Taniyah's Story
A college student's nightmare

Throughout my teenage years I watched as many of my peers became pregnant and have babies. Throughout high school I thought I had my life planned out. I would go to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and major in TV Production, get my Master's and work for one of the local TV stations first as a reporter for the news and hopefully I would be promoted to an anchor.

I also never intended to have children and often told my mother I would adopt at the age of 40. I told myself that I would likely have one child around age 30 when I was established in my career and secure in a loving marriage. This all changed my senior year of high school.

I ended up getting accepted to both UNC and another big name ACC school in my state and chose the latter on a four year teaching scholarship. I also got involved with an older man who was 13 years my senior. He is the most loving and caring man I could ever have and I thought we would marry as soon as I turned 18 but first he was hesitant and later when he asked me about it, I was reluctant and not sure I was ready.

Having unprotected sex on the weekends is what caused my first pregnancy. As a college freshman I did not think I was ready for a baby and had considered abortion but cried because I had love for my baby. Fortunately for me, I had a miscarriage 3 months into the pregnancy so God made the decision for me and allowed me to feel no guilt because the situation was already taken care of.

After that I wanted to get on birth control but because of the weight gain and other side effects, my boyfriend did not want me on them and since he didn't like condoms, we continued to have unprotected sex. In May of 1999, I became pregnant again and I planned to have an abortion. I decided against telling my boyfriend because I feared he would not agree with this and worked for the summer to get money for the procedure. I was told I had to attend summer school to maintain my scholarship and had to spend my money on that so I was unable to get an abortion.

Weeks and months went by with me doing things such as hitting myself on the stomach and trying to fall down stairs to kill my baby. The first time I felt her kick I dropped an encyclopedia on my stomach trying to kill the little life that was growing inside me all the while trying to figure out how I would get the $2000 required to have an abortion at 20 weeks.

After looking at several websites on second trimester abortion and how the procedure goes, I decided I could not go through with it and in February 2000 I gave birth to a healthy baby girl who I love dearly. I know this is a long story but it is not quite done.

See I guess my boyfriend and I still had not learned our lesson because we used condoms for a while since he still did not want me on birth control but in hurried situations we had unprotected sex relying on the withdrawal method and then no method at all.

Sometime between the time my daughter was 2 1/2 and 3 months, I became pregnant again. This time I also considered getting an abortion without consulting my boyfriend but I eventually told him and he also felt an abortion was necessary.

We made an appointment and once I was there I found out I was eight weeks pregnant. I used the nitrous oxide and felt absolutely nothing, not even the pinch that you're supposed to feel when your cervix is being numbed. I was so out of it I thought I was dead until the procedure was over and the nurse informed me that I had been talking to them the entire time and had not been asleep after all. The procedure was simple and I feel that terminating this pregnancy was necessary for the happiness of everyone.

My boyfriend and I have both realized that birth control is needed and I will probably get on the shot after my post abortion follow-up in two weeks.

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