"Our abortion was a love story."

So says Alison Piepmeier about how her experience with chemical abortion brought her and her husband closer together in an essay in Skirt magazine entitled "Choosing Us."

Sitting on rocks on the riverbank, on a sunny, cold January morning, I read my letter aloud. "Dear potential person," I said. "Thank you so much for coming along." I started to cry. I wished it well, told it I hoped it found another home, and pulled the blossom off my flower and threw it into the river....

Our abortion was a love story. I'd worried that Walter and I were rejecting a gift from the universe. What I discovered, though, was that when we stripped away the distractions of everyday life so that we could make this difficult decision together, it bound us together as surely as if our choice had been different—and as it turns out, that was the gift.