Having an Abortion “Saved My Life. Now I’m a Successful, Happy Person”

Opinion   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Mar 9, 2016   |   10:39AM   |   Washington, DC

It’s difficult to understand how anyone could describe an abortion as a life-saving experience, but that’s what a California woman did in a recent story for Cosmopolitan.

Celina Perez acknowledged in the article that she was “carry[ing] a kid,” but she said her abortion saved her life – not because her pregnancy was physically threatening her life, but because she just didn’t think she could handle a baby. Her’s was one of six abortion stories shared by women in the abortion-supporting magazine this month.

Perez said she was in her early 20s and had no health insurance when she got pregnant. A waitress and a bartender, she said she did not consider adoption because, “How was I supposed to carry a kid for nine months when I worked two jobs that are physically demanding?”

She described her abortion experience in the article:

Going into the surgery, I was nervous. The meds started working, and I felt sort of detached from my body, like I was watching myself. I have a lot of tattoos and it hurts to get tattooed, but there is a point when you think, I am getting something out of this pain. The abortion felt sort of the same. It was uncomfortable and strange, but my brain switched to, It’s fine because after this pain I get this [positive thing].

Now 34, the Los Angeles woman said she is “a successful, happy person” because she had an abortion. Perez said if she had chosen to have her baby, she would have been “stuck in poverty.”

“Having an abortion saved my life then, and it made my life now,” she said. “People don’t think about what it really means to make these choices when it isn’t them. … I didn’t become a heart surgeon or win a Nobel Prize. I just became an independent person who was able to find happiness. The opportunity to do that is the least anyone deserves.”

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But many women who chose life for their babies in difficult circumstances have said the exact opposite – that their babies’ lives saved theirs, too.

Such is the story of Ohio mom Brittany Davis who said her baby son’s life prompted her to stop drinking and work hard to provide for him, LifeNews previously reported.

The 28-year-old was spending 10 days in jail for drunken driving when she discovered she was pregnant. Davis told The Cincinnati Enquirer that her baby’s father was a friend who she hung out with often; but she ended up having sex with him one night and getting pregnant.

“I kind of really didn’t want to [have an abortion],” Davis said, “but everything just seemed to be going wrong.”

Davis said didn’t have a job at the time, and she was broke. The baby’s father thought that she should have an abortion, so she scheduled an appointment at an abortion facility in Sharonville, Ohio, she said. But when she took a wrong turn and ended up at a pro-life pregnancy center, Davis changed her mind and chose life for her son.

Her baby’s father, Michael Stenson, soon changed his mind, too – and they started going to classes together at the pregnancy center. Davis also began applying for jobs and stopped drinking.

“I didn’t realize that he would really save my life like that,” Davis said. “I didn’t realize beforehand that being a mom was actually going to be rewarding, even though it’s work.”

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