Necessary Healthcare 

When I was 17, I went out with a senior who was giving me attention. He was popular, older and all that. I knew I was going to be drinking and making out. I agreed to all that. What I did not agree to was him pulling down my pants and underwear when I was mostly passed out, and having sex with me without my consent. I didn’t really fight hard, so was it rape? I never told anyone it was date rape.

It would’ve caused me more problems if I shared that part. I already had problems though; I had became pregnant from the one sexual encounter.

From there, the current older girls I was trying to be friends with were the ones who were with me when I discovered I was pregnant. They were so excited for me! How lucky I was to get pregnant with a popular guy’s baby! I was never going to keep it. My Mother, only 17 years older than myself, was going to help me get an abortion. There was one place in the adjacent city of 300k, only a fifteen-minute drive.

She met my Dad, who she been estranged from for quite some time, at a bar, and he gave her the money for me to get an abortion. I cannot remember, but it was $400-$500. I was only 17 and lived with my Grandparents, so I did not know at that current time that my Mother was a crackhead. The money my Father gave her for my abortion went into her pipe.

Meanwhile, the girls at school had left a letter in my Grandparents mailbox telling them I was pregnant and planning on getting an abortion. I was forced to take a home pregnancy test. All this confrontation aside, my Grandparents took me to get an abortion. They were more upset than anything I was having casual, unprotected sex. It was irresponsible. I never told them I was date raped. A few days after the abortion, I was at a friend’s house and started hemmorhaging. I had to be rushed to the ER in an ambulance. They could not really explain what happened except that I possibly went TOO EARLY in the pregnancy and the procedure didn’t get it all.

A few years later, I was on the pill and in a serious relationship. Whatever serious is for 19-year-old, but you know, in love. I became pregnant. Boyfriend scrounged up money and paid for all or most of it. (good guy! ) Crazy thing is, it was an ectopic pregnancy. Getting an abortion saved future fertility options and possibly my life. I was correctly taking the pill and got an ectopic pregnancy.

A very rare side effect that can happen when on said birth control pills. I had another pregnancy at 21 from a fling. We were being irresponsible. He ghosted me with the whole thing. Never spoke to me again. I had one at 27 after reconnecting with an old flame, who threatened me if I did not have an abortion. He paid for it, but what HE didn’t know was that it was covered by the state of Washington, so I kept his fucking asshole money.

The last one is the hardest. I fell in love with “the one.” We had a three-year-old at home. We tried to get pregnant and it happened quickly. (If you have not caught on, I am unfortunately fertile)

We told the world.

At our 16-week anatomy scan, we were told the baby was a girl, it had a club foot, trisomy 21, and fetal heart malformations. Devastated, we ultimately made the decision to do a late term abortion (19 weeks) in IL. It was not a form of Eugenics, even though I have massive guilt, but the stark reality is that we are poor, and if the child even LIVED, multiple surgeries would be needed. I now have a second, healthy child. If I had not had the opportunities to so easily have access to necessary healthcare, I could’ve have possibly died or had SEVEN children today, with the first being a product of rape.