I was date raped.
I was doing political work with a specific movement. I was in my first week of acupuncture school. I had worked hard to be in school for a long time and I did not intend to be raped by someone I knew who forced himself upon me. I knew I needed to have an abortion. And it is only through the services at Planned Parenthood that I was able to get one.
I would have been bound to someone who had abused me for the rest of my life through a child who was the product of an unwanted sexual encounter had I not been able to access an abortion. My mother believed so much in a woman’s ability to choose that she came out to be with me and support me through the abortion.
I would not have been able to have an abortion had it not been safe and legal at Planned Parenthood.