I grew up in Miami Beach. My mother’s Jewish and my father’s Catholic, and I grew up in a pretty laid-back religious atmosphere. I’m pretty accepting of anyone and anything. I went away to school when I was 18, and I came home the summer after my freshman year to just work and be with my family.

One night, I went out with my older sister and a couple of her friends. We went out to a bar that I probably shouldn’t have been at, because I was only 19, but it was pretty relaxed, so we went out. One of her friends was buying us all rounds of drinks and I drank way too much…more than I should have. I ended up with this guy who I kind of knew—he wasn’t a complete stranger, but I didn’t really know him that well.

I really don’t remember all that happened, except that I said that we should stop, and I know we didn’t. I remember waking up in the morning and being really freaked out and asking him to get me home. I found out a few weeks later that I was pregnant.

I didn’t ever press charges because I just knew it would be a big ordeal, and I didn’t want my parents to find out about it. It would break their hearts more than it would break mine. That was basically it. I didn’t really find that there was much of a choice for me, because I definitely wasn’t going to have a baby in those kinds of circumstances… there was really no future ahead of me. I was only 19, I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t have a relationship with the guy—I wasn’t even willing to have sex with him. So I had an abortion.

I didn’t feel like the doctors were very nice to me. They were all trying to force me to go on birth control, and I didn’t want to because I wasn’t really sexually active. Also, I felt like I was being judged by them, which I thought was very unprofessional. But more than anything, afterwards I felt relieved that everything was over.

All my friends know about it. I’m not embarrassed about it. I just don’t really want to tell my parents because I think they would see it as “oh my god, my poor baby” and I don’t want them to feel bad for me. There’s nothing to feel bad about—I’m fine, I got over it—and I don’t need to bring them into it too. I feel like circumstances were the way they were and I just had to deal with it the only way I knew how.