I Didn’t Have an Abortion When I Got Pregnant at 17, but My Clinic Helped Me Understand My Options
Category: News & Politics
Via: tessylo • 4 years ago • 57 commentsBy: As told to Julie Mazziotta, People
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Lifestyle
I Didn’t Have an Abortion When I Got Pregnant at 17, but My Clinic Helped Me Understand My Options
I was 17 when I learned that I was pregnant. I actually went to a local clinic, the Druid Clinic, with a friend who thought she was pregnant, and I took the test with her for emotional support because she didn’t want to pee alone. So, I peed with her, and that’s when I found out.
My immediate reaction was, “I’m 17!” I didn’t know what I was going to do, and I didn’t want to tell my mother. Luckily, the woman at the clinic was the sweetest. I think the color had drained from my face, so she sat me down and held my hand. She had this good vibe that was comforting and made me relax. She told me what I could do, and how to sign up for hospital visits if I kept the baby and what to do if I wanted to terminate the pregnancy.
I decided to keep my child — she’s now 18, and for me, it was the best decision I ever made. My family was able to help me and I was able to still get an education.
But during my pregnancy, I didn’t have health insurance and the clinic helped me with check-ups and everything I needed. They take you in whether you have insurance or not. Now the government is trying to take away funding for clinics and I don’t think it makes sense at all. They need to give women a place to go, whether it be for annual check-ups, abortions or just birth control. We need health care, so women like me have somewhere to go.
Guttmacher Institute
Even though abortion wasn’t right for me, the option needs to be there. Some people cannot take care of a child, and the right to an abortion needs to be on the table.
I’ve started sharing my story because I want everyone, including my two girls — my younger daughter is 17 — to know that not everybody is perfect, and even if you’re in a tough situation there’s always a light at the end of it. We need people to speak out for others who aren’t strong enough to speak for themselves.
-
As told to Julie Mazziotta
Tags
Who is online
79 visitors
I'm just waiting for those to claim that Planned Parenthood is nothing but an obscene profit making abortuary business and that they have a quota at Planned Parenthood where women are coerced into terminating their pregnancies.
“Now the government is trying to take away funding for clinics and I don’t think it makes sense at all. ”
Is this about access to abortion, or free abortion?
It's about access to all the services Planned Parenthood provides.
It's about access to all the services Planned Parenthood provides.
It sounds like it's about public health.
"But during my pregnancy, I didn’t have health insurance..."
Well, have another reference to health care at the expense of others.
Are you suggesting all healthcare be denied to those without insurance?
If it's an Elective Health Procedure then yes.
Some insurances might cover elective procedures. But that's for an insurance company to decide. Abortions are generally paid for out of pocket.
This isn’t generally. I presented two anecdotal references for the expectation of care without a major contribution.
Geez I didn't know blacks get abortions at almost three times the rate whites do.
There are some (many) who realize that for them personally, to have a child at specific times in their lives will have a negative prospect on their financial or personal futures.
That was the whole point of Planned Parenthood existence. Part of founder Sangers eugenics plan
Wrong! Ms. Sanger wanted better health conditions for women, whom she saw dying as a result of unsafe procedures and unsanitary conditions.
She has been dead for 53 years, how is she relevant?
She's not. But anti-abortionists typically don't have any valid talking points and will resort to citing Ms. Sanger as a last or desperate resort.
I'm not a fan of abortion so I will never get one. It helps that I'm an elderly man so the odd's of my ever needing one is rather low.
But just like the quest for drugs, aborting pregancies is never going to go away. I would much rather that the abortion be performed in a clean legal fashion rather than in a dirty motel room or out-of-the-way office to keep it hidden. I don't want to go back to a time when having an abortion put one at elevated risk of infection and death.
If aborting a fetus is truly murder they will eventually have to answer for it when they face God. I trust in His will and abide in His love but I will not wish to put another person in harm over this.
Why won't those who are against abortion for religious reasons just let the Lord handle it at the Day of Reckoning?
I guess they are just doing the 'Lords work' for him.
I kept getting Jehovah witnesses at my house when I 1st moved here, It took me threatening them with physical harm to get rid of them....
Or better yet, why doesn't god himself deal with it?
He's too busy miscarrying nearly 50% of all pregnancies...
Well then, God should be thanking us for picking up the slack with abortion.
Most do, they don't stone Abortionists or anything like that. The Problem comes when Politicians make an issue out of it, if you're against abortion (for what ever reason) you can't in good conscience vote for a politician who is pro choice so you vote for the pro life politician. The thing that gets me is how many pro choice people act like pro life people are bad people when in truth they're just people who (for what ever reason) believe abortion is killing babies and they're against it. If they are Pro Life for religious reasons then many feel it is their duty to a least try to prevent these mostly young naïve girls from murdering their babies. You can believe what you want but you should at least be able to respect what it's like to believe what these pro lifers believe. If you can't relate just imagine your distaste and horror if you found out some group believed it was OK to kill a toddler if it became an inconvenience and they were actually doing it, would you speak out against it, would you write your Congressman, would you be pro life or pro choice ? How would you feel about Planned Parenthood using your Tax dollars to kill these Toddlers ? That's how many Pro Lifers feel about abortion.
Given the chance, I'm sure some anti-abortionists would like to. Some have already shot abortion doctors or bomb clinics (yes, extremists, I know).
Indeed. And there are certain states where this issue just keeps repeating itself.
I call that sanctimonious arrogance!
They can believe whatever they want. But their belief ends where another's rights begin. If they attempt to prevent or prohibit a woman's right to choose, then they deserve whatever scorn they get and should not be surprised when they get pushback.
A false equivalency. There are already laws against that. Neither is anyone advocating such a thing. Abortion is legal and it is not murder. It's also no one else's business as to what a woman chooses to do regarding her body and pregnancy.
Not to many who are Pro Life, they see absolutely no difference. Abortion wasn't always Legal.
Of course they don't. But they are wrong.
It was in the 19th & early 20th centuries. Then it wasn't until the Roe ruling, as there was no legitimate or legal reason to keep abortion illegal.
That is the definition of a one issue voter. I can overlook someone's abortion stance if their other stances are close to my own
I tend to think many people vote according to only 1 issue.
Emphatically. And I am so glad you clocked that language trying to embed and hide itself in plain sight. Murder is a crime. Judges, especially of the supreme type, do not indulge in a conspiracy of murder. Moreover, Justice Blackmun who wrote the first opinion on legalized abortion was acting in the interest of compromise for the privacy of American girls and women and for the preservation of American lives. As orphaned and abandoned children were 'littering' the American landscape.
Indeed. Another and more extreme real world example of this is Romania under Nicolae Ceauşescu, who enacted abortion and contraception bans. Children were born (the "forgotten generation") and then neglected, abused, lived in poverty, ect.. Perhaps without realizing it, that is what anti-abortionists advocate when they try to limit or prohibit abortion. Not to mention women who were maimed or died as a result of back alley or unsafe abortion conditions or due to complications associated with pregnancy.
What's sad is there are college and professionally staffed industries which have sprang up around a woman's right to choose and support for the life of an unborn child. This most unfortunate and private affair is 'outed' everyday in subtle and grotesque conduct of its participants.
Just today, as I pulled into shopping lot parking, I watched a couple of well-suited male volunteers "manning" an abortion lookout station just off a public sidewalk. As I returned to my car to leave I observed a shift change had occurred for now two women volunteers were seated where the men were stationed. Such people do not bother me. They are quiet, decent, and barely imposing themselves on the street and their surroundings.
Then there are the professionals, who have a 'product' to save the life of the unborn which is packaged and marketed to politicians, think tanks, and once up and running institutions resist and fight to survive at any cost. Ironically, the unborn are a business in this world, and accordingly have fed many generations of living children into adulthood, given them a career, and retirement into old age. There are the purveyors, who ply their trade in courts, legislation, and every local, state, and federal halls of power.
For the right-wing evangelical churches, abortion is not so much being carried away with the idea of saving the life of unborn children, for these churches know the courts and judges have well-reasoned their opinions balancing the acts themselves against the negative outcomes. Offering up a compromise - as a form of "splitting" the babies to quiet the issue.
For right-wing evangelicals this is about self-righteousness, nevertheless They want to win over the top of abortionist supporters. They are intensely fighting the 'war' they can't release themselves from now that it is ongoing.
why are pro abortion feminists and their male Schumer like allies so angry 😡?
That doesn't address my post, not to mention it is also disingenuous.
it is and they will indeed
That's nice. Prove it!
The issue is Choice. Or whether 'we' want the government to take that decision away from 'us'.
And Privacy. The anti-choicers keep trying to chip away at the abortion issue, but if Roe v Wade gets overturned the bedrock of medical privacy can be crushed. HIPPA would be dead within months and everyone's medical and mental health issues would be big business.
Planned Parenthood should claim they were hacked and anonymously release thru a 3rd party the names of all known thumpers and anti-choicers that have required their services in the past.
As interesting as that would be, I'd have to say no.
I disagree completely. Someone's medical history should always remain private between the patient and the doctor. As soon as you allow one piece of information out some other group will come along asking for another "small" piece of info, and before you know it personal privacy is gone and people are being blackmailed for their history. I don't want to see any part of that.
We want the government to protect the sanctity of all human life which in the case of all of us began at conception.
And we want to protect a woman's right to choose what she wants to do with an unplanned pregnancy...not your uterus, not your medical choice.
Hi Lady. I id not particularly wish to watch a video this morning, but I did watch the Instagram link @5.2. It is a different style of argument not for the life of the unborn per se, but for the life of the girl or woman having the abortion. Apparently, it is a new tactic or is it a new reality concern? I don't knwo much about it. Girls and women dying during abortion proceedings? Spurring a call to court action?
Unfortunately, some people just don't seem to get that.
It is utter bullshit...it's the new "silent scream", (which was fake) that's all, more anti choicer propaganda.
Sure let's make abortion illegal and then more women will die having back alley abortions....circular logic stupidity
Ah. Thank you for sharing a new way of looking at the 'problem.'
[deleted]
Yes, that would be accurate of everyone. Your point?
You are no better than the fetus you are aborting. Thats the point
I never said I was and I have no delusions about being "special" or something emotionally satisfying like that. An embryo/fetus essentially is a "clump of cells," literally in early development too. That's simple fact and reality. I have no need to sugar coat it.
And you as a full grown adult are nothing but a clump of cells. So what is your point?
As are we all. That was the point, as I indicated in my post 6.1.
So then if somebody aborts a full grown adult then it shouldnt matter since they are a clump of cells?
I think that would be considered murder and there are laws against it.