My Pregnancy Scare: aka why I'm pro-choice

Earlier this year I did not get a period because the birth control I had been on kept me from getting one. For four months after the birth control was supposed to wear off I STILL didn't get a period. About 2 months into that I started to think I was pregnant. I'd only had sex with two guys that could have gotten me pregnant in that time one being Bruce, and the other was Tom. I was fairly certain it wasn't Tom because he had never gotten off, and it was too recent. Eventually after a few weeks of worrying about it I finally told Bruce. I then went to the grocery store and got a pregnancy test and it came back negative. I was VERY relieved!

The thing of it is is that Bruce and I had talked about what we were going to do if I got pregnant in the past. We were always extra careful, but accidents happen and we wanted to be prepared. Due to the fact that we were both 23 and lived at home, and had almost no money we knew that neither one of us could afford to have a baby, so that would have left abortion or adoption, but at least for Bruce adoption was never going to be an option.

Bruce has a genetic disorder that when it flares up causes him to be in serious physical pain for months at a time. The first time it flared up when he was a child he was in immense pain for months and then finally had to have surgery to fix it. That surgery almost killed him. He coded on the operating table, and while they were able to resuscitate him, it did some long term damage to his longs which is why second hand smoke could actually kill him. He was in remission for years before it flared up again. This time medicine had advanced far enough that they could fix the problem rather easily, but it still took months during which he was on very strong painkillers. The surgery it took to fix him had a ridiculously high chance of killing him. The genetic disorder Bruce has has a 98% chance of being passed on to any children he has and he doesn't want to make anyone else have to go through what he went through.

Between Bruce's disorder, and the fact that I was not ready to have children the decision was a no-brainer, but that didn't make it easy. I still loved Bruce a lot and the idea of killing one of our children was not an easy one to swallow. At the end of the day though I respected Bruce's opinion on the matter. I know there are other women out there like me who have had to actually make that decision. I respect that for them even more now that I've almost had to make it myself. This is just one of the MANY reasons I firmly believe in a woman's right to choose.