Though I had every reason to seek an abortion, and also was pro choice at the time and had volunteered for the local abortion clinic, I did not want to terminate my own preganancy, and little did I know how richly I would be rewarded! I am from the States but the year I got pregnant I was living and working in Ireland. I was nineteen, had no friends or relatives in the country and was just living for parties and travel. I met a fellow from Dublin and we hit it off great and went hitchhiking around Europe together. I was having unprotected sex and lots of it with him,...having been told that because of a particular uterine and cervical birth defect, that I would never be pregnant, much less carry a child to term. I found out that I WAS pregnant in the Czech Republic, and my Dublin boyfriend told me flat out that it was him or the baby, but no way was he going to be a father now. We had been seeing each other for six months at that time and I truly was in love with him. I had no money, no job, and only the backpack on my back. I was heartbroken but had to many other concerns with the idea of a pregnancy to let on to him how I felt. He accompanied me back to Ireland where I stayed one evening with his family before catching a bus to the airport and flying home to the States. My parents did not expect me back, especially not broke and pregnant. My father, who picked me up from the airport threatened to abandon me on the side of the road if I didn't get an abortion, and then recanted saying that I would be an unfit mother and that he would go to court and gain custody after the birth. I prayed a lot during this time. I got a job waiting tables against the doctors orders, who said I should be on complete bedrest considering the nature of my womb and cervix. A welfare program paid for the ultrasounds I had to have every two weeks. But I could not live at home and therefore needed to earn my keep in an apartment with a roomate. I got a phone call when I was six months along. It was the boyfriend from Dublin who I had not heard from since I left Ireland three months before. He said he was in Boston, and he was coming down to me in Florida...would I get him at the airport? I didn't dare hope or question...I just said ok and drove my friend's car to the airport to get him. When he got off the plane he hugged me but I didn't know what to say or do. While we waited for his baggage he leaned over me and put his hand on my belly and whispered so quietly in my ear how sorry he was, how wrong he was, and how everything was going to be ok with us now. I was to confused and happy and mad to reply, and unbelieving as well. I was afraid I would lash out and hit him if I even aknowleged his apology. So I just tried to pretend that we were just casual friends. This man, however, was true to his word. Over the course of the next month he paid me every consideration. He formally apologized to my parents. He insisted I stop working, took up two jobs and worked his tail off. He had his meager life savings moved over from his bank in Ireland to the one in our town. We married quietly in the Catholic Church soon after the baby was born. He is the best of husbands and we have been together ten years now and have one more child together as well. Though both births were very risky c-sections,...I hemmoraged during the first and lost the oppurtunity to ever have more children the second time. He likes to say to folks that he can't do wrong by me, because I don't wait up for him! He brags that I am a strong woman who thinks on her own...I am not a strong woman, I just have a strong and mighty God! And when I pray I ask him to help me do my thinking with me. I was broke, friendless, homeless, and physically unsuited for childbirth and a happier ending doesn't exist than this I feel, I am a rich woman! -- story submitted anonymously