When I was a teenager, a friend confided to me that she feared she was pregnant. The relationship was futile, her life unstable; she was terrified at the prospect of bearing a child for nine months in a hostile environment, then bringing that child into an already chaotic existence. I listened as she spoke of her fears, the impossibility of getting any support from the father, her despair – and as I listened, I found that I simply wasn’t sure what to say. What happened in that moment was a collision of realities. I knew what abortion was: I will always remember the dismay I felt when I discovered what the word “abortion” meant. But I couldn’t look away from my friend’s pain, from her sense of being trapped.