I got pregnant at 15 and had an abortion.

The choice I had shaped my life. Everyone should be able to make that choice.

I got pregnant when I was 15. I was seeing a guy who was studying marine biology at Memorial University. That year, I’d started hanging out with some girls who were a little older than I was — I’d skipped a grade in school, so I was younger than just about everyone I knew — and they’d occasionally bring me to a house party where I’d sip a beer, smoke cigarettes, and try to fit in with the cool kids from the vibrant downtown punk scene. I knew some of them from all-ages shows, or the games arcade, and I was in love with one or two of the skaters. I’d made out with a few boys my age, and I’d had sex, once. One whiff of Calvin Klein’s Obsession catapults me back to that crush, and the disastrous, heart-stopping revelation that he had a serious girlfriend when she returned from her summer vacation a couple of weeks later (sorry Sabrina! I didn’t know about you). I wasn’t a virgin, but I was young, and gullible as hell.

So when this guy I’ll call Pierce approached me at a party and chatted me up, I was ripe for the picking. Most of the guys his age ignored me for the most part, which I hated. I lived in hope that one of the musicians from Schizoid or any of the other awesome bands on the scene would crack a beer, put an arm up against the door frame behind me, and pin me into submissive flirtation like I’d seen in the movies. I daydreamed that I’d press my back to the wall, bite my lip, and alluringly tuck a piece of hair behind one ear as we fell deeply in love. However, the 20-something dudes didn’t mess with “jailbait,” as they laughingly called me. At least, they didn’t mess with me, and for that, I’m grateful.

13 going on 14

Pierce didn’t care that I was 15. He had a slight stutter, which I took as a sign that I was bewitching. He said I seemed older, which delighted me. I told him my dad was a fisheries scientist. He said Wow, that’s amazing! That’s what I want to do. I remember trying to impress him with my knowledge of scientific names for various fish; he got me a shot of Southern Comfort, and told me to keep talking. I was hooked.

I don’t remember how long it took him to get me to come over to his place alone; maybe a couple of weeks. He’d come by my house to briefly meet my parents, and had made a good impression as a nice young science student, which was the ticket to being accepted by my family. My parents were also gullible, I guess. I hung out with him a few times at an apartment that a bunch of his friends shared. The grubby living room was furnished with an old couch, beanbags, a particle board table propped on cinder blocks, and milk crates full of vinyl next to the only thing that mattered: an incredible stereo system. Occasionally someone would show up with a gram of hash, and the guys would smoke a spliff. I didn’t smoke weed at that point (that came way later), but I loved the feeling of being untethered from my chaotic home life on those hazy late afternoons; my mother and I didn’t get along, to put it lightly, and my father was spending most of his time at work to avoid our constant fighting. I knew my parents wouldn’t approve of me hanging out with these guys. I didn’t care, because their attention made me feel grown up.

14 going on 15 (on the left, obvs! next to my grandmother and mother)

One day, Pierce convinced me to skip school and go over to his place. He lived alone, which I thought was super cool. I had to walk a couple of miles to get there because I didn’t have money for the bus. When I arrived, he made me a cup of tea with plenty of milk and sugar, and put on an album — Van Morrison, I think. Then he took me to his bedroom, where he told me he wanted to share something with me that almost no one else knew: he couldn’t have kids. It made him sad, he said, because he really wanted to get married and have a family someday, but it just wasn’t in the cards; he was sterile, and there was nothing to be done about it. His puppy-dog eyes and wistful smile made me feel tender towards him. We had sex, and I left his place feeling more grown up than ever.

I don’t remember how many times we had sex, exactly, it was a handful of times at most, but the last time was on my 16th birthday. He’d arranged with a friend of mine for me to say I was sleeping over at her place, and he got us a room at an inn overlooking the harbor downtown. It had a big old four-poster bed and swaggy silk curtains in that horrid shade of dusty rose that was ubiquitous in the late 1980s. There was a bottle of wine in an ice bucket on the table. He’d scattered rose petals across the bed and in the bathroom. It took my breath away. Cue the saxophone riff from Smooth Operator.

That was the last time we had sex. The following week, I threw up in the school bathroom. I knew right away that it meant that I was pregnant, but I had no clue what to do about it. My mother and I weren’t speaking; I didn’t have any other female elders I felt I could turn to; I was being taught by nuns at the Holy Heart of Mary Catholic School, so I wasn’t going find any help there. I promptly descended into a sort of fugue state of denial. I kept going to class, and rehearsals for the play I was in, and ignored what was happening to my body.

A couple of weeks later my mother clocked my matted hair and greasy skin, and asked me what was going on. Nothing, I muttered. Luckily for me, she took me by the shoulders, and looked at me closely. Are you pregnant? I shook my head. But she knew. And, god love her, she pulled me in for a hug, and said, I love you. It’s going to be ok.

It was the early ‘90s, and the first-ever abortion clinic in Newfoundland had just opened. A physician named Dr. Henry Morgentaler was in the news with his fight to provide abortion access to Canadian women. Morgentaler was imprisoned as a Jewish youth at the Łódź Ghetto and Dachau during World War II. After immigrating to Canada, he became a family planning specialist and was one of the first Canadian doctors to perform vasectomies and provide birth control pills to unmarried women. His battle to open safe abortion clinics after imprisonment and a long-fought series of appeals to the Supreme Court prompted a nationwide movement to reform Canada's abortion laws.

Newfoundland society has always been deeply Christian; the churches owned and operated the public schools (hence my being schooled by nuns, even though my family wasn’t religious). I remember the headlines about the Morgentaler abortion clinic opening, and the protests against it. When my mother asked me if I wanted to go to the clinic, I remember feeling frightened — not at the idea of having an abortion, but by the shame and guilt I’d absorbed from my Catholic schooling; who could even consider making such a choice?

I could consider it because of my mother’s support. She has her own story of getting pregnant and giving up a child for adoption before she was ready to become a mother. It’s not mine to tell, not at the moment, anyway, but her story gave her the resolve to help me make a choice. And it was my choice. Not my father’s, not the 21-year-old man who’d gotten me pregnant, not hers. Mine. She asked what I wanted to do, and I said that I did not want to be pregnant.

She went to the clinic with me; my best friend came too. They waited for me, and took me home afterwards, and we curled up on the couch and ate coffee Häagen-Dazs and watched TV together. It was a quiet, somber day. A few weeks later, when we were studying human reproduction in biology class, I looked at an image of a fetus in the stage of development that I’d aborted. I tried to feel sorrow. I didn’t feel sorrow. I felt relief, and gratitude.

18 going on 19, with my sister Caroline

I told Pierce after I’d had the abortion. His eyes got wide as he stuttered that it was impossible, he couldn’t get anyone pregnant. But I could tell by the way he shifted away from me as he said it that he was lying. He never called me again. I later found out that he wasn’t really a marine biology student — he’d enrolled at the university, but he’d flunked out, and was living on the remainder of his tuition money until he had to get a job, or go back home to Nova Scotia or wherever he was from. He’d lied about a bunch of stuff. I’m pretty sure that even his stutter was put on.

I've never thought of what Pierce did as sexual assault, because I was a willing participant, but it was coercive. He got me pregnant by lying to me. Reproductive coercion is a form of abuse. Not to mention that I was 15 and he was 21, which is pretty gross, and illegal. I’m very grateful that I was able to make the choice not to carry that pregnancy to term, and to my mother for supporting my choice.

I’m sharing all of this because of the assault on reproductive choice that women and girls face in America today. Anti-abortion politicians in nearly two dozen states have banned or severely restricted abortion. If Trump resumes office, this will only be the beginning, says the ACLU: “Trump’s advisors are already plotting to twist a law from 1873 to effectively ban abortion in all 50 states, even where abortion is protected under state law. Trump won’t stop at abortion rights – he will seek to limit contraception access, too.”

Access to contraception and sex education — which I would obviously have benefitted from! — should be well-funded and widespread. The choice to have an abortion should be up to the person experiencing the pregnancy. I don’t know what would have happened to me I hadn’t had the option to have a safe, legal abortion, but I have never regretted making that choice. When I engage with anti-abortion commenters on my videos, I often point them to an article from Human Rights Watch on abortion access being a human right. It says, in part:

Where safe and legal abortion services are unreasonably restricted or not fully available, many other internationally protected human rights may be at risk, including rights to nondiscrimination and equality; to life, health, and information; to freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment; to privacy and bodily autonomy and integrity; to decide the number and spacing of children; to liberty; to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress; and to freedom of conscience and religion.

The points that I think apply to my naive 15-year old self, who was coerced into sex by an older man who lied to me, are bodily autonomy and integrity; liberty; and freedom of conscience. I’m so grateful to have all of these things, and more, today because I was able to make the choice not to be pregnant when I was a teenager.

Here are some resources for more information about abortion:

Shout Your Abortion is an organization that works to normalize abortion and elevate safe paths to access regardless of legality.

Jessica Valenti

is writing about anything and everything happening with abortion rights in the United States here on Substack. Her new book Abortion. Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win. is a New York Times bestseller.

WRRAP (Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project) is a non-partisan, nonprofit organization assisting people who are financially unable to pay for safe, legal abortions or emergency contraception.

Thanks for reading, friends. Much love and more soon. MJ ❤️