My Mother Told Me to Get Rid of the Baby, and Now I’ll Never Have Children Again

When I was sixteen, I found myself pregnant by Tom Gray, the boy I adored. Tom and I had been courting at school in York for a year before the news arrived, and we were terrified. We kept the secret from our parents, hoping the shock would pass. When my mother, Mrs. Harper, finally learned of it, she was livid.

Our family was held up as the paragon of respectability. As the only daughter, I did well at school, and Tom was a bright lad too. Both of us were still minors, so the adults took the reins of every decision.

Our parents dreamed that we would secure places at good universities, finish our degrees, and go on to respectable careers. A child, they thought, would throw a spanner in the works.

Consequently, my mother insisted I undergo an abortion. It was still within the legal window, and the procedure went smoothly.

Life then slipped back into its ordinary rhythm. Tom and I still saw each other, we finished our exams, went off to university, and a year later we married with my parents blessing. When I became pregnant again, we were over the moon.

But in the sixth month a severe bleed set in. Our son was born tiny, weighing barely a pound and a half. Three hours after his birth he slipped away.

Complications followed. The doctors could not stop the hemorrhage and were forced to remove my uterus. I would never be able to bear children again. One day my mother visited me in the hospital, tears in her eyes, telling me she regretted having forced the earlier abortion so many years before. Her remorse did not ease the ache.

The past cannot be undone, and the mistakes of those years cannot be mended. I now know I will never be a mother, never have children of my own. Whether Tom and I can keep our marriage together and find happiness remains uncertain; after all, children are the heart of a normal family.