This story is published at Access: A Podcast About Abortion

Listen to the episode and/or read the transcript of Briana’s story below.

Briana McLennan [00:24:25]

I've had multiple abortions. My later abortion was around in 2010.

So I was 20 years old. I was living actually in Atlanta, Georgia, at the time, which is where I got my abortion. And I can't remember exactly how many weeks I was, but I was definitely over 20 weeks.

And I was actually pregnant with twins. So it was really, a really, I'm not going to even say a hard time for me at that moment. But it was a lot going on. I was a college student. I was unemployed, and it was a lot, to say the least.

My partner was an amazing person, but they were in Texas at the time. And here I am sleeping on a mattress, trying to afford, you know, this next semester. It was just no way that I was going to be able to take care of not one but two children, you know, like, I couldn't even take care of myself.

So I just had to make the decision to do what was best for me in that moment, and my priority was finishing school and just trying to make sure that I even had food in my mouth.

What happened was that I don't I don't think I was 20 weeks when I went in initially. It's just that when they told me I was pregnant with twins. I left. I was just like, ugh, do I really want to do this, you know, like type of thing. Because, of course, people always tell you, like, oh, twins are a blessing and twins are a miracle.

And I was just like, you know, I was really more so thinking about the stigma of, like terminating a pregnancy with twins versus like, is this really the best decision for me financially, mentally too.

At that time, I probably wouldn't have been able to like be able to talk to you. And even within that time period, there was other factors that I was going through. Like I was having family issues at the time. I was having issues within myself about going to school.

So it was so much stuff that was going on that I was so worried about. Like, was my family going to think about me finishing school, having the baby? Like it was just, I did not have a mind of my own I felt, you know? And I feel like now I definitely can be able to talk about it with confidence and to understand and still feel like I'm OK with the decision, you know?

Like looking back at it, like I'm still I'm very, very happy I got that abortion. I don't know where I would be right now if I didn't. I'm still very, very happy I made that decision. And I'm happy now that I'm in a position where I can help clients or even be able to, like, share my voice and and talk about my experience.

It's very, very important, especially as a woman of color, to be able to, like, talk about what I went through. So that way, if other folks hear this story, they'll be like, oh, there's someone that that's like me, that they went through the same thing.

And it's OK to have an abortion. It's OK to not have everything together. Because I feel like for some people, we always think that we have to be OK a hundred percent of the time. We have to always make sure that we have our shit together a hundred percent of the time.

If you are going to be pro-choice then you can't really put a limit on that, that's just my opinion. Like, everyone's situation is different. Everyone has an abortion for many different reasons. So I just don't feel that a person can be pro-choice if you're saying I'm okay with abortion up until this point. That means you're not pro-choice because you're not giving that person full autonomy of what they want to do with their body.