Regarding abortion: This is my secret story. I’ve never shared it before, but I don’t know anyone here personally, so I feel this might be a good place to share it now, after nearly 40 years of silence.

Nobody likes to hear abortion stories, just like nobody likes to hear about the abuse of women and children when an unwanted pregnancy is carried out.

If anyone is undecided on how you feel about abortion, or outright against them in all cases, then simply don’t have one yourself, but please don’t judge the women who feel they have no other option or fear harm will come to them or their baby.

I’m sure many women have secret abortion stories that they have never shared with anyone. I am one of those women. I haven’t shared mine with anyone, even family members, except my mother, who is gone, and my ex-husband who knows of this but never gave any thought to the trauma the decision caused me.

I've never even told my daughter, who wouldn't be alive today, if it were not for this story, for fear it would disintegrate further the relationship she has with her dad.

Here is my story. I actually have another story too, but I don’t feel like sharing that now.

Nobody wants to get an abortion. I didn't when I found out I was pregnant just a few weeks before my wedding. My husband-to-be insisted that I get an abortion or he wouldn't marry me. With that ultimatum, I didn't know what to do. Raise a baby all by myself? Or go along with my soon-to-be husband’s insistence that I get an abortion?

I didn't really have anyone to talk to about it, since it’s a sensitive subject, but I did confide in my mother. She was of the old school who felt that the man is always right, so you do with the man says, no matter what your feelings on the subject are.

So I went ahead with the abortion (legally and safely) but it was very traumatic for me, because I felt it was senseless. We were going to get married anyway, so what was the problem?

My husband had very strong feelings about children born less than 9 months after a wedding, since he was one such child, and his mother blamed him all his life as being the reason she was stuck in her unhappiness, never finished nursing school, ended up with seven kids, always cooking, never having fun, etc. I understood that, but the time to worry about not bringing a child into the world without marriage would have been when he decided not to use protection during intimacy.

Now, if smart, I would have canceled the wedding and waited for a man who would welcome a baby into the family, but I felt very confused at the time. My dad had just died, my mom didn’t have a lot of time or helpful advice for me, my sister was planning her own wedding, so I got married. I continued to feel tricked into the marriage though, a feeling that stayed with me while exiting down the aisle, crying not for happiness, but for the feeling that I just lost myself into a stupid choice.

Seven months after the wedding I got pregnant again. Because this was a legitimate baby, my husband did not insist upon abortion this time, but he was not happy about our situation, worried about the responsibility. That is when the physical violence toward me began.

He did not know how to handle his frustration about a responsibility he was not ready for, except by hitting and punching. I remember one time he was swinging at me nonstop in a rage and when he got to my midsection, the object of his rage, I picked up the cutting board and held it against my belly to protect the baby, then ran into the bathroom and locked the door.

In my seventh month of pregnancy, I took my mom up on an offer to spend a week with her and my grandma on Kauai. When I returned home from that trip, my husband bragged to me about going out drinking and dancing with other women who were not pregnant, while I was gone,. He said pregnant women are repulsive, meaning I was repulsive to him.

My husband did not prove to be all that paternal, refusing to go to childbirth classes or have interest in doctor visits, so I felt like I was going through the pregnancy alone. He even made plans to go to an out of town softball tournament the very weekend the baby was due to be born, leaving me all alone in our apartment, with just the phone number of the motel office to call if the baby came while he was playing, drinking or sleeping, 3 hours away.

As it turned out, our daughter was born 2 weeks late, so he was home and able to drive me to the hospital when I went into labor. Our beautiful baby girl was born and I was fully aware that I would not be holding her in my arms, had I not had an abortion 16 months earlier.

I made the best of those early weeks with our newborn. My husband was not interested in helping with the baby or even holding her. I remember having to trick him into holding her, by making up excuses to hold her while I ran to the bathroom with a fake emergency in kind of an attempt at forced bonding.

Less than 9 months later, I was pregnant again, and that’s when my husband returned to venting of his frustrations by hitting and punching. He was not happy about the situation. But again, he could have used condoms, but he chose not to. Birth control pills were too expensive at the time and the only type available gave me unwanted side affects.

When I was four months pregnant with our son, my husband had beat me to the point that I grabbed our 1 year old daughter and left the house in tears with broken glasses and a bruised face. I showed up at my mother’s place for some kind of guidance, direction or advice, but she didn't really have any except to to suggest that I “don't needle him" whatever that meant, I guess inferring that the fact my husband beat me was my fault, and sent me back home to him.

I said all that to say this:

My feelings about the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned nationwide, by a supreme court stacked with ultra conservative judges, rather than a selection more representative of our general population, is one of fear for the women and unborn children who may have a frustrated father getting violent against the mother and unborn baby.

Having access to a safe abortion is better than outlawing the procedure, meaning women would turn to unsafe abortions. Again nobody wants an abortion, but sometimes it’s the lesser of two evils, when life is confusing and uncertain.

We’ve all seen Dirty Dancing, where Penny goes to a back street doctor for an abortion, which causes her the pain and infection that Baby’s dad helps with. That is a warning about what would happen if abortions were illegal again. It wouldn’t stop them from happening, it would just mean they would be unsafe for the woman.

How to reduce abortions? Make sex education and all forms of birth control free and widely accessible. That’s a start. Offer affordable high quality health care to all. Having a baby is massively expensive.

Let me say again, nobody wants an abortion. It is a last resort and could be that the pregnancy resulted from marital rape or a husband's refusal to use protection or missed birth control pills or other accidental causes, any number of possibilities that many of the right wing voters should be able to comprehend.

The choice to have an abortion is a very difficult one, not made lightly, but must remain a safe option, for the health of the mother, and to prevent violence against women and children.

So if I had not had an abortion a few short weeks before my marriage, my wonderful daughter would not have been born.

Who is to say that the life of the aborted child was more important than the life of the child I did have? That is something to ponder.

The right wing folks who do not believe in birth control and reproduction rights demonstrate plainly that they do not know the experiences of those less fortunate. Not everyone finds a non-violent supportive partner with whom to share their life. While we all want a perfect world, that is not reality. We have to work in a reality based world.

Each child is unique. An unwanted child might be met with a hard life with a single mother or if the father is still in the picture, he may turn violent against the child, possibly resentful if he would have been made to be financially responsible even while refusing to marry the mother. It’s just not a happy ending no matter what. That’s reality.