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My Morning After Epiphany

"Maybe I did want to get pregnant."

Listen to this Commentary!

By Stacey Leung

Host Intro: As policy makers revisit abortion debates and sex education programs, Youth Radio’s Stacey Leung sent this perspective.

I was worrying about birth control one day, and thinking about the morning after pill, when I was overcome with the sudden realization…maybe I did want to get pregnant.

The idea that teenage girls have babies because they need someone to love them has always made sense in theory to me, but I never completely understood it…until now.

I want a little girl.

She’ll be smart and beautiful. She’ll be extremely talented — an artist, a dancer, an athlete, a writer, a singer — and everyone will absolutely adore her. She will be everything I ever wanted for myself, but couldn’t achieve.

I used to see ahead of me a career, and then a husband and kids. Now, I’m thinking that could happen in reverse order. My mother would disown me, and my relatives would look on in shame.

Having a baby right now would be the easy way out of a real future. I wouldn’t have to make all these decisions about classes to take next quarter. I wouldn’t be forced to declare a major. And I wouldn’t be asked what I want to be when I “grow up.”

It scares me that I’m willing to give up everything I’ve worked so hard for, and that I’d want to live vicariously through someone else, who, as I later put more thought into this, I’d end up resenting.

Instead of a morning-after pill, I got a morning-after epiphany.

When and if I do have a child, I want someone I love, not a window to what I could have become.

With a perspective, I’m Stacey Leung.

Back Announce: Stacey Leung comes to us from Youth Radio, an award-winning journalism training program.