the strength, and opportunity, to realize this.

There is a part of every woman that wants a child, the part of us that is biologically predisposed to procreation, and this part makes the abortion very hard, but I still do not regret it. Every year around the time of the abortion, a part of me leaps up to say that I was wrong, and that I was a horrible person to have killed my own child, but that part is only passing fancy. It is a hard thing to do, because a pregnancy prepares our body for the eventuality of a child, and I do partly grieve for that which might have been, but every december, when the anniversary rolls around, I thank myself, and I thank God for the four years of growth and freedom that I was granted by having an abortion.