The Legion, otherwise known as Keeping the voices at bay....

01:10

Ana's story. Cliff note's version.

Her full name was/is Anastasia Browne. She was/is my daughter. Her 12th birthday would have been November 11th this year. Would have been because she died when she was born. She died because I made the decision that she should. I was 14 and I had been raped nearly 6 months prior to that decision by her father, my best friend's boyfriend. He beat and raped me at a house party one night. As a result, I got pregnant. This fact eluded me for many months of depression wherein I drank like a fish to forget, until I tried to take my own life by washing down a bottle of valium with a bottle of vodka.

I was rushed to the emergency room to have my stomach pumped by one of my closest friends, Bruce Browne. Otherwise known as Brownie, the man who gladly gave her a last name. It was there I learned of my pregnancy. A miracle in my way of thinking as the doctors that had treated me for my HUS all those years ago had stated that if I ever got pregnant it would be nothing short of a miracle. And that if such a thing happened I would most likely have a miscarriage or both me and the child would die in delivery. A miracle she was. A miracle that wasn't meant to be. As I found out a few short weeks later.

The drugs and alcohol that I'd ingested had damaged the baby. Irreparable damage. She was going to die. And if by some miracle she did live until my delivery date (about a 5% chance according to the doctors), she would have a very short, very limited life, a few weeks at most. My choices: continue the pregnancy to have a stillborn and risk possible medical problems to myself, possibly even death. Or a partial birth abortion. Kill her in the womb. Not a choice anyone should ever have to make. Not a choice I could ever make again.

I went through it though. On the condition that she be issued birth and death certificates and that her body be given to me for burial. In most cases aborted fetuses are not considered to be anything but medical waste and are treated as such. I did not want that. I admit that the doctors were a hard sell but the alternative was unthinkable to them. For me to carry a child to term that may or may not die before delivery. A child who might very well kill me in the process. They couldn't risk it. So they capitulated to my terms and proceeded with the surgery.

I got to see her once. And that one look told me I made the right decision. Irreparable is not a word I would have used. Broken is the word I would have chosen. I may have made the right decision but it still haunted me. It drove me deeper into my own private hell. A place it took me a long way to get back from. And it haunts me still in some ways. I knew from that one brief look that my baby would never have had any kind of life. The doctors had been generous when they named her chances of survival at a few weeks. I would have given her hours. But it still hurts. What I had to do. I miss her. I wonder often if the image of her I have in my mind is what she would look like if things had been different.

I support the right of a woman to decide what should be done in regards to her own body. And it is a right I would gladly die for. But it is not a decision I will ever make again. I do not want pity, or condolences or even forgiveness. I deserve nothing for what I had to do. I am brief in the telling because much of the story is mine alone. Even those closest to me do not know it all. And it's probably a story I will never tell. I share what I can with you only to make my ramblings a little less enigmatic. And because Ana is part of who I am.