By Sarah E. Murphy

Last week, I celebrated my anniversary. My own Independence Day.

The place that gave me my freedom is behind bars.

Planned Parenthood in Providence, Rhode Island.

The last I knew, the person who got me pregnant is also behind bars, after another armed robbery to fuel his heroin addiction.

I still have sympathy for him, but I finally have compassion for myself – the girl I was and the woman I’ve become.

April 26, 1995. It was a Wednesday.

I was 23, two and a half weeks from college graduation.

Thirty years later, I still have the nightmare that I’m late for a final, wandering around aimlessly trying to find the lecture hall.

I have no idea where to go because I’ve never even been to the class.

The symbolism is obvious, especially since I wrote a note to my psychology professor asking her to forgive (and hopefully overlook) my absence and performance in recent weeks because I had been “going through something.”

My subtle yet desperate cry for help wasn’t recognized, but I can’t blame her. She was probably fed up with underachievers and their last-minute justifications, the college version of the homework-eating dog.

I still can’t believe I graduated and made it across the stage, but I’ll never forget my mother’s disappointment when she discovered my diploma was blank and I’d have to make up those three psychology credits.

I grew up hearing about my mother’s aunt, who had given birth late one evening in her parents’ home on Prince Edward Island. She was unmarried at the time, and presumably, no one in her family knew she was pregnant until she told her mother. My great-grandmother had to call for a doctor in the middle of the night to come deliver the baby, whom I later met at a family reunion.

It was impossible to imagine, scarier than any ghost story, but I took comfort in the knowledge that could never happen to me.

I grew up in an Irish-Catholic household, and although all of my immediate family eventually gave up Catholicism, I now realize it was an environment of  purity culture, largely because of my great-aunt’s experience, in addition to a trauma my grandmother experienced before leaving her family and immigrating to the United States. Both of these things impacted my grandmother’s view of men, romance, and sex. 

I used to resent my grandmother for how it then impacted my upbringing, but now I understand, and I have nothing but compassion for her, and certainly my great-aunt, whom I can empathize with in a way others simply cannot.

I know what it feels like to have no control over your body and nowhere to turn for help. It’s a terrifying feeling.

My grandmother lived in fear that her own daughter would become pregnant before marriage, an unspeakable “sin” in the Catholic faith, a fear she passed down to my mother.

I wasn’t allowed to date in high school, and while that sheltered me from the possibility of pregnancy, I missed out on essential, healthy milestones and experiences.

So when “it” happened to me, I was suddenly a character in a plot I couldn’t control.

Someone else had the pen now.

I spent the next 25 years burying my trauma, and the requisite shame and guilt that accompanied it, often feeling like I didn’t “deserve” things, especially motherhood. I had “sinned.” I had made my “choice.”

I was stupid and selfish. How could I have let it happen?

As I’ve written before, “God punished you” was a common refrain in Catholicism, a resounding echo in my mind since childhood. It’s a way to keep people in line. To shame them into obedience.

For years, I thought I  “deserved” it, when in actuality, what I deserved was the agency to control my own body without relying on whether or not the guy had condoms. I deserved that fundamental mother-daughter connection, and the chance to have an adult conversation with her about birth control and how to access it, without fear or shame, so I wouldn’t end up exactly where I did, in a waiting room one late April morning, trying to curl up in the fetal position in my chair, waiting for my name to be called to end the excruciating pain of perpetual morning sickness.

It had become unbearable and impossible to manage, coupled with my hiatal hernia and a naturally “nervous” stomach that began when I was bullied in sixth grade, amid a lifetime of people-pleasing and trying to be a “good girl.”

Trying to not make waves or ask for too much.

My father died before I could tell him my secret, but it was as if he already knew. He used to tell me how relieved he was when that relationship ended, for he envisioned me living somewhere in Taunton, staring out a window during a rainstorm, holding a baby in my arms, wondering where the father of the child was.

That was the future he feared.

Little did he know how accurate it was.

When I first went “public” right before the 2020 election, people were only talking about abortion anecdotally in my community or online. Back then, I rarely said the word, the shame was so deep.  Four and a half years later, I continue to use my platform, writing and fighting for reproductive justice for all people of all backgrounds and political parties. People send me messages on social media, thanking me for speaking not just for myself but all women.

If you’re not allowed to control your own body, you’re not free in any sense of the word. There is no life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. It’s something that can’t truly be understood unless it is experienced.

When I got pregnant, I had never even been on an airplane. I was one of six kids, so we took family trips in a crowded station wagon. My life hadn’t even begun, and suddenly, it was all over.

The protest sign I carry is no exaggeration: My Abortion Saved My Life.

Some people ask me why I “keep talking about it.”

I’ve spent the last two decades writing about other people, telling their stories of trauma and triumph.

It’s my turn now, and I’m proud of my journey, as I should be.

And while society tries to convince me of my lack of worth because I’m not a mother, I know otherwise.

I’ve been putting myself out there for other people’s kids, losing sleep knowing their girls don’t have the same rights I did. As I’ve written since November, while many were “joking” about the “Childess” Cat Ladies, we did most of the heavy lifting leading up to the 2024 election, trying desperately to sound the alarm about virtually everything we’re currently witnessing and experiencing. You don’t need to be a parent to be invested in the future. Needless to say, I don’t have patience for those  who sat back and let us do the work suddenly telling us what we need to do to “resist.”

Been there, done that, still doing it.

Today I was reminded of a Facebook post from three years ago, featuring photos I took on this day, at a rally for reproductive freedom on the Falmouth Village Green. A few hours later, I was reunited with some of those same dedicated Americans, many of whom I’m now lucky to call friends and kindred spirits.

Last weekend, I took a much-needed break from activism. My husband and I went up to our off-grid house in Maine for a quick mental recharge. On April 26, I stared out the window as incessant rain beat against the pane, the only sound the hiss of the wind and woodstove. As I do every day, I felt gratitude for the life and career I’ve been able to build.

I know my dad was watching, and although I’d give anything to hear him say it, I know he’s proud.

Thirty years ago, I did, in fact, “Choose Life.”

I chose myself, my dreams, and my future. I’ve never taken that for granted.