I haven't had an abortion

...but I've held the hand of a college roommate who was having one. I've waited with friends in person and on the phone as they watched to see if the stick turned blue and prayed that it wouldn't. I've gotten medical treatment at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Boston where John Salvi shot 4 people. I've had to cross protest lines in order to go get annual checkups and birth control prescriptions and pap smears, because I was a poor college student who couldn't afford ob-gyn care anywhere other than the clinic that also performed abortions. I did clinic defense when scary protestors were threatening other young women as they attempted to seek medical treatment at a clinic that performed abortions. I was at the doctor's office with my mother as a teenager, when the doctors were still determining if she was truly miscarrying or if she was going to have a pregnancy that would need to be terminated through a so-called "partial birth abortion" because the baby was going to have serious problems and would be unlikely to survive or to be born without serious risk to my mother. I've listened to a close friend cry after she made the choice to have an abortion and expressed her regret over the decision, even as she knew it was the only option for her.

I can't sign Ms. magazine's petition to support reproductive rights because I've never personally had to employ the right to choose abortion as a medical option. I've been extremely careful and lucky in that regard, but I like knowing that if I found myself in a terrible situation in which carrying a pregnancy was not an option, that I would have the choice to terminate if that is what I decided I must do.

I know it's still considered one of those things you don't talk about, if you've ever had to make that choice. It's one of those things you don't tell new friends, or your family, or even new boyfriends and even sometimes husbands. It's one of those things that most women who've gone through it like to pretend never happened. But that's why standing up for the right and not being ashamed or afraid to admit that you have been there, and that real average women like you NEED this right and this choice, is so important. I can't sign the petition but I hope the women who have been there will put aside their fear and shame for the sake of protecting the right for the rest of women and for our daughters and granddaughters.