P.J. was only 14 years old when she met the man who would rape her.
Growing up in a military family, P.J.’s parents weren’t typically the kind to let their kids hang out with just anybody. But when the teen’s friends invited her to hang out with a military boy who was home for Christmas leave, they were surprisingly fine with it.
The friends all gathered in P.J.’s house, and in her parents’ basement, with several witnesses, P.J. was raped. Every one of them remained silent about what happened.
It wasn’t until five months later that P.J. found out that she was pregnant. The truth about what had happened in their basement finally came out when she told her parents.
They were shocked and furious. They felt guilty, and P.J.’s mother, Angela, admittedly considered taking her daughter to get an abortion.
“I really thought I would take her to terminate the pregnancy,” Angela explains. “I was pro-life but with exceptions. I didn’t want to do that, but I was always told it was the thing to do in the case of forcible rape. My husband, however, said he couldn’t have anything to do with the death of a child. That it was still a human life. Everywhere we went, friends and religious people were very adamant that we should terminate.”
Wrestling with the decision that weighed heavy on her heart, Angela was at a loss of how to best care for her daughter. Many of the people closest to her were encouraging her to help P.J. terminate the pregnancy, but her husband, Doug, was encouraging the opposite. She was reminded of her own experience with abortion.
“In college, I got pregnant and I went to a health clinic. I was 24 weeks, and I had an abortion. My mother forced me to because she didn’t want to be embarrassed by my poor choices. We never spoke about it again. I have never gotten over it.”
Like any parent, Angela wanted better for her daughter than what she had. She didn’t want P.J. to suffer from
the same guilt and regret that she was forced to experience every day of her life.
A friend called Angela and referred her to Trisha, who runs a Birth Right. She begged her to take P.J. there before they made any decisions.