Guest Post: Story of Orthodox Teen Pregnancy

pregnancy test in account of pregnant Jewish teenThe author of today’s guest post wishes to remain anonymous: 

This story has a happy ending, mostly. It almost didn’t.

I grew up in a religious household, and I knew what the expectations were, yet when I was eighteen, I became sexually active. When I was twenty, a condom tore. Ten days later, I saw two lines on a pregnancy test. My first thought was that my parents would never accept me. Not that they wouldn’t accept what I’d done, but that they wouldn’t accept me.

The idea of abortion was brought up, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did it. It wasn’t a possibility as far as I was concerned.

I thought maybe my boyfriend and I could get married soon enough that no one would know until it was too late for them to disown me. I could have a seven month baby, and maybe people would giggle, but it would be ok in the end. And then he dropped the bomb. He didn’t want to get married. Not now. Not to become a father.

I was backed into a corner. I thought – I really thought this – that my life was over. My parents would stop loving me, stop accepting me, and I would be on my own in the world with a baby and no friends. I didn’t want to live like that.

That’s why I took sleeping pills –a lot of sleeping pills, around forty of them. And then I got scared. I called my boyfriend, and he called an ambulance, and I spent the night in the emergency room. I puked my guts up, got medicine, got put in a ward. My boyfriend called my sister. My sister called my parents, who were out of the country at the time.

Do you know what they said? They said they’d support me no matter what I decided. They said they thought I probably shouldn’t have an abortion. I woke up in the hospital to my sister patting my head and all of my fears gone.

A few days later, I miscarried. It was what they call a chemical pregnancy. We never saw so much as a sac on the ultrasound. I bled. I cried. I left the hospital.

The boyfriend and I broke up. Time went on. It’s been nearly fifteen years since then. I’m married. I have a husband who I love deeply. I have children who were planned and wanted. I have a good relationship with my parents.

A few days ago, I was talking to my mother. She told me she was genuinely sad when I miscarried, even though she realized it was ultimately for the best.  She was really sad to realize that I really thought she could stop loving me because I made a mistake, even a big, scandalous mistake like getting pregnant.

I hope I’ll manage to tell my children that I really will love them no matter what. That misunderstanding almost cost everything.

image: Daquella manera

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Are Rabbis too Strict about Birth Control and Abortion?

Abortion in the Religious-Zionist Community

Interview with Daniel Schonbuch on Teens

Comments

  1. Very powerful story. Definitely not a topic talked about enough in the Orthodox community. Really glad your mom came through for you completely.

  2. A girl in my Orthodox Yeshiva high school in the US got pregnant at the end of 12th grade. She and her boyfriend got married three weeks after she found out and have been married for 25 years. It happens.

  3. I’m not sure about the “teen” part of this. Seems as if the pregnancy was when she was 20. But she did begin to be sexually active at age 18.

  4. You have exceptional parents and you are very, very blessed!

  5. I came to this site to read a frugality article but couldn’t help but be see the headline and come to read this post. as well. What a wonderful family you have now, and what great parents you had when you had that miscarriage. I have no need to ask if they make great grandparents too.