Hi, M Name Is Saanvi.

Hi. I'm Saanvi, and I had a medication abortion in NJ in 2016.

I found out I was pregnant when my fiancé and I were both in grad school, and my first thought was: "How can we raise a child while trying to build our careers in our early 20s?" I decided to have a medication abortion because it was important that we established ourselves as adults and gave our future children equal opportunities to a successful home and life. After all, their parents had a career and a stable job and income. The idea of raising a child when we both had no financial stability. We were working on our PhD‘s, and we had no grandparents’ support as both sets of grandparents were still working their day jobs. The idea of just birthing a child and putting them in daycare and not being hands-on was just out of the picture for me. I want to be an active mother and parent.

I received my abortion pills from a clinic.

From start to finish, the process was easy, private, empowering, and it gave us time to truly decide if this was a decision we wanted to make. We had our appointment first, and then we had, I believe, 48 hours to decide before we were given the pill. I took the pills at home, and I felt emotional. Physically, it felt like just an aggressive period. That was not the hard part. The emotional part was that I was losing my first child, but I knew it was the first and best decision to make given where exactly we were in our lives. We, as a couple, were just kids ourselves. What surprised me most was how painless the pill felt. It was just a very bad period, and there was nothing graphic or aggressively painful in the whole process. The next day, I felt so much better and sure. The emotional burden was there, but the physical pain part of it all was done and was not there to continue dragging on the pain of the decision that I had to make.

Because I had access to medication abortion, I was able to continue my life, complete my graduate school degree, get a very successful job in medical research, marry my fiancé, and then years later have the child that we were praying and hoping for. And be able to provide a good home to that child. I felt in control of my destiny, my life, and my decisions. I felt relief that the child that I was impregnated with was not going to come into a life that I could not support and help.

I'm sharing my story because no one should ever have to decide between having their first child as a couple or having to decide whether they should continue to educate themselves, build a career, and build themselves up.

Medication abortion is not an easy decision for any woman to make, but having that option to make that decision and having the freedom to have it should be legal. It is important to allow a woman to feel the freedom and safety of their own body.