Growing up as a pastor’s daughter in the heart of a heavily Christian Georgia town, I was the last person you’d expect to become unexpectedly pregnant. Yet there I was – in college on a basketball scholarship – when the double pink lines spelled disaster.
Feeling completely isolated, I contemplated the public shame, my parents’ disappointment, the end of my basketball career, and my inability to afford college if I continued this pregnancy.
I did what many young women in such a vulnerable position would do: I scheduled an appointment online to get abortion drugs..
In the most vulnerable moment of my life, all I had to do was put in my age and I was on the books to pick up the drugs at Planned Parenthood. I was never asked how far along I was or if I was in a coercive situation. All they cared about was my age, because to them I was simply a number, a statistic.
Thankfully, I never picked up those drugs.
What transpired instead has opened my eyes to the negligent lack of informed consent women receive when it comes to making a permanent, life altering decision about their bodies and their unborn children. It also emphasized the need for greater support for expecting moms, and education on the dangers of mifepristone.
At the time, I naively thought that abortion drugs ended pregnancy before the baby was alive. I was completely ignorant of what the process entailed, and how painful and traumatizing it could be for me. Culture suggested that abortion was empowering and that if I didn’t want to be a mother, I would just have to take a little pill. My surroundings, mixed with the fact that I wasn’t willing to sacrifice anything for my basketball scholarship, led me to believe that an abortion was my only choice.
Then I shared my situation with two close friends. The one had suffered a miscarriage in the past.
As we spoke about her devastating loss, I felt the profound contradiction of me grieving her baby while planning to abort my own. I’d convinced myself that my baby didn’t exist yet. My friend’s grief over her unborn child said something different.
A conversation with another friend drove home the truth: no matter what I chose, I was already a mother, and this was a human life. Taking the abortion drug would never change that.
This conviction saved me from the trauma that so many women have experienced at the hands of mifepristone and its proponents.
Rather than suffering the lifelong physical consequences and emotional burden of the drug, I faced the short-term consequences of telling my parents and my baby’s father.
The baby’s father accepted that I was going home to tell my parents, who were disappointed in me but met me with grace. Rather than suffering alone, I benefited from speaking with those who truly loved and knew me.
I knew that I was choosing life, but as a 19-year-old, I didn’t think I would be able to provide my child with the upbringing she deserved.
After intense prayer and research, I was able to calmly discern that placing my baby for adoption was the ideal option. My parents connected me with a wonderful adoption agency, and soon I found the perfect family who agreed to an open adoption with me.
Thanks to the adoptive family’s generosity, my parents, the father, and I have a beautiful relationship with my now three-year-old daughter. She is being raised surrounded by an abundance of love and support, even if she does not yet know how that love came to be.
Choosing life for my daughter blessed a wonderful family that desired to parent. It also gave me a new purpose and outlook on my own life and empowered me to continue my education and become a pro-life advocate.
If I hadn’t spoken to my two friends, I might not have even paused to think before rushing into an unwanted abortion. Many women and girls aren’t lucky enough for fate to intervene before they make life-altering choices.
In recent months, ongoing litigation over the abortion drug, mifepristone, has highlighted the serious adverse effects that 11% of women who take the drug experience. What’s more is that nearly 70% of abortions are coerced, unwanted, or inconsistent with women’s preferences. Women are making these choices out of fear, just like I would have, rather than with a clear mind and the appropriate information. And we cannot rely on abortion facilities to provide the sounding board that young women desperately need.
I am grateful that I am not part of a statistic and that I had the support and resources to choose a good life for my daughter. I hope other young women, and especially student athletes know that abortion is not their only option.
Choosing life for your child does not mean that you are choosing to give up your own life. There is beauty, strength, and so many possibilities that come from the adoption process.
You do not have to be a statistic of the abortion industry. Your life, and your child’s life, are worthy of a beautiful story.