This story appears in the comments section of a New York Times article titled “Let’s Talk About My Abortion and Yours.”

1974 Me: Grad school, he: 1st year med school. Forgot my diaphragm. He left for a year in Italy before I discovered the pregnancy, and had an abortion.

Never told him. Never regretted it. Never regretted the abortion.

He returned, we lived together for a year, and broke up. We're still friends. He still doesn't know.

1979: Date rape. Aborted.

1980: Birth control failure. Aborted.

At no time did the fathers ever know. It was none of their business.

I am childless by choice and currently widowed. I not only never regretted my decisions, but I never look back on them with anything but relief and the thrill that they were all legal, and a "good thing.

~ Euphemia Thompson