Letter to the Editor: An abortion with no regrets

Dear Editor:

This April 2022, my husband and I celebrated 50 years of our marriage. We have two wonderful sons and two lovely grandchildren.

Looking back 50 years, to April 1972, when we were newlyweds, my Bolivian-born husband, Guido, now a U.S citizen, had come here as a foreign student hoping to become a lawyer after finishing a year of law school in his country. Shortly after our marriage, he applied for U.S. residency. He was just starting college here. I had finished my BA in Social Sciences at San Diego State University two months earlier.

We were living with my parents as we had no money. He got a job as a journalist with a small Spanish language newspaper but the pay was very low. I was looking for a job.

I had just started taking birth control pills. Soon after I began feeling nauseous. One of Guido’s friends suggested I might be pregnant. I thought, no way, I had been very careful. But he was right, I was pregnant. We had no intention of having a baby until we were more financially stable. My mom took me to a place nearby where I got an abortion.

My husband finished his university studies and got a job as a teacher with LAUSD where he worked for over 30 years. We raised our two children and Guido retired over 10 years ago.

My husband’s father, being a farm owner and a very faithful Catholic, had 25 children with three wives (he was widowed twice and remarried each time). His first wife died in childbirth, giving birth to their 12th child.

I know that families nowadays need to prevent so many births as we are already overpopulated on Earth. We are depleting the Earth’s natural resources and worsening pollution-caused climate change with human activities. I am one of the approximately one in four women in the U.S. who have had an abortion.

My husband and I have no regrets and I am horrified that many young women now will be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term or go to illegal back alley abortion providers risking their lives and their health.

Anita Rivero
Downey