I’m currently 26 years old, and I became pregnant when I was 25 years old and living in Medellin, Colombia. I can’t even describe how long those days and hours felt while I was in a country with restrictive abortion laws. I’ve never felt so trapped and depressed in my life. I knew what was best for me and my boyfriend was not to have the baby. We weren’t ready.

I wanted to go back to school, we had no house, we still weren’t sure what we were doing with our relationship (I wanted to go home to the U.S., and he maybe wanted to stay in his home of Colombia), and my boyfriend was struggling with alcohol addiction. It was just not the right time.

I took a flight back to my hometown of New York City, in about my eighth week of pregnancy, and I walked into a clinic with the most incredible and caring doctors and nurses and was provided with the option to have an abortion, with no judgment. I can’t even tell you how much that meant for me, after about two weeks of feeling completely broken and trapped in a country where that option was less available.

Many areas of our country also have restrictive abortion laws, and it makes me saddened and outraged to think that there are women who are forced to feel like I felt, and don’t have the option of getting on a plane like I did. Having access to abortion should not be a privilege, it should be a right.