Four Years Since the Fall of Roe
We are the majority. These are our stories.
405 Voices and Counting
You—or someone you love—has benefited from contraception, sex education, maternal care, assisted reproduction, miscarriage care or abortion. This isn't a privilege we ask permission for.
Our lives depend on this right. It's a right millions of us exercise every day—legal or not, restricted or not, named or not.
We are the majority. We're going on the record.
What have reproductive choices given you the freedom to do?
When I was 14 my mother married my stepfather and I inherited my stepsister’s room as she moved out to get married. In her bookcase was a small paperback called “sex and abortion”. After reading that I made the decision that if I ever got pregnant I was going to get an abortion. Jump forward to 1972 I am a college senior and I am pregnant. Thank goodness in California we had a therapeutic abortion act. I went to my college counselor explain to her that I definitely wanted an abortion she approved and so I went to get one. In those days it was a major production on the level of surgery. I had to go into the hospital when I woke up from the procedure I had a drip in my arm and I kept saying could they hurry it up so that I could get something to eat I was starving. An hour later I was finished my girlfriend picked me up we went to get something to eat that night I went to a party and I have never regretted it, I went on to finish college and started my own company. This is why I am a pro choice.
I was able to stand up to the Hypocrisy around me, As A serious Woman in the Arts, and A top intellectual, in my family, I was able to defend my choice to not have children, as it was pushed onto me by, so called, : ” Traditional Woman and Overbearing family” . Also, as a Survivor of STRANGER SEXUAL ABUSE , My dancer’s professional body and awareness was then full of mistrust of men. Having a community of aware woman who were protecting the rights of women, gave me ammunition to fight for my strong convictions that I was not motherhood material. My own, beautiful Mother, did not want her Gifted Artist daughter to Marry the Wrong Man and have a child with a abusive traitor. She had her gifts thwarted by being forced to have too many children. All in all, Motherhood is a Sacred calling and must be looked at with much more Honesty and dedication to the TRUTH OF WOMEN’S LIVES. We have overpopulations of stranded children, in foster care and huge levels of domestic violence. TRUTH NOW!!
Access to reproductive health choices changed my life options. Before Row v Wade: I was born in Massachusetts in 1942. Birth control information was against the law until 1972. By that time. I had married, and had 3 children by my 25th birthday. My Gyn/Ob would only offer the rhythms method as birth control to me, as a married woman. By the time of Roe v Wade, I had left my husband and was deeply involved with the Woman’s Movement. I was better able to explore my own sexuality and choose abortion, if I wanted to. It affected my family, my relationships, my career and my overall ability to create a life of my own.
I struggled with premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Estrogen makes me crazy. If I have too much of it. And plus a tubal ligation on my left fallopian tube was attached to my intestines, so I ended up with a botched tubal ligation that resulted into a full hysterectomy. I was only granted the full hysterectomy after I told the doctor if he didn’t take all my organs out, I was going to kill myself. I’ve been a firm advocate since the age of 13 for reproductive health and birth control and contraceptives. And I am a firm believer in the D and C procedure. for all females, especially for emergency purposes to save their life.
I have known since my mid-twenties that I do not want children. I once went to a clinic to get an IUD, where the male doctor tried to talk me out of it because I didnt have children yet, which made absolutely no sense. Years later, when I was 37, I was considering more permanent options for birth control, but at the time the permanent IUD was off the market. I went to my annual visit with my gynecologist who I had been seeing for many years, ready to lay out my plea for tubal ligation, and when she walked into the exam room 8 months pregnant my confidence went right out the window. After the exam when she asked me what I was using for birth control, I started to state my case and before I could finish she suggested tubal ligation. She said she knew I didn’t want kids and would be happy to do it for me. A month later, days before she left for maternity leave, she performed my surgery. I am so grateful to her for trusting my choice and providing me with the care I needed.
At age 23 I became pregnant. I was single and definitely not ready to raise a child or even decide to be a mother. In the state I lived in, at the time, there was one female doctor within 50 miles who performed abortions. It had only been a short time since Roe versus Wade. Having the choice to abort enabled me to go to graduate school, establish a career path and make an informed choice to have a child when I was both emotionally and financially ready. I am grateful I had the choice to decide what was right for me. My friends and I marched for that right, I never thought I would have to march again so my grandchildren could continue to have that right.
I got pregnant in the 1970s when my marriage was going through a precarious time. I had no idea what the future would be with my husband. I decided to get an abortion. My husband and I reconciled. A few years later I had the opportunity to go to law school. I went and during that time the marriage fell apart. I have had a very successful life after that, practicing law for 40 years. Coming from my background, I would have given up that life to being entrapped in an always turbulent marriage. I am worried for the women who live in the current environment.
In the Fall of 1984, I drove my partner to a clinic in Maryland and waited as she endured an abortion. My partner was 23. We knew the decision to end her pregnancy was momentous, and we both believed that ultimately, the decision was hers. Her body, her right. We had just returned from several months abroad. We were unemployed. We did not know where we were going to live, and we admitted that we weren’t sure that our relationship would move forward. This was all true before we discovered the pregnancy, and it was true afterwards. We admitted to each other that neither of us was ready to have a child. We were unsettled in every way, and it felt terribly unfair to saddle a newborn with chaos. As it happened, we did stay together. We moved cross-country and settled there. We had and raised three children. At times, we talked about the baby angel we’d made. If we had to do it over again, would we make the same decision? Of course, our answer did not matter. The point is, we had a Choice.
I was a teenager in the seventies and birth control was free and easy to get in this area. I got on the pill and managed to not get pregnant until I was grown and married. Meanwhile my friends who insisted they were virgins ended up pregnant in high school. Some got abortions, some didn’t. It’s really sad that we’re backsliding into the 50s.
I built the life I wanted to have by becoming a single mother through donor insemination in 1995. I was lucky because my employer-sponsored insurance covered the care required for me to get pregnant, fortunate that it “worked” on just the third insemination, and grateful that I had friends, family and colleagues who encouraged and supported the decision. As I think back now to how relatively easy it was to make this dream come true 31 years ago, it’s maddening that we still have so much work to do to recognize that reproductive rights are simply human rights.
When I was in nursing school I experienced a birth control failure (remember the “sponge”). I already had 2 children, ages 6 and 4 from a failed marriage. I needed to finish nursing school in order to support myself and my children. Thankfully abortion was legal and accessible in my state. That was 40 years ago. I finished nursing school, went back a few years later and completed my BSN and my Master of Nursing program. I still practice nursing. My children have always known that I will support their reproductive health choices no matter what they are.
It gave me the freedom to finish high school. I was date raped at 15. And since my parents were divorced, things were crazy. And Mom had put me on birth control pills so we didn’t end up with a huge problem. (Lots of teen girls in our town took them) I went on to be a good student who went to college; now I’ve worked in TV and written two books.
I had suffered 2 terrible miscarriages. Had I not had a D&C I would not been able to conceive. The D&C saved me from hemorrhaging and allowed my body to heal. I was an older mom, 38 when my daughter was born. The reproductive care I received allowed my husband and I to have the family we had hoped for. Reproductive healthcare must be front and center. It should not be a political football and, it definitely should not part of a religious movement. Reproductive rights is for all women and their families.
Motherhood was what I always dreamed of. In 7 pregnancies, I thankfully had 3 easy miscarriages, but another was horribly mismanaged due to the provider not wanting any to do with what he deemed “abortive” so I was left bleeding heavily and with a fever for 9 weeks. Another was heterotopic twins — that one took 5 separate attempts at abortion to finally terminate and save my life. My final pregnancy started as quadruplets but I miscarried baby D at 6 weeks. As I would find out later at the 19 week anatomy scan, babies C and D had shared a placenta and most of a bifurcated umbilical cord, so baby C sustained severe brain damage when baby D died. She was not expected to survive if she was even born alive. Babies A and B and I were all suffering from malnutrition and were at risk of dying unless I terminated baby C. I did, at 22 weeks. My surviving twins are 6 years old and are absolute joys. I have abortion access to thank for my life and for my motherhood to my survivors.
As a young Catholic daughter of an alcoholic and drug addicted mother, I decided that I did not want children. I did not wish to repeat that behavior. I was growing up in the sixties and seventies; after leaving home at 18, I was on my own. Life was a struggle, but I was happy. I was attending night college to earn a BA. Then, I got pregnant. I got an abortion. Traveling by bus to another state to avoid an illegal abortion. I earned that degree and it led to a teaching job and then, a graduate program. I got pregnant again. My education would be over. Thus, I got a legal abortion, and subsequently earned a MA and a Ph.D. My life has been dedicated to activism, counseling, and teaching, alongside a like-minded spouse. Now, retired, at 80, those-two life-changing decisions changed my life and the lives of many others. I look back with no regrets, and smile.
Unmarried and building a career at age 26, I found myself pregnant. I did not want to marry the man who impregnated me. In fact, I had already been married and divorced and wasn’t interested in marriage at all. Roe v Wade had become the law of the land on January 22, 1973. I was incredibly lucky that my wonderful female gynecologist helped me obtain a legal abortion at Chicago Lying In hospital on March 13, 1973. Legal abortion was so new then they treated me like a pregnancy patient, staying overnight in the hospital. The legal access to an abortion preserved my career, my personal life and my future. Ten years later, married and settled in a career I loved, I gave birth to my beautiful daughter.
I was 16 yrs old and had been in a relationship for 1.5 years when I became sexually active. We used condoms for a bit but I was still concerned about getting pregnant. I couldn’t go to my family doctor but was able to drive into the city and visit a Planned Parenthood office. I was treated with respect and was able to get on the pill. Having the option to be able to control my reproduction, allowed me to finish my undergraduate degree, begin my career find my lifelong partner and grow a family when the time was right. Thank you Planned Parenthood, you made a huge difference in the trajectory of my life. 🙏🙏🙏
Access to The Pill enabled me to not experience intense ovulation pains every month. It also allowed me to finish college and to not have a child that I could not take care of.
Finish high school, go to college, graduate school and law school, have a career, a home, a child and an entire life. I was not prepared for motherhood at 17 and I am eternally grateful that abortion was legal in 1975. I cannot imagine what a young woman like me living in an abortion ban state faces today.
I had the freedom to complete my college education, teach school for 32 years, become a mother when the time was right. And now I have 5 beautiful grandchildren, also because of access to care.
Having an IUD enabled me to finish college, start my career and pursue my masters. It allowed me to fall in and out of love, enjoy life and heartbreak and never once have this threaten my freedom to build the life I desire.
When I was 12 my menstrual cycles began. Unfortunately for me I was met with excessively heavy periods and migraines. The first year of cycles was horrible. I was in 7th grade, which is already an awkward stage in life but adding heavy menstruation to the mix it was miserable. I was always worried I’d bleed through my pad and be embarrassed by a stain on my pants or getting blood on a chair at school. Then the migraines began to occur, right around the same time every month. My mom took me to our family doctor. They wanted to do a pelvic exam and pap, my mom advocated for me and refused as I was only 13 and she felt that was invasive and not something she believed I needed to experience at such a young age. The doctor prescribed me an estrogen based birth control to help regulate the excessive bleeding. This birth control also helped a little with the migraines. With out birth control my teen years would have been miserable.
I was able to help out my best friend in high school in 1971 when she got pregnant in 11th grade. Abortions were not legal in PA. but we were able to drive to Pelham, NY to a clinic there. This would have totally derailed her life and it opened my eyes to what choices were available to women in a lot of different areas of our lives. It was the catalyst for my participation in many of the DC marches and fighting for our rights. I loved picking up my MS. magazine and feeling part of a larger movement. I made me hopeful and I was right to feel that during those times. I’m refuse to lose that hope today!!!!!
When I became pregnant in 1960, there were no options. When I asked the OB/GYN who diagnosed me whether I really had to go through with it, he said he would have to call the police if I was considering any other choice. I believe that he deliberately withheld anesthetic during the birth, and cut a large, painful episiotomy, to teach me a lesson. I married my boyfriend of two years, and finished college. While he got a Phd and a law degree I stayed “barefoot and pregnant.” I gave up my own graduate work, and was a stay-at-home mom. The marriage did not work out. Divorce was a nightmare of heartbreak, fear, abuse, and custody issues. Now, nearing 90, my joys are my children and grandchildren, so I cannot claim regrets for their existence. But the timing was wrong, and I wish I had been able to finish my own Phd and enjoy a career. I am despairing and appalled by the current Supreme Court.
Mine is a little different story about access but still applicable. In 1966, when I was 18 yrs old & a junior in college in NYC where I grew up, I became pregnant by my boyfriend. This was obviously before Roe v. Wade & abortions were illegal in the US. I have a somewhat unique & interesting story as to how, despite the laws against abortion at the time, I was able to get a legal one in a safe environment at one of the top hospitals in the US. I was extremely lucky at the time &, as a result, my career was not thwarted, which was very challenging in itself as I was one the first or one of a very few women in the country who accomplished what I was able to in my career.
At 17, in 1974, I was able to access birth control pills. This singular option made it possible for me to choose whether or not I wanted to be a mother. That choice allowed me to, independently, continue my education, travel, establish and maintain personal credit, become an entrepreneur. I also became active in the fight for Equal Rights, as my parents were. My mother and father were both founding members of the local chapter of NOW in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Women’s strength was instilled in us from my maternal grandmother thru to our children. My grandmother was a strong woman who, beginning in the 1920’s was an entrepreneur, owning first a gas station in California, when my grandfather became ill, then a general store in an Ontario, Canada mining camp when he returned to mining. The fight continues rather than having been won.
Access to reproductive choices gave me the freedom to survive. In my mid-20s, I had two devastating pregnancy losses back to back. After the first miscarriage, an older male OB/GYN performed a D&C and told me to “get back in the saddle” and try again. No compassion. No meaningful guidance. Just an old-school, patriarchal attitude toward a young woman’s body and grief. I followed his advice and became pregnant almost immediately. That pregnancy was ectopic. In the emergency room, that same physician argued with a younger doctor outside my door. He wanted to remove my ovary, while the younger doctor advocated for a newer, less invasive laparoscopic procedure. Thankfully, the younger doctor prevailed. But my ordeal wasn’t over. The microscopic embryo bled out and reattached itself somewhere in my body, and my HCG levels kept rising. I endured a month of methotrexate injections — a form of low-dose chemotherapy — along with leucovorin injections, to stop the growth of pregnancy tissue
I became pregnant for the first time in the post-Dobbs world. It was a much longed-for pregnancy, but I endured a devastating, three-week miscarriage instead. As I was bleeding, in addition to my devastation, I had to wonder if I would be able to access help if things took a turn for the worse, or if I would just have to get into the bathtub and cross my fingers. When my pastor was consoling me after the fact, she confessed, “The first thing I thought when you told me was, ‘thank God we’re not in Texas!'” Last year, my husband I conceived again and were blessed with a healthy baby boy, but I had to miss two family funerals because they took place in parts of the country where I knew if something went wrong again, that I would be on my own.
Because of an IUD, I was able to avoid another unwanted pregnancy. This allowed me to avoid having children and passing on a life threatening genetic disease.
Access to reproductive choices gave me the freedom to finish high school. I had an abortion at 15 and without that access I do not know if I would have completed high school. After my abortion I had to take myself to planned parenthood to get on birth control. This allowed me to go through college, live my life-child free until I was ready to start a family. No one should be making these personal, life saving decisions but me and I’m thankful and grateful to live in New York where this access is available. With that said none of us are free until all of us are free.
When I was around 16-17 years old, I kinda felt that I wanted to have birth control that I definitely always wanted to have control over my own body, so I’ve asked my mother if she would put me on birth control, which she agreed to do so that both me and my sister (who is actually my older sister just by a few years) that we both would be the implants (Nexplanon). And obviously meanwhile my mother is more liberal/progressive/supportive; my grandmother was not that obviously she was a devout Mormon, conservative and a clear Republican that she was actually against it. Just like she was against us getting the vaccine for COVID and she would very often get onto us about our weights and stuff. So I definitely would have to admit that I was kinda terrified of what she would think when I’ve actually had gotten the implant, well obviously luckily she was actually supportive. But in the end I will not let religious institutions dictate of how I should live and do according to their standards.
I had 2 abortions before I had my children (I gave birth to 2 and adopted one). I was young, single and knew I was not ready to be a single parent and support a child at the time of my abortions. I have suffered no physical or emotional or psychological bad effects from my abortions. I worked 40 years as an RN, including as a Women’s Health Clinician. I certainly know first hand and from my professional life how important access to abortion is for women. And how important access to legal, safe and humane abortion services is for women. I worked as a nurse in the early 1970s before abortion was legal and took care of many women whose health was ruined by dangerous attempts to end a pregnancy. My grandmother told me about kitchen table abortions done by unlicensed women for each other in the early 20th Century -we do not want to go back to that.
I was always grateful to planned parenthood and the doctors who gave me care and birth control when I couldn’t afford it! My generation gained us choice for women! We are sickened that Republicans, evangelicals and others are banning care and choice for women again! This is against the wishes and needs of a majority of Americans who want sanity, science, choice, care and compassion from our government ! NEVER fascism, greed, corruption and hatreds! Because I was able to decide not to have children for possible medical, economic, and moral reasons : I was able to build a life as a therapist who helped other people’s children .
Sex education was taught in the Catholic school I attended. I was in the 7th Grade when I learned about “the birds and the bees”. Because of this, I knew I didn’t want to be a teen-aged mom; I knew I wanted to work and live in my own apartment and have the chance to enjoy my singlehood before getting married and starting a family; and I also knew I was going to have a child on my own terms. I was 32 when I had my son, and I’m so glad sex education was made available to my class.
In 1973, I was 18 years old, a young working-class woman going to a hospital nursing school near my home town in New Jersey because my family could not afford college and nursing students earned their “free” tuition by working 5 hours a day in the hospital and going to classes all afternoon. I was in my first relationship and still a virgin out of fear of pregnancy. My mother was trapped in an abusive marriage with my father as she married at 19 and had 5 children by age 25. Another student got pregnant and was able to have an abortion at Planned Parenthood in Hackensack, NJ. No doctor in our small town would give birth control to unmarried women, and no doctors would provide abortions. I went to Planned Parenthood and for a gynecological exam and birth control pills, and this changed my life! Access to birth control allowed me to complete nursing school, become financially secure, and have a great career, and to enjoy sexual freedom for over 50 years!
Abortion became legal the year I graduated from high school. I was so lucky to be able to go to Planned Parenthood and obtain affordable birth control easily and without any hassle. Fortunately, I did not need to access abortion care, but I had friends who did. My oldest daughter lives in a state where abortion is illegal and exceptions are very rare. She and her partner had several backup plans for leaving the state during her pregnancy in case she needed an emergency abortion. Everyone should have bodily autonomy and access to safe and affordable reproductive care. Reproductive choices should be a fundamental right in this country.
From early on, I’d never wanted to be a mother. Life was a struggle, financially, after leaving home, under constant threat of eviction, etc. I was in no way able to raise a child. My head was a mess, trying to stay afloat. After my 2nd ( early stage) abortion, I had my tubes tied ( Reagan was running on the anti-abortion platform). When I was 32, for medical reasons, I was able to opt for a hysterectomy, due to already having had a tubal. I was free at last. I had built for myself a good business, which I loved, and kept at for 56 years. A woman has no “equal rights” as promised in the Constitution if her life’s function is relegated to being a uterus. I do feel this is the logical approach that should’ve been used by those fighting the new laws. The entire idea that it’s a baby from conception is diabolical and simply religious extremism gaining the reins. Separation of Church and State is a protected right as well.
I had trouble getting pregnant and had surgeries and pills . I finally had my son. But I got pregnant again and it was an ectopic pregnancy and I was devastated. When I read that a politician from Ohio said that they should just put the fetus back in the uterus and jail the mother if she has it removed I was speechless! Men should not have this kind of power. We don’t live in North Korea!
After four children I became pregnant with an already failed relationship; I had the option of terminating it quickly and had my tubes tied. I was then pursuing a bachelors degree and had I not had that choice my situation would have much more difficult to continue with the pursuit of later achieving a MA degree. Even though it was already difficult with four children, I gained the courage to continue with best decision for myself and continue with my self liberation.
I was able to achieve my goals and dreams and wait for children after finishing my Master’s Degree. I have provided a safe living home for my family as an independent woman. I decided how many children I wanted for my family and what I felt I could care for and provide and nurture. I made these choices and have lived a full happy exciting and successful life. I have also been there for female friends and family to support their reproductive choices. I relied on planned parenthood for most of my young adult life, I felt safe and protected in an accessible reliable medical facility with knowledgeable and caring people for my reproductive needs.
I had 2 wonderful children with IVF.
Abortion should be safe & legal.
I had to use Planned Parenthood after the birth of my first daughter. When I was barely eighteen years old. It was the Reagan era and my husband and I had very little money so Planned Parenthood was the only way I could get reproductive health. They found a precancerous spot in my cervix, and I had to go find an OBGYN that was able to freeze my cervix, and get rid of the precancerous spots. Fast forward five years, I had gotten a divorce and was with my youngest daughter’s father. I was having a period and having severe pains. The pain was so bad. I got an emergency visit to my doctor and he sent me directly up to the emergency room. Do not pass go, he said, get there now, I believe you have an Ectopic pregnancy, in layman’s term a tubal pregnancy. Had it ruptured, I could have bled to death or never had children again. The only way to save my life was to have an abortion. These are two of the instances where Planned Parenthood and having an abortion at another time, saved my life literally!
Be a young mom compared to my friends, and then to pursue the career of my dreams…to become a clinician, educator, curriculum developer, author, chief of service, and volunteer for a number of organizations without the fear of having more than the delightful, delicious and endlessly satisfying children I do have. Thank you supporting my right to choose.
As a young lesbian in Texas, I didn’t think much about my reproductive rights. It was when I moved to Jefferson City, Missouri and began to attend public hearings at the Capitol that it became clear to me that to the legislators in the majority party, denying women reproductive rights is about control.
I was able to preserve my fertility after a radical hysterectomy and before beginning chemotherapy and radiation. It also afforded me time to heal and to find a surrogate who would successfully carry our now 14 year-old son. Cancer altered a lot about myself but science, good doctors and an incredible place to live gave us our family.
The choice to plan my family when I was ready.
It saved my daughter and granddaughter from being in very detrimental situations.
Our lives depend on this right.
Tell us what you built.
Published in Ms. · Be Part of the Record