16 years old – got my first period.
17 years old – got pregnant.
How fucking stupid am I? I couldn’t fault the extraordinarily thorough sex-ed I’d had at high school. But my mother never talked about contraception. Nor did either of my boyfriends. Not even the one who was 25. The one I got pregnant with.
I flipped through the Yellow Pages, an ancient tome that millennials would laugh at, looking for abortion clinics. Or family-planning something. I called the clinics and couldn’t get through the calls without crying. I felt so stupid, like I was in some crass soap opera. A teen pregnancy. It seemed so melodramatic and not me. How could this happen? It was inconceivable. Ha, ha … Get it? A woman could make a baby. Not a girl. I was still a girl. A really fucking dumb girl.
Thank God I lived in Sydney, Australia, and it was 1989.
I walked from my home in Paddington to Woollahra. The operation was performed by a lovely, handsome doctor. When he administered the sedative, he asked me to count down from ten. At number ten I was blubbering. By number three I was groggy, free and relieved.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, to all the men and women who made that procedure possible. Thank you.