The Only Person Who Judges Me for My Abortion -- Who Matters  -- Is Me

I have a recurring dream wherein I am staring into a mirror and shouting at myself. I have run the gamut of pregnancy experiences: children, miscarriage and abortion. Having children and miscarriages and saying "those things were really hard" is completely acceptable. They are hard. Childbirth is hard, parenting is hard, losing a baby is hard -- they are physically and emotionally devastating in their various ways. On the other hand, it seems we are allowed to speak about abortions in one of two ways: our insurmountable regret, or our complete lack of doubt. I have spent the past six years tormenting myself for being in this in-between place of, "I'm sad about my abortion. I don't think I was powerful and in control. But I don't regret it either." I had my children young. I am like newly mulched earth and could get pregnant alone in a field. I already want to justify this to you, to tell you that we were using birth control. This is me: I'm a woman who has been pregnant by accident four times, one time after using a condom and taking the morning after pill when I realized I was about to ovulate. But it doesn't matter. I know that about myself. I should have been more careful -- more and more and more layers of careful. When I found out I was pregnant with my first daughter, I was 19 and living with a guy I had known for three months. I had been working in a new job for six weeks. That would have been the time to have an abortion, right? I could have gone down the ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news