“What are the chances you’ll find somebody who wants to help you?” Ashley said.

Just out of high school last year, Ashley was focused on partying. When she began to regularly feel tired, she had no idea she was pregnant.

After taking a pregnancy test and getting a positive result, she was frightened.

“Like this isn't a joke,” Ashley said. “This is real. I was scared. I'm a kid. I'm a kid about to have a kid. How do you do that?”

When Ashley told the child’s father, he urged her to have an abortion. She didn’t want to, but eventually conceded.

She had an appointment for a chemical abortion at seven weeks and five days gestation. The abortion facility staff told her that once she took the first abortion pill, it would block her hormones, and her baby would stop growing.

“And then you go home, and you finish it at home,” Ashley recalled. “And I just sat in that waiting room and he was like, ‘You're already here. You're already here. You're already, here you go. Just do it.’”

“And then I took the abortion pill,” Ashley said.

She immediately had regret.

“I felt like I did the wrong thing,” Ashley said. “And I hated that I did that. Is there any way I can take back? Like I can't take this back... That's scary.”

She kept telling herself that she went ahead with the abortion because she was unsure.

“But it's like, exactly, you were unsure,” she said, “you didn't give it the benefit of the doubt. You didn't try to be a mom.”

Ashley was terribly upset.

“I couldn't do anything but cry,” she said. “I was like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. I can't even describe it. I just felt a burden on me. Like I felt heavy. I felt like I did the wrong thing, and I couldn't take it back.”

Ashley wondered how she would live with this decision for the rest of her life.

She contacted the abortion provider for help, to no avail.

“I called back the doctors who gave me the abortion pill and they were like, no, no. Like the progesterone is gone,” Ashley said. “I'm freaking out. I was terrified. I thought, okay, I lost my baby. I did it. There's nothing I can do about it.”

Ashley went on the internet and searched, “Is there any way to reverse an abortion?”

She called the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) hotline and heard back from a nurse consultant first thing in the morning. The nurse connected her with to someone who could help.

“I would not still pregnant if it wasn't for that,” said Ashley. “I reversed my abortion, and I am pregnant. I'm about to give birth to a beautiful baby girl.”

 

Ashley gave birth to daughter Thailynn in August 2021.