If passed, this law will have nothing to do with me: I am not a teenage girl, I am unlikely to get one pregnant, and I don’t have any children. When I was the age during which I might have been affected by a law like this, I did not live in California. But this reminds me of when I was a teenager. And that is a very personal subject.

I never took “health” class—my parents pulled me out of it, presumably because they were religiously opposed to me learning to say “penis” without giggling or learning that some STDs were communicable without intercourse. Consequently, when I started dating, around 15 or 16, I had no clue what acts I participated in with my boyfriend might actually cause me to get pregnant. As far as I was concerned, French kissing was just as sinful as sex (whatever that might have been). By this point, I’d taken rudimentary biology and knew how elephants got pregnant and how long their gestational cycles were. Also, that if I was pregnant, my period would be late.

The most religious moments of my teenage life were the days between when the calendar my mom told me to keep told me I “should” start my period and when I actually started bleeding. Like most teens (which, if I’d been educated about it, I would have known), I was far from regular. And while I was waiting for my period to start (in addition to praying to Mary, who knew all about getting pregnant without meaning to), I would analyze every interaction I’d had with a male in the last 28 days to see what might have caused my pregnancy. I knew that I had to have gotten semen inside me somehow but just because I hadn’t knowingly come into contact with an actual penis didn’t clear my conscience. Not knowing what semen looked like, I concocted all manner of possibilities for the fact that my period was late. Of course, the fact that I was a sinful girl and therefore deserved to bring shame upon her family by getting pregnant without even knowing who the father might be didn’t help.

My parents had been active in the pro-life movement since before I was born. I grew up thinking Rover Sesuede was a close friend of the family because of how often he was spoken about. When I was in grade school, my parents were both busy one evening & so I went with my dad to a KofC meeting, where I was told to do my math homework and keep quiet in the back of the room. The room which was later darkened and in which a video of an abortion was shown. No math homework got done.

I knew that abortion was a way to end a pregnancy, but I didn’t know much else. What I remembered from between fingers covering my eyes looked painful and bloody, but by that time I’d seen open heart surgery, which also looks painful and bloody. I knew that the other option was having a baby while I was still in high school and that that was no choice at all, as far as I was concerned. (Worse, it meant admitting my parents how much of a sinner I was by telling them I was pregnant.) And yes, fear of “disappointing” my parents was a major thing for me.

So, I suffered for those few days each month (sometimes a few weeks). I tried everything I could think of, everything I’d read, everything I’d heard, and probably some things I dreamt up. I starved myself (for as long as I could stand it, which was never long). I drank. I prayed. I even went to Church. But most often, I punched myself in the stomach, as hard as I could stand, as often as possible. I was probably nowhere near my uterus, but this seemed to have the best effect (probably since I saved it for last, even then I figured it probably wasn’t the healthiest avenue). I either already had or managed to acquire a pretty high tolerance for pain but generally waited until I was sure I was pregnant before resorting to it.

I had a friend who had shared her copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves with me (mostly to laugh with me about the pictures of the penises and the discussions of masturbation), so I knew that her mother would have been a safe adult to go to. I babysat for another family whose mother had told me, before letting me out of the car when dropping me home one night, that if I ever needed anything, I should call her, that she would never ask questions (she was talking about drinking/partying and driving, but again, I knew she was a safe adult).

Above all, I knew I could not go to my parents.

Were my parents abusive? Certainly not physically, although I think that letting me grow up with such gaping holes in my knowledge might allow an argument to be made. If I had managed to get myself pregnant by allowing my boyfriend to grope me through my shirt, I would have not simply wanted the option to avoid telling my parents. I would have needed it.

What would they have done if they found me suddenly pregnant in high school? I cannot even conceive of it. All I can relate is how they reacted when I left the Church (not well) and how they reacted when I moved in with DH before we got married (they stopped talking to him, my sister threatened to cut off her pinky and send it to me, and my father flew down to give me the “sex talk”). Heh. When I give the short version, it doesn’t sound that bad. Suffice it to say that then, as now, thinking about what my parents might have done causes me extreme amounts of stress.

I want every one of my nieces (and nephews) to know that they can come to me if they can’t go to anyone else. I want every one of your children to know that they can come to me if they can’t go to anyone else. I do not want anyone to go through what I went through.

There is no discussion. There is no rebuttal.

That is why I’m voting against Prop 4.