Hi my name is Renee. I was 19 when I found out I was pregnant but my story has a little twist to it. My baby was going to be biracial and my family couldn’t deal with that. I’ll never forget the day that I took the test. I thought my life was over. My parents kept on saying negative things towards me like, “how could you be so irresponsible”, and how is our community going to treat us now that you are going to have a biracial baby?” All they talked about is how this was going to affect them, it was like they didn’t care about my feelings at all. It was on a Wed. that I found out that I was pregnant(however I had suspected long before that) and my mom told me that I had to make a decision of whether or not I was going to keep the baby by Friday. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Not only was I having to make this life changing decision but in 2 days no less. Right when I found out that I was pregnant there was no dobut in my mind that I was going to keep my baby but I started letting what others around me said affect my decision. I decided to go ahead and have an abortion.

My abortion took place on July 7, 2018 and both my mom and dad went with me to the clinic. The father of the child didn’t even know that I was pregnant and my mom would not let me contact him to talk to him at all. When we pulled up to the abortion clinic I started crying and I didn’t stop the whole time I was in there. I was so bad that one of the nurses had to take my into her office and pretty much convince me into going ahead with the process. You see I never really knew what took place on the day of a abortion. I went in the building(scared to death) and the first thing I had to do was go into this cold, dark room where a doctor and a nurse waited for me to do an ultra sound to see how old the baby was. After the ultra sound was complete a picture of the baby was printed out and I had to clip it on to the front of my file that they made me carry around with me the whole time I was in the office. For 2 hours I had to sit in the waiting room and stare at a picture of my 2and1/2 month old baby that I was about to kill. The reality really sank in. I looked around the room at about 30 other girls and women who were also there for the same thing and thought about how many lives were about to be taken that day, I almost got sick.

Finally it was time for my group(10 women) to go upstairs to get meds for the pain of the procedure. I was so guilt striken I didn’t even consent to having drugs at all, I wanted to feel the physical pain to suffer for what I was doing to my child. In the upstairs room a nurse came in and handed out the medication to each woman and even though I didn’t let them sedate me they still made me take a Valium to relax my muscles for the surgery. When the nurse handed out the cups of Meds she told us that once we took our medication then we had to go through with the process b/c the drugs would have an affect on our unborn children. So I sat there stareing a whole through my cup knowing that the minute I took the pill there was no turning back….and then…. I put the pill in my mouth and swallowed. It was over, at that moment I no longer had control of my childs life. I had made my choice and had to live with it.

After the abortion was over they took each of us one by one into what they called the recovery room. Of course I was the only girl concious b/c of the medication that everyone else had taken, so I sat there. I looked around the room at all of the other girls and thought,”what have we all done?” One by one every girl in the room slowly woke up and as each of them opened their eyes I noticed that they were all crying. It felt like I was in a nightmare or something, like none of this could really be happening to me and eventually I was going to wake up and everything would be back to normal…but no, this was reality.

It has been three years since I had my abortion and I still regret the decision I made. I finally got to talk to my unborn baby’s father and tell him the whole story and it left him speechless. He asked me if I had gotten a chance to talk to him before I went to the clinic would I still have had the abortion and my reply was this,”if I had just heard your voice I would have known that everything would have been okay and I wouldn’t have done it.” Of course this broke his heart.

My parents act like nothing ever happened and I don’t think that even now three years later that they do or will ever understand the emotions of anger, saddness, and guilt that I deal with everyday b/c of the decision I made. My advice is this: if you are pregnant, please worry only about yourself and how this will affect your life. Don’t let other people force or talk you into doing something that you know is not right for you. You are the one that has to live with the outcome of the situation not them. Take it from me, living the rest of your life with guilt and the wondering of what could have been is not a very happy or easy life.

Renee

Dear Renee,

You are ABSOLUTELY right. Women need to make the decision for themself. Abortion is not the “quick solution” that so many try and promote it as. Women are the ones that have to live with the guilt, the emptiness, the regret after having an abortion.

You say your parents have already moved on, but you are left to live with the pain. Hopefully, with time, they will see what they’ve done and you will be able to learn to forgive yourself. You can’t change what happened. You can’t bring your baby back, but you can learn from this and share your experience with other girls, just like you are doing now, so they don’t go have to go down the same path that you did.

Thank you so much for sharing your story.