All in U.S.

“Not once did I entertain having a baby. Sometimes I think about how old they would be now, but not much more. Those 3 abortions were not difficult decisions for me. I have also yet to encounter someone that doesn’t sit with me while I open up and talk about it. To anyone feeling alone, like I did during my first abortion, you are not! You have thousands of people in your corner.” Read more.

“At 19 I became pregnant for the second time. I didn’t immediately know what I wanted to do, but eventually I decided to have an abortion. I just didn’t want to be a parent yet. This abortion happened a bit later into the pregnancy and was more painful than my first. But again, I was so glad to have been able to make the choice not to be pregnant or have an unwanted child.” Read more.

“Making the decision to have an abortion is a complex and quiet calculus. Even when it feels uncomplicated, there are nuances. As a woman of color, I grew up like with so much stigma around not being an unwed teenage mother. Now that I'm older I wonder why I got so fixated on there being only one way –married—to have kids.” Read more.

“That abortion gave me the time to meet the person I am spending the rest of my life with, and eventually have our daughter. When our daughter was 5, we wanted to give her a sibling. I was 37 at the time and experienced a number of losses before getting pregnant again. We told everyone — we were so excited — and then at 13 weeks the doctors found chromosomal abnormalities.” Read more.

“I felt incredibly lucky. As a college student before becoming a physician, I had worked in a public hospital in Arequipa, Peru, where women were brought when they had unfinished "illegal" abortions. They were denounced by the healthcare providers because it was illegal and they often were not given any pain medicines. And they had many horrible, long-term consequences, including infections, infertility, chronic pain.” Read more.

“The excessive burden of motherhood my great-grandmother carried had plenty of heart-breaking legacy for us all.”

The New York Times ran an article detailing stories of people who had abortions before it was legalized by the now endangered Roe v Wade ruling. Among the comments to the article are these four stories involving people who’ve had more than one abortion. Read more.