I am a stay-at-home mother. I had only been pregnant three times and had three children. I was lucky, but didn't realize how lucky until I got pregnant unexpectedly two months ago.

My husband knew right away that he wanted me to have an abortion. And I knew that I wanted to keep the baby. No matter how many times we talked through everything, another child was too much for my husband to even think about, and the abortion was not something I wanted to do. But in the end I was the one who had to bend. I am a mother to three young daughters, and I do not want them to grow up in a broken home. And I could see no way for our family to survive another child with my husband feeling as strongly as he did.

I ended up going to two clinics since I was just 5 weeks pregnant and the first clinic couldn't see the pregnancy on the ultrasound. Without an ultrasound image, they would not perform an abortion. So I made an appointment for a surgical abortion the following Monday at the second clinic.

There were no problems at the second clinic. They had a more powerful ultrasound machine and were able to get an image of the pregnancy, and a positive urine test. The abortion itself was quick though awful. Emotionally, I was numb.

But after that first week the reality of what I had done hit me. There really wasn't time to work through anything though, since the holidays were upon us. Coming home after our Christmas visits with family and friends felt like hitting a brick wall. Walking home with my daughters, I was overwhelmed by a powerful wave of grief, realizing that the last time I'd walked this way with them I had been pregnant.

I feel like I am mourning both the loss of the pregnancy and my sense of myself as a nurturer and giver of life. I now realize how impossible it is for me to ever have another child. And it is difficult to accept this reality. I wish there was some way I could have avoided all this, and could somehow have had that fourth child, no matter how difficult that would have been.

I find myself longing to get pregnant again. I find it difficult to make myself swallow the tiny birth control pills. I feel like these things were there under the surface and the abortion has forced me to face them. And all this as I am humbled by the intense sadness I feel over the abortion itself.

At the same time it worries me that the two abortion clinics in our town (and yes I realize how lucky we are to have them!) are only open a couple days a week, and the abortion doctors, all older men, drive in from out of town to perform abortions. I worry whether there will even be "choice" for my daughters.