And when things went wrong, I was to blame. When I gained weight — about 30 pounds — from the hormones and from being told not to exercise so much, a doctor told me I shouldn’t expect to become pregnant “at my weight.” It didn’t matter that I’d started treatment in a normal weight range; I should have known what gaining weight would do to my chances.

Being treated like my only purpose was to bear a child, and one that I was failing at it, was devastating. I tried to find some solace in the fact that I had a choice. No one was forcing me to do I.V.F., and when it became clear that it wasn’t going to work, my husband and I made the decision to stop.

Having those choices — to start treatments, and to stop — didn’t solve everything, though, because each choice came with a round of new judgments from people about what I did with my body. A former friend called me selfish, first for doing I.V.F. instead of adoption, and then for working with an adoption agency instead of a foster care group. Another friend told me that she was relieved I had “quit the patriarchal bullshit of I.V.F.,” which was somehow both reassuring and upsetting at the same time. And I’m sure, right now, that someone is reading this and saying, “Well, she should have tried to have children earlier if she didn’t want it to be so difficult.”

Every one of my choices about my body is wrong to someone.

Women’s reproductive choices are always up for judgment, especially when it comes to abortion. To the anti-abortion protesters who stand outside the clinic, or the state legislators who passed those recent bills, the patients seeking abortions aren’t people with their own needs, but vessels for future generations. The potential life they carry is worth more than their own. It is fine for them to suffer mentally, economically, physically, as long as that pregnancy comes to term.

Now that my husband and I are hoping to adopt a child, the importance of reproductive choice has taken on more nuance for me. Anti-choice groups like to present adoption as an easy out for pregnant people, as though it guarantees a happy outcome for all involved. But adoption isn’t a choice about whether to give birth; it’s a choice about whether to parent. Neither choice should involve coercion.

When I meet a woman at the clinic who’s decided that an abortion is the right choice for her, I don’t second-guess her. I smile warmly, and open the clinic door.

I want a baby, but I don’t want to force someone to have one for me, or force someone to give one to me. I am pro-choice — and it’s because of what I’ve been through.

Elizabeth Keenan is the author of the forthcoming novel “Rebel Girls.”

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