The woman in this story asked that her name not be used to protect her privacy.

“They called me a murderer,” she said. “I didn’t murder anyone. I just made a choice.”

She is a 23-year-old woman who was raised in the heart of the South, a 27-mile drive from Jackson, Mississippi. 

Politically progressive, she felt suffocated by the “narrow-minded” people she was surrounded by, she said.

“My parents are about as Republican as they come, and I needed to get away from that, so I moved to Oregon in 2021,” she said. “And thank God I did because I got pregnant a year later.” 

On July 7, 2022, Mississippi became one of 13 states that completely banned abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Had the young woman stayed there, she wouldn’t have had access to the healthcare she sought in Oregon.

The young woman said she still has contact with her parents, but their relationship has become strained since her move. 

She was three weeks along when she found out she was pregnant. After taking a couple of days to process the news, she went to Planned Parenthood to seek help with her best friend by her side — the only person she told about her situation.

“I was in no place to raise a baby. I barely knew the guy [the father], and I’m a college dropout,” she said. 

Walking up to the doors of the clinic, she was harassed and shouted at by protesters with signs that read “Choose Adoption” and “Pray to End Abortion,” she said.“This was already the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make, and it didn’t help being yelled at.” The young woman said she couldn’t carry a pregnancy to term and attend appointments while working enough hours at her minimum-wage job to support herself. 

When former President Donald Trump was in office in 2017, he backed a bill that would have placed strict restrictions on abortion. With Trump running again, the young woman expressed fear for women across the nation.

“Luckily, I had the right to choose when I was in that position. But now I’m scared for literally every woman in America,” she said. “I have friends, I have a little sister, and what if someday I have a daughter?”

Last year, more than one in ten patients receiving an abortion in Oregon traveled from out of state, often arriving sicker than Oregon patients as a result of delayed access to care, according to Axios Portland. The state has become a safe haven for American women in need of reproductive healthcare because of its strong abortion access laws.

Vice President Kamala Harris promised to make it her priority to restore reproductive freedom nationwide, and that is who the young woman will be voting for this November 5th, she said. 

The young woman said she struggled mentally after her abortion. “I was wrestling with myself. Did I make the right choice? Should I have just lived with the consequences of my actions?” 

In the end, she said she came to the conclusion that, while it is hard to face, she couldn’t live with herself knowing she brought a baby into this world without the means to care for it properly. She was thankful she was able to choose.

“My parents raised me Catholic, so I always felt like I had to ‘listen and obey,’” she said, gesturing air quotes. “Now, I’d like to believe I’m a strong woman, and I don’t want to go back to being that little girl who just did what she was told.”