In 1965 I was a junior in college in Raleigh, NC, and I got pregnant. Although my boyfriend was winsome and handsome and funny, he had bipolar disorder, an illness that the mental health community didn’t know much about in 1965. We learned his diagnosis years later, but in 1965, he was left to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs.

…I don’t remember when exactly I met “Kevin,” but we quickly became romantically involved. At some point, I got a Dalkon Shield IUD. Unfortunately, it didn’t work, and I found myself pregnant in the summer of 1973…

I strongly support the movement for women to be more open about their abortions. We’ve been having them for hundreds of years, probably thousands, but it’s become such a taboo thing to talk about. We should instead be sharing our experiences. Doing so could prevent shame, depression, even further abortions.

I look at our two sons and I see them all.

***

In 2011 my husband and I ended a wanted pregnancy. According to our doctors, we were hit with two strokes of bad luck, back-to-back. We faced the same heart-wrenching decision six months after the first, terminating another pregnancy, due almost exactly one year later.

…I was also filled with anticipation over my new job. Starting in September, I'd be teaching writing and literature at a new small college in a nearby town.

But I also had a nagging worry - my period was almost two weeks late…

My first abortion was in August 1973, and I was so happy that it was now legal. Unfortunately, in Oklahoma, none of the doctors were yet willing to do it, and Planned Parenthood was also not set up yet for abortions in Oklahoma City.

They turned the screen completely away from me and spoke in whispers while they looked at the machine. The sound was still on, though, and there was just one heartbeat with a steady rhythm: mine.

I lay in a spotless medical room with my feet in the stirrups, chatting with a supervising male doctor at my shoulder while a female nurse worked for about five minutes on my privates…

In 1969, I was 16 and pregnant. There were no pregnancy tests available in stores. I lived in a small town and couldn’t go to the family doctor…

My story begins as a teenager with a long history of painful undiagnosed endometriosis and ovarian cysts that caused me to have 2-4 months of heavy bleeding menstrual cycles. In 1975, a naïve 17-year-old virgin, I went on a date and got date raped on the 1st date with this creep. I was scared and freaked out…

My pregnancy was an accident, one big, unplanned mistake. There was no future for me and the baby’s father, my boyfriend at the time. I didn’t love him; I didn’t even really like him. I was unemployed, dead broke, and barely staying afloat. I could not support another human.

This is difficult to write; I had an abortion. I was 25, and my boyfriend and I had broken up (and fortunately, a few months later, we got back together and are now married for close to 40 years). An asshole “friend” from work and I went to a baseball game, and I had one beer too many and went back to his apartment…

The bell to start second period had just rung a few minutes ago. I was sitting in Algebra II and knew my teacher didn’t like for us to get up so soon after the start of class, but I could think of nothing else. I glanced over at my best friend, who gave me a knowing, hopeful look…

A lot of women say that their first child “healed” them from the traumatic experience of having an abortion; that all grief just magically disappeared once they welcomed their first baby. This hasn’t been my experience…

I was just 15 years old when I met JJ. He lived down the street from my family’s home, and he was the new kid in town. He had been bounced around his entire life without any parents. This time, he was placed in a drug addict’s home, and a part of me felt sorry for him…

Recently married in March of 2022, my husband and I were excited to extend our family.  I have a 5-year-old daughter from a previous relationship and my husband was ready to have one of his own.  We bought a house in October later that year and found out we were pregnant a week later.  The family we’d been dreaming about was about to come true…

I was 22 weeks along when I decided to get an abortion. At the time, I was very depressed and in a dark place. I had just been honorably discharged from the military after serving for seven years. During that time, I was sexually harassed, assaulted, and raped multiple times…

There weren't sex ed classes in my high school, so I thought the pull-out method worked when I was a 20-year-old college student in 1974. That's when I missed my period and went to the clinic…

I married when I was 18 and had three children by the time I was 23. My first son was born healthy, but my second child was a full-term malformed stillborn…

In 1966, at the age of 16, I gave birth to my first child. No other options were suggested to me, this was pre-Roe. I had a bad home situation and found that while having a child so young was not the best situation, it did provide me with a way to emancipate myself…