Bonnie Bernau kept it a secret most of her life. Only three friends knew the details.
This weekend, she let 25 strangers in on her secret.
Bernau, 60, was one of eight women who shared their experiences with abortion Saturday at the Civic Media Center.
The speakers spoke against the ideology that has recently driven state legislatures to consider 18 bills that would limit abortion rights.
They reasoned that cuts to education and a lack of jobs make it more difficult to raise children, so they should be able to choose when they have children.
They also said they don’t need a reason; it’s their bodies.
They told their stories as if they were having a conversation with the audience of men, mothers and feminists. The women stood in front of a few lines of chairs. Some used a microphone, but many did not need to.
Bernau, who is a UF employee, told of how she filed for divorce after her husband impregnated another woman, only to find out she was pregnant, too.
“I was shaking, just like I am now,” she said.
Whitney Mutch, 31, told her story while she held her 7-week-old son, Elliott.
When she got pregnant, she was a 23-year-old graduate student. She said she was on birth control at the time, but two pink lines appeared on her pregnancy test.
She said she and her fiance weren’t ready to be parents.
“I had the support of my partner, but it was still the most terrifying, lonely experience,” said Mutch, a UF alumna.
After three days of waiting for an appointment, she walked past pro-life protesters into an abortion clinic. She got the abortion pills and went home.
Now, she’s the mother of two children, and she said her decision to have an abortion was the right choice because she was not able to support a child at that time.
She said if she’d been forced to have a child when she was 23, she probably wouldn’t have had any more children.
“I wouldn’t have my two kids,” she said in an interview. “I don’t know what my life would’ve been like because it would’ve completely changed the trajectory of my life.”
Editor's note: Whitney Mutch is incorrectly identified as a UF alumna in thisarticle.
Mutch has actually received degrees from Agnes Scott College and Florida State University.
