i am 57 years old and just two people know i have had an abortion – my partner at the time and my sister. i have never told a soul – until now – that i have actually had three. the shame has been too great.

my first pregnancy occurred when i was 22, while using “the rhythm method”. my boyfriend was not supportive of a pregnancy.

the second time, the diaphragm failed me. my boyfriend, again, was not supportive.

the third time, my boyfriend had said “let’s make a baby”…but when i became pregnant, he promptly back pedaled, saying he wasn’t ready after all.

i was brought up by a catholic mother who had always told me that if i got pregnant outside marriage, she would “put me in a home for unwed mothers and the baby would be put up for adoption”. end of discussion.

what was i to do? i was poor, i had no support, i could not bear the idea of subjecting my potential children to my sad, unstable life. in a way, i felt that to abort was to protect them from a hostile world.

protestors yelled at me outside clinics. i must have thought i deserved an even greater punishment because the third time, i did not pay the extra money it cost for anesthesia and went through the procedure without it, clutching the clothing of a nurse who offered me no comforting words and listening to a doctor talk to everyone else in the room but say nothing to me. there was no kindness.

i never had children. i never married. yet despite all the heartache, i still do not regret the decisions i made in my 20’s – they were necessary at the time, for myself and for those “kids” who were never meant to be.

but i do sometimes cry for that girl that i was: lost, alone, traumatized, disappointed, ashamed. she’s the one who most needed to be valued, supported, and loved. she. not the embryos.