In Memory Of The 1.5 Million People Who Should Have Turned 28 With Me The Federalist, Feb 2, 2018, Ariana Gilbert
I recently celebrated my 28th birthday, and it was lovely. My brother came to my apartment to go to church with me, and treated me to my favorite Indian restaurant for lunch afterward. That weekend I enjoyed an event with women at my church, and a party at my old workplace. I also received a nice amount of happy birthday texts and Facebook posts, and each one put a smile on my face.
The cliché, yet sincere, birthday reflections end here, and things are about to get gauche. During my birth year, 1989, 1,396,658 legal abortions were reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. The Guttmacher Institute reports an even higher number, 1,566,870.
The CDC’s abstract on the average woman who obtained an abortion that year looks like it was written explicitly about my mom: “less than 25 years of age, white, and unmarried and had not had any live-born children.†The top three reasons women gave in ‘87, the closest year I could find, were all issues my mother faced. No. 1 was concern that a baby would change her life, No. 2 being unable to afford a baby, and No. 3 being problems with a relationship or wanting to avoid single parenthood.
In other words, I could have very easily been a statistic. ...
Read more:
http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/02/memory-1-5-million-people-turned-28/
