I was 15 when I had my first abortion. I met the father at a crazy house party, he was older, like 19, and he was a total douche, but he gave me the tingles like no one else, so I let him take me on the bathroom floor.

A couple of months later I realized that I had gained a lot of weight, like a LOT. Even as teenage-Anne, I rarely gained an ounce despite eating Happy Meals and Twinkies every day, so this sudden belly-thing freaked me the fuck out. I voiced my concerns to Tharah, a close friend of mine at the time whose parents both had a lisp, and she had recently read somewhere that you can get pregnant from having sex. I was even more freaked out, I thought pregnant was something people only became in the movies, I didn’t know it was a real thing, and being a young innocent girl, I hadn’t learned about all the sex stuff yet.

So I got an older friend, Trailertrash Tiffany, (she got that nickame cuz her father owned a really successful business that cleaned out trailers on Hollywood movie sets, but for some reason she didn’t like it), to buy me those little pregnancy tests. I peed on it, and it totally showed that I was pregnant. I couldn’t believe it! We’d done it in a condo, wasn’t that supposed to stop babies from growing? This was back in 2006, I think, my momma was still alive back then, she hadn’t died in that tragic fishing accident yet, but I decided not to tell her cuz I was so ashamed for looking so fat.

I had to get rid of it. I just HAD to. NO WAY I was gonna look this fat for the upcoming school dance, oh and the whole being a mom thing seemed so BORING. I Googled “How to get rid of a baby I don’t wanna have in my tummy.” The first result was a Wikipedia article on Abortion in Simple English. I read it and was relieved, there WAS a way to get it out and feminists seemed to love doing it—perfect! I wasn’t as much of a feminist back then cuz I was young and stupid, but when I saw that feminists were having big parties in the streets holding colorful signs about abortions and women’s right to have a body, I knew that getting an abortion was the feminist thing to do. I sent the baby daddy a message on MSN, #oldschool #lol and told him about my plan. He was a total bitch about it, he was all like, “I don’t believe in abortion, it’s murder, you can’t kill my child, it’s mine too!” and then he started crying, and I lost all my attraction for him— pathetic.

“I am a woman and I have the right to have a body, it’s not murder cuz it’s not a person, its nose and ears haven’t even grown fully yet!” I told him fiercely, but he threatened to take legal action because he didn’t want me to “kill” “his” child (yeah cuz you’re the father it’s suddenly your kid?), LOL what a loser. All the judges ended up laughing at him in the end.

The day came. I was a little scared, that like, it would hurt or whatever. It didn’t, like at all. The doctor fiddled around down there for a minute or two and then it was all over. I felt lighter instantly. I checked myself in the mirror and my red dress fit perfectly again. I was a bit sad about the baby though; maybe it would have been a cute little girl…

In the following week, word had somehow spread about my abortion and all these girls came up to me saying how strong and independent I was and how I must be going through such a hard time. “You’re such a mature woman” and “You’ve gone through so much,” they said. Suddenly I was even more popular than before and everyone surrounded me with questions. Then, suddenly, I realized what had happened. I had gone through a rite of passage, I had entered womanhood, I was a woman and they were clueless girls. It was EMPOWERING.

So yeah, you can’t really call yourself a woman before you’ve gone through something traumatic like that. Hardship and the strength to overcome those hardships are what shape us into women. If you haven’t had an abortion you don’t know what I’ve been through.

Going through an abortion was the ultimate tragedy for me and it made me grow from a clueless girl into a strong young woman. You’re not a real woman if you haven’t had an abortion, you have had an easy life—you’re a just a lost girl in a big scary world.