I am an eighteen-year resident of Corpus Christi diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. I previously went through an abortion inconsiderately because I am Autistic. My medical history and doctors could have told you I wasn’t fit to have a child. I made the mistake of falling in love, and making love to someone I cared about for a year. I without hesitation decided on my own time that I could do anything anyone else could do. The question I ask is that, “Yes I may be disabled, but what in someone’s rational conclusion could I have a forced abortion when in all reality I was the person who created the being?” I made the choice to have sexual intercourse all on my own.
From the moment I took a pregnancy test mixed feelings and anxiety circled my life. The biological father concluded from the minute I told him I was pregnant that we couldn’t keep it. Without the ability to express myself through words I wrote a letter telling him exactly what I felt, but he disregarded all mentionings. My severe anxiety made it impossible to go through the surgical procedure without having a nervous breakdown. I can’t even think to describe those excruciating days of February 2012.
Thoughtless of my unfitness to go through with the in-clinic abortion, the office assistant almost made it clear I didn’t have the right to what method was right for me. The following morning a nurse was baffled that I was to get the operation and led me to another room to take the medication. She saved my life. It was dreadful. Skipping school to take the second medication was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I was about to lose my first child because of a myth that I wasn’t fit to be a mother. Alone with the father and close friend of his in an ambiguous apartment, I took the medication tearfully and forcefully.
This just explains how much discrimination is used with disabled people. I could have had my baby. The reason I’m speaking out now is so that other people who are pregnant and disabled hear my voice. We have a right. We have our own rights to decide whether or not to give birth regardless of our predicament. I feel so much regret, but I know now that the Lord took my boy or girl to heaven, and He knows what a struggle I have been through. He knows to bring my life back to a steady pace. I am Silent no More.
