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Thank you to everyone for having this discussion. Discussion and appropriate counsel is the area I would like to see become more important at all time frames of a woman's health. When I was 17 and sought after an abortion the only counsel I recall receiving was how to fill out paperwork so that it would be paid for. There seemed to be indifference to any emotional or physical that might have been brought on by this decision. At the time when I experienced this I too thought it was a clump of cells. It wasn't until I gave birth to my 1st live child that I realized what I had done. I'm sorry to say I have regretted it all these 37 years since.

Pregnancy is not new, it's not going away. Options are many and I hope and pray that we can support one another in ways that encourage life but also not pass judgement on those who chose to end it. That is not our place.

My daughter became pregnant at 17 even though we did everything possible to counsel her and her boyfiend about boundaries. Gratefully she had gone through a class where they debated abortion and so she had already made up her mind before she was pregnant that abortion was not for her. She chose the option to raise her baby. We her family have rallied around her ever since and I'm happy to say that today our daughter is married to our granddaughters baby and they have two other children as well. It wasn't easy and at times I wanted to pull my hair out, but together our family is raising a child.

I also am an adopted child, having been conceived in a time when my biological mother and father were not married and did not intend to marry. I am grateful to my mother who gave me live and allowed another family who could not have children raise me as their own. My biological father has never had another child and my partents who raised me with my brother and sister (also both adopted under separate circumstances) were happy to have had this option. I'm thankful to the people who put my mother up for the months that she was pregnant so that she could give me up for adoption outside the environment of her family who she probably felt would not support her decision.

And finally my mom who raised me. She could not have children because of a teen pregnancy that resulted in a still born child which later caused complications and a historectomy. Options were important to her then as they are to our women today.

Thank you for listening.

posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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