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.

i had an abortion in 1969. i had tried to get birth control pills but the doctor refused to give me a prescription because he didn't believe in premarital sex.

i was 27, in my second year of graduate school and in the second year of a four year work contract, when i found out i was unexpectedly pregnant. the father, and my then boyfriend, did not care to have a child and i was unprepared to have one by myself. it was a lose-lose choice as far as i was concerned, yet i am grateful that i had the choice.

i write down this story with my beautiful 3 month old daughter asleep in my arms. as i approached my late thirties without yet finding the live of my life i decided to simply go ahead and have a child on my own.

two years ago i was 14 years old and in an abusive relationship with my boyfriend. after a year together he raped me and that was how i lost my virginity.

at ten weeks i learned that my second pregnancy had an anomaly, heterotaxy combined with a congenital heart defect. the odds of survival outside of the womb were all bad.