i’m one of those rare women who have had an iud fail. it was may my junior year of college. my boyfriend and i had just relocated to california for summer jobs when i figured out the highly improbable: i was pregnant. i was in a strange city with a brand new job, and suddenly this bomb dropped. i went to planned parenthood, and they tried to find the strings for my iud to remove it. they couldn’t find them. because i had an iud, the doctor needed to make sure i didn’t have an ectopic pregnancy. i had to undergo the probing style ultrasound that some states now require for a women to get an abortion. mine was necessary for medical reasons and i still felt violated. i can only imagine how women who don’t need them at all feel. i was lucky, and my pregnancy was not ectopic, but i did not want it. i was about to start my final year of college, my boyfriend and i had only been dating for just over a year, and bringing a child into the world at this point was just not an option. i had an in-clinic abortion. i missed only one day of work. i had to go back in later to get my iud removed because, against all odds, it did not come out with the termination. sometimes i feel like i should feel bad about my abortion. i don’t talk about it much, and many of my family members don’t know. however, i know that i made the right choice. i was not ready to be a mother, and our life would not have been a good one. this abortion freed me. it made it possible for me to follow my dreams and career. i will someday gladly be a mother, but i am happy that i am not one yet.