Welcome to Down to Find Out, a column in which Nona Willis Aronowitz addresses your biggest questions about sex, dating, relationships, and all the gray areas in between. Have a question for Nona? Send it to downtofindout@gmail.com.

Q: I'm 16, I'm pregnant, and I don't want to be. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to get an abortion without my parents' permission, but I'm really scared to tell them because they are both against abortion. What should I do?

A: One Saturday night, when I was 15 years old, my boyfriend came back from the bathroom post-sex and informed me that the condom had ripped. Plan B was only available with a prescription back then, so I spent the whole next day calling clinics, most of which were closed on Sundays. I obsessed over a potential unplanned pregnancy to my best friend over the phone. I knew for sure I didn’t want a baby, and I was raised with very little shame around sex. So when my morning-after mission failed, you’d think my next step would have been to talk to my mom — after all, she’d fought for reproductive rights since the 1960s. And still I was terrified to turn to her for help.

To my relief, my mother eventually helped me get Plan B without judging or admonishing me. But if teenage me had a hard time broaching the subject of a hypothetical pregnancy with my pro-choice parents, I can only imagine how overwhelming it might feel to announce an actual pregnancy, much less a desire to get an abortion — in any circumstance, really, but especially to parents who are against it, and especially during a time in American history when the bodily autonomy of people with uteruses is under serious threat.

First of all, I’m here to tell you that you have nothing to be ashamed of. Accidents can happen even to the most careful among us. And it’s only logical that if teens are mature enough to become parents, they are mature enough to decide whether or not they want to give birth. Having access to abortion should be your right, regardless of your parents’ beliefs.

Unfortunately, not every state legislature agrees with me. Roe v. Wade deemed access to safe and legal abortion a constitutional right in 1973, but just six years later, the Supreme Court ruled in Bellotti v. Baird that states could insist that a minor obtain parental consent. Now, 21 states require that at least one parent provide consent for an abortion if the patient is younger than 18 years old, 11 states require notification of at least one parent, and 5 states require both consent and notification.

So let’s talk logistics: Your first step is knowing your state’s rules when it comes to parental consent (though there are ways to sidestep those rules depending on what state you're in — more on that later). If you live in one of the handful of states in which a minor can get an abortion without parental involvement — and if you don’t want to tell your parents — you’re all set. But if the law does require that your parents are involved, it’s time for some soul-searching about how you think they’ll react when confronted directly with their pregnant child’s desire to not be.

One thing I’ve learned while researching and reporting on these issues is that supposedly anti-abortion Americans often get abortions. They often help their children procure abortions. You know those activists who stand outside clinics holding signs adorned with Bible verses and pictures of fetuses? Even they sometimes get abortions. Dr. Yashica Robinson, a board member with Physicians for Reproductive Health and the medical director at Alabama Women's Center for Reproductive Alternatives — in a state that just passed a near-total abortion ban, even in the case of rape or incest — says she has performed the procedure on some of the very people who protest abortions. “People don’t really know what they think about abortion until they’re in the position themselves,” she explained to me at a recent roundtable of abortion providers. She’s born witness to staunchly anti-abortion patients who tell her through tears, “I will never judge another woman again.”