Amanda's Story Amanda's Story

I am 19 years old and I am entering my second college year. My boyfriend and I have been together for two years and have been living together for about one year and 6 months. We have always used birth control, and we thought that it would def. prevent us from becoming pregnant (boy were we wrong).

Right now he owns the two-family home that we live in on the first floor and we rent out the second floor. My boyfriend makes decent money he is in the building homes business and does fairly well. We just recently found a beautiful single family home that we are under agreement with and the house that we are in now is also under agreement to be sold.

I had a funny feeling when I missed my period two weeks ago that I was pregnant so I bought a test at our local CVS and told my boyfriend that I had to know if we were pregnant.  I went into our bathroom alone and took the test. I almost fainted when I saw that the test result was positive and that I was pregnant. I told my boyfriend that he had to double check it for me, he did and it was positive, we were both in shock, but didn't quite know how accurate the test was. So we made an appointment at my doctors to be sure that I was pregnant.

I went in with my boyfriend and that afternoon it was confirmed that we were pregnant. I cannot believe that I am carrying a small baby in my belly. My boyfriend and I are planning on getting married and we have talked about getting married sometime next year. I'm so confused because the timing for having a baby is all wrong. We wanted to be married and want to have our fixer upper home fixed up first. I wanted to have more or all of my schooling completed first, I wanted to have a good job making great money before all of this.

So the first thing that we decided was that we would have an abortion. But now my heart is breaking, I don't want to kill my child, I am an only child and my parents had difficulties having me so I know that later there might be a chance that we won't be able to have a child. If we couldn't it would tear me apart knowing that I had an opportunity to. I think that it bothers me most because I know that my boyfriend and I are in love and are committed to making our relationship work. I know that we aren't going to split up and I know that we will eventually get married. On the other hand we wouldn't be able to give our baby the things that we could if I had the opportunity to finish college first.

We have an appointment set up for tomorrow morning to talk about the abortion and possibly even take the abortion pill tomorrow. But I am so afraid that if we do it will be something that we regret for the rest of our lives. While reading others stories has helped me to know that I am not alone, it still sucks knowing that there is no right answer and that we have to make our own decision and stick to it and deal with the hard consequences either way. Wish us luck I will write again and tell what we decided to do and how it is working out for us.

Amanda
June 2004

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