i look back now and realize that even though i was educated and very capable, i was also very young and naive. i was 18 years old, a freshman in college and in my first serious relationship, all while dealing with my father’s illness and death later that year. a powder keg of change and stress – to deal with it i spent almost all of my time with my boyfriend, trying not to think about the future.<\/p>\n
we used condoms for awhile but stupidly thought that we could avoid pregnancy using the rhythm method.<\/p>\n
midway though that first year, i thought i had the flu, one which lasted almost three months. i was tired and nauseous, and couldn’t stand the smell of certain foods. my boyfriend finally suggested that we get a pregnancy test “just in case.” the next day i took the test in my dorm bathroom, and (i feel foolish saying this now, 22 years later) was absolutely shocked when it turned up positive. (it turned out i was 10 weeks pregnant at that time.) i drove to my boyfriend’s to tell him, and once i did we knew what we needed to do. he still lived with his mom, working the night shift at a local newspaper. i had no job. we knew that we were not prepared to raise a child- we were kids ourselves.<\/p>\n
i ended up calling planned parenthood and was able to get an appointment for the following week. i was awake the entire time, the staff were so kind, and the procedure seemed to be fairly quick. i remember when we left my boyfriend took me to a restaurant to eat. it was so surreal to have just had an abortion and then be surrounded by people who had no idea.<\/p>\n
to this day, only a very small number of people know i did this. while not ashamed, i just don’t want others to see me differently. i am now married to my boyfriend and we have wonderful careers, a house, and a lovely dog. and no, we do not have any children. i cannot say i feel any regret having an abortion, but i also knew that i never wanted to go through it again, so we made sure to use birth control diligently. i know that having had a child so young would have limited our opportunities to become self-sufficient, so it was the right thing to do at the time. i am glad i had a choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
i look back now and realize that even though i was educated and very capable, i was also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_世界杯2022亚洲预选赛b组 ":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[296],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20257"}],"collection":[{"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/世界杯2022亚洲预选赛b组 ?parent=20257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.k12fl.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}