In my experience, I’ve known a lot of women who have opted for abortion. The biggest reason boiled down to a single cause, which was fear. In one way or another, fear played a massive role in choosing to abort the pregnancy. I’ve only met one woman in my entire life who had quite a few due to irresponsibility on her part and she wasn’t really phased by any of it. Which I also don’t judge, just to make it clear – she was just different than most.
Admitting this is somewhat difficult, simply because I’m such a private person, but I have had two. The first was when I was about 22. I was in a very unstable and unhealthy relationship and I had no confidence whatsoever that things would work out for the best between the father and myself, and I didn’t have the means to raise a baby on my own at the time. The second time was because I wasn’t ready and I was terrified that something really bad would happen to me if I went through with the pregnancy due to how badly my body was doing in multiple ways. I was being tested for Lupus and all kinds of things because doctors couldn’t figure out what was going on with me. Also, something the father said terrified me and I was scared that I’d have to do it alone.The second abortion ate at me, even worse than the first, because I never wanted to have another one. But I was very scared, for varying reasons, each time.
Why, ultimately, share something so personal? Because I believe in a woman’s right to choose. I shouldn’t be ashamed because of the choices I’ve made (and I’m not), but the difficulty in sharing comes with the knowledge that someone, somewhere, is going to judge you – without all of the extremely important details, and as much as I believe, I still don’t want to deal with that. It gets tiring and very difficult sometimes.