The Hardest Decision

25 years old, just starting to get my career going, and newly married. Life was wonderful, but then I find myself in a situation that I never thought would present itself, pregnant. At that very moment, I sat on the bathroom floor, and just cried. My brain was racing, all I could think was, “what am I going to do? I can’t have a baby right now, I’m still a student, I have too much debt, I cannot afford to raise a kid.” I sat there for a good hour and just cried. Not knowing what to do, I called my husband. He was silent on the other end when I told him, all he could say was “we will talk when I get home.” The next few days after getting this information left us confused, lost and not really sure of what to do next.

After lots of discussion, we came to the decision that we were not ready to be parents, so what were our options? Well, personally I knew that if I gave birth to this baby there was no way I would be able to hand over my child to someone else. So the only option left was abortion. However, for a long time I have looked down on women who had gone through with abortions, thinking there has to be some way it would have worked itself out if they had the baby. Now here I was, presented with the same situation and did I ever feel horrible. I felt selfish for even considering having an abortion, but

deep down I knew that it was the right thing to do. On the day of the appointment, me and my husband go to the clinic and I am just racked with guilt. I sat and cried before I could even enter the clinic. This had to be the worst day of my life. My husband reassures me that this was the right thing to do, we cannot provide this child with a life that he/she would deserve. I knew he was right, but that didn’t make me feel any less guilty and selfish for doing this. Once the procedure is complete, I was unable to fully process how I felt. But if I had to describe it, I would say ashamed.

Me and my husband are the only people that know about this with fear that if we tell our families we will be ridiculed and looked upon negatively. Since this situation, we have taken extra precautions to ensure that this situation will never present itself again. It was the hardest decision of my life and something that I will regret deep down for a long time. But at the same time, I felt it was for the best, given the situation. Sometimes you make decisions that are against your own morals. That decision made me realize that, you should never judge someone until you have been presented with a similar situation.