my senior year in high school i had unprotected sex with my boyfriend. right after, we went to go get plan b. this was not a great plan. i knew i was pregnant before i even missed my period due to the insane amount of morning sickness (more like all day long sickness) i had. i threw up everything i ate or drank-even water. it all made me sick but i kept eating in hope that some of it would stay down. when my period didn’t come i told my boyfriend and he came over to my house after school with candy and pregnancy tests. positive. we sat crying and eating candy for a while and i just couldn’t imagine what to do. i was a straight a student, waiting to hear back from private schools across the country about my applications. could i give all that up-everything i’d been working towards? and could i do that to him-he still had another year of high school left? i was extremely torn and i pressed him to make the decision but he wouldn’t. he said he would be there with me every step of whatever decision i made but he couldn’t do it for me. i know he was right but i couldn’t do it alone. one afternoon my mom came into my room and asked if i was pregnant (she knew because of the fact that i was puking 20x a day-a symptom she had each time she was pregnant). i burst into tears and told her all about my pros and cons list and asked what i should do. she said she couldn’t tell me what to do-but she also told me a story about how she got pregnant at 17. she and my dad got together at 15 and she found out she was pregnant right before junior prom. my dad and his mother took my mom to an abortion clinic (she did not live in a household where that would have gone over in a way other than catastrophic). my parents got married after high school and had their first daughter at 27, there are now four of us and my mom said she knew none of us would have the life we do now if it weren’t for that decision she made at 17 and so she didn’t regret it for a second. i couldn’t see the future after an abortion, but i could see the future without one- i’d have no where to live, i wouldn’t have time to go to school and i would need more than my full-time job at mcdonald’s to support myself and a child, even with my boyfriend’s help. two years later my boyfriend and i are both straight a students at a university. maybe someday we’ll get married and have kids, but not now. i want my kids to have a stable household and all the opportunities that i had growing up. i’ll never forget that 7 week and 2 day old blur on a screen, but i will also never regret my decision.