I’ll never forget “Mary,” a sweet, nonverbal 14-year-old with significant physical, mental, and verbal delays and a mental and emotional age of roughly two years.

Given that she had just started having periods, her parents didn’t think anything of her missing her menses for several months, until she started gain weight. They realized only at 23 weeks of gestation that she had been abused by a caregiver and was pregnant. Keeping the pregnancy would have been disastrous for her child’s body and even more so for her two-year-old psyche. Safe and legal abortion was the option that allowed her family to save her from further cruelty and prosecute her abuser.