Sonia has 5 kids and her husband was just laid off.
I love my big family...and I love my children too much to have another baby right now.
My husband and I have five children. We love kids and we love having a big family. But when my husband got laid off from his contractor job, having a big family got really hard.
When I found out I was pregnant again, it was terrifying. We love the idea of another child -- but we love the children we have too much to add that kind of stress to our family right now.
I'm only working part-time and I couldn't get maternity leave, so I might not be able to keep my job with another little one. I hated that we had to make this decision, but it turned out that making the decision was the easiest part. Because then we had to find the money to pay for an abortion.
We started taking stuff to the pawn shop: our vacuum cleaner, my wedding ring, our family television, the old desktop computer. When that wasn't enough, we took my husband's tools and his drills.
We started taking stuff to the pawn shop: our vacuum cleaner, my wedding ring, our family television, the old desktop computer. When that wasn't enough, we took my husband's tools and his drills.
That was the hardest trip. My husband's been trying to pick up construction work. Without his tools or his drills, there's hardly anyone who'll hire him.
And after all that, we were short on what we needed. But the woman at the clinic gave us the name of an abortion fund.
An abortion fund. Who knew, right?
They gave us what we needed.
And when I broke down on the phone and admitted that we didn't even have gas money to get to the clinic, they helped us with that, too.
So now I pay the pawn shop every month to keep our things -- my wedding ring and my husband's tools are the only ones we can afford to pay on. And if you miss a month, the payment is doubled from then on. So we're stuck in this cycle. We'll be paying for this abortion for a long time.
But the panic is gone. The rest of it, well...we'll figure it out. We'll do whatever we have to do to take care of our family.