I was 19 and living overseas, in the Middle East. My dad is Middle Eastern and so when I was deciding about college, I decided to go overseas and connect more with my roots.

The guy I was dating was a sweet guy... turns out that after I came out as queer the next year, he came out too. Anyways, we were sleeping together and my period was late. I bought a home pregnancy test and did it, but it was negative, so I thought I was just late from being stressed. My period still didn't come the next month, so I took another test, which was positive. I couldn't believe it, so I did another test, and then a third and a fourth. They were all positive.

I didn't know what to do. In the country where I was living, abortion was illegal and punishable by 10 years in prison. The father's brother found out about a doctor who did them out of his office for $1000. We didn't know how we were going to get that money but we went ahead and made an appointment for me to get checked out. I went in a few days later and got an ultrasound. I was further along than we had realized at that point-- just about 3 months-- and the doctor said it was too complicated to do in his office. We would have to do the procedure in a hospital, pretending that I was a married woman and had miscarried, and needed to clean everything out. The clinical dryness of my doctor's lying surprised me, and kind of scared me, but I was grateful. The total for all the hospital fees, the doctors fees, etc. was $3500. We had to be ready in 10 days, or the doctor wouldn't do it.

We borrowed money from everyone we knew, sold pretty much everything either of us had, and we were still almost $1500 short. His brother ended up taking out a loan for us.