This story is published at Women on Web.
What were your feelings? Resolved, relieved, ashamed, sure, and sad.
How did you do the abortion? With medicines.
The procedure was quick and relatively impersonal. The hospital I was at performs many abortions every day and I had only an hour to recover. I was awake during the whole thing.
The first abortion I had was difficult as I went through it alone, only a few of my friends knew and we were young so they could do little to help.
The second time was similar, though I had more support from friends, and the boy involved. My mother and family still do not know about it.
The second time I felt ashamed as though I should have learnt my lesson and should have known better and acted more responsibly, but I also felt that it was out of my hands, and that I could not be shamed into having a baby when I was still a child myself.
What was your situation at this time? My age (too young), problems with my relationship, my personal reasons for not wanting a child, mental health reasons.
I was 15 the first time I got pregnant. I was not in a relationship and saw abortion as the only option. I told the father a week before the operation and he said he would come with me to the hospital, but the night before he called to say he was busy so I went alone.
Six months later, a day after I turned 16, I fell pregnant again. It was the same situation as the first and despite my shame and embarrassment I repeated the process again.
The hardest part for me to come to terms with is the fact that both times I had taken the emergency contraceptive pill, which doctors have told me fails only one time in every hundred.
~Louise from New Zealand