“I remember the decision to get an abortion was an easy one. At the point I was in my life, I could barely financially support myself and my 5 year old, let alone another child. I was living with my parents and working full time at a retail store making $7.25/hour and barely getting anything in child support from my husband whom I was separated from at the time. I was seeing a man casually, we both knew there was no future in our relationship, and I got pregnant. When I first found out I was pregnant I feared what my parents would think. I knew I didn’t want to have a baby. I also knew we couldn’t afford another child; but I knew that my mother especially would champion for me to have the baby no matter what our financial situation was. She didn’t believe in abortion and that was that.
Abortion access wasn’t the easiest in South Carolina due to the prices, but luckily the father and my grandmother helped me pay for it. I knew I made the right decision not only for myself but for my son who was 5 years old at the time. There would be no way I could provide for him sufficiently if I had another child and honestly after having my abortion, I realized that I had no interest in having another child. As women, especially Black women, we are expected to have babies and and do whatever we have to do to take care of them. In the Black community especially there is a stigma around women who get abortions. If S. Carolina implements a bill banning abortion, this will do nothing but push women, especially poor Black women like myself further into poverty and also our children. Not only that, being forced to have a child is archaic and only upholds the patriarchal society that we live in. No one should have a say so in what we do with our bodies, and we should not be forced to go back to having backroom abortions with clothes hangers that endanger our lives; when abortion is a safe method for ending a pregnancy. After having my abortion I decided a few months later to have tubal ligation, I knew I didn’t want anymore and children. Honestly, my abortion was the best decision I made for myself and I don’t regret it and I am done being made to feel like I should be ashamed of making a decision for myself for my body and for my future.”
– Kymberly S., South Carolina
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