KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 2010 / NEWS
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cts an intact
itation and extraction, also known as a partial birth abortion, which was outlawed in the United States in 2003. Manager Jeff Pedersen said various protestors gather every day that abortions are performed.
Adam Buhler/KANSAN
Katie doesn't hear from Drake for seven months, until June 2006.
He calls, claiming that he is a changed man. He's been to anger management and addiction counseling, and he wants her back.
Katie believes him. She moves in with him two days later.
He starts beating her within a week.
In the two months she stays with him this time, he puts a cigarette out on her left arm, tries hanging her with his T-shirt and punches her in the mouth so hard, one of her bottom teeth punctures her lip and breaks open his knuckles.
One day he takes her out by the rail road tracks. He thinks she gave head to a crack dealer for a score. He bangs her head, repeatedly, on the side of an old brick wall. He grabs a rusty rod iron and hits her over the head with it. He grabs a piece of glass from a broken beer bottle and places it at her throat, threatening to kill her.
It would be the last time Drake touched her.
--james calls two hours later — he wants to keep the baby.
Her birth mother takes her to her birth father's house.
The next day, campus police stop Katie for loitering and suspicious activity outside KU Hospital.
It's working alongside her father at a woodshop that she meets James. The two-month relationship leads to another pregnancy, a tumultuous break up and another choice she would make alone.
She's been dreading this moment since she missed her period two weeks ago.
A trip to Planned Parenthood and two pink lines prevent Katie from denying it anymore. She has to tell him she's pregnant.
James finally agrees to see her, despite their angry break up two weeks earlier.
They're standing on his back stoop. She hasn't seen him since the fight. She doesn't miss the drugs or the pressure to do them, but she misses him, him and his wide, brown eyes. She catches herself staring and shakes her head to snap out of the memories.
She holds out the pregnancy test and handouts from Planned Parenthood.
He takes them from her, slowly, in disbelief.
"I'm pregnant."
"Hell no," Katie says.
"What are we going to do?" Katie asks.
"Abortion?"
It's an option, but not the one Katie wants. She leaves, telling James to think about it.
"Well, what about adoption?"
Katie is cestatic. She loves kids. She still loves James. Maybe this time, being pregnant doesn't have to be a bad thing.
But her phone rings the following day, it's James, and he's changed his mind.
"I can't take care of a kid, man. I don't have money for myself."
the next day, he calls again.
"I want this baby. I want to
The next day, he calls again.
be a daddy."
He changes his mind several more times in the next four months.
Finally, realizing lames wasn't going to be the reliable partner she and the baby need, Katie makes the executive decision.
Four months into her pregnancy, Katie approaches American Adoption to give her child the family she couldn't provide.
As an adopted child, Katie knows the risks of relinquishing her baby to adoption.
Her mom, pregnant and unmarried at 21, gave her up for adoption to a couple that couldn't have children of their own.
About 1.5 million
children are adopted in the United States every year.
U. S. CENSUS BUREAU, 2001
Five years later, Katie's adoptive parents conceived, and Katie learned how to take the backseat to her younger sister most recently when her parents opted to fund Ashley's way through Washburn University. For Katie, they paid for only one semester's tuition at Johnson County Community College.
But Katie isn't worried about her child taking second place with the couple she chose from St. Louis. They are young, in love and already devoted to the baby growing inside her.
--holidays, that Katie regrets her decision to give him up. But the regret doesn't last long.
Lacking money and motivation after meeting Drake, Katie dropped out after only a year. She was studying to be a high school teacher.
Four days later, the couple comes to get the baby boy, whom they rename Benjamin, from Katie's arms.
Keaton Michael was born via C-section at 12:20 p.m. on Sept. 17, 2007. He weighed 7 pounds, 4 1/2 ounces.
Before they leave, they take Katie to dinner and give her a gold, oval locket with handprints and footprints on one side, a picture of Ben on the other.
Although the couple agreed to an open adoption, promising to send pictures and letters and accept and save presents from Katie, this would be one of the last times she would hold Ben in her arms until or if — he came looking for her.
It is only then that Katie breaks down and cries.
Ben is 2 $ \frac{1}{2} $ years old now and, judging from the pictures and letters, he's doing great in his St. Louis home.
He has big, blue eyes and plump, white cheeks. He looks a lot like Katie. A good thing, she says.
She sees him again that Christmas, her last chance to say goodbye before Ben is old enough to remember.
There are times, looking at the pictures on her Blackberry and on birthdays and
"I think I did a great thing for him," she said. "I couldn't have given him the life he deserves."
Now, with Ben in good hands, Katie is trying to get her life back on track.
After a three-year hiatus, Katie returned to JCCC last fall. But she could afford only one semester. Now she's taking a break from school, working two jobs so she can move out of her adoptive parents' home soon.
Katie rarely hears from James these days - just an occasional text message asking for photos of Ben. She's sent him two and says that may be all he gets.
Drake is out of the picture as well. He tried to call in December, after his latest stint in jail for drug possession, but Katie ignored his calls.
Distanced from the pain, Katie speaks freely about her experiences.
"For me, it's kind of like closure," she said. "The more I talk about it, the more I can put it behind me and not have to think about it as often."
ERIN'S STORY
is the middle of the night and it's 95 degrees outside.
1 The Harmony House doesn't have air conditioning — just windows
that let in the muggy, Jamaican air that smothers the missionaries inside. The acrid scent of jackfruit trees fills the air.
Erin shifts on her mattress, trying to block out the smell, the heat and the growing discomfort in her stomach.
It's got to be gas bubbles, the way her stomach is gurgling, churning and turning.
She looks down at her bare, flat stomach — she's wearing a sports bra and shorts, sweating, the idea of a blanket laughable in the sweltering humidity.
A bump pushes out the right side of her abdomen and crosses to the other side.
And then she sees it.
She feels a pitter patter across her belly.
No
I can't be.
You can't get pregnant when you're raped.
She sees another bump.
It happened in February
He had said he was 22 years old, this friend of a friend. But he wasn't. He was 36. She went to his house to confront him, and he raped her. He raped her right there on his bed.
She doesn't sleep that night. When the sun rises, Erin rubs her eyes like everyone else and prepares for one last day of work.
And now, 17 years old in a foreign country with her church group. Erin is five months pregnant.
She's there with Olathe Bible Church to build two houses in the slum of
Adam Buhler/KANSAN
Displayed in the front window of Aid for Women, these signs greet patients and protesters alike. The signs read from top to bottom, "Doing my part to PISS OFF the Religious Right""We do sacred work that honors women and the circle of life and death. When you come here bring only love,""Children left unattended will be towed away at owner's expense."
She went to his house to confront him, and he raped her. He raped her right there on his bed.
From ERIN'S STORY
She tries to take it easy, scared she could hurt the baby already growing inside her, but it's the last push to finish building.
She spends the day pouring cement and hauling bags of sand up and down the hill where the houses stand.
She doesn't want to board the plane — she remembers reading about how you're not supposed to fly when you're too far along. But she can't explain her fears. Not to them. She buckles her seatbelt and prays.
The next day, she's snorkeling with her friends in the Caribbean. The missionaries are there one more day.
Harmon, Jamaica.
It's Aug. 5, 2008, and she can't fit into her 1940s-style red dress for the jazz concert that night.
"Erin, how can you not fit into this? I just bought it last month."
Her mom lifts her chin. They make eye contact. Erin sees the worry, the knowing. The floodgates holding back her secret break, and the tears she hasn't cried flow down her cheeks.
---
Her father is in Colorado with her older brother. And it's a good thing, too. He wants to kill someone, preferably his daughter's rapist. Her younger sister is hysterical.
Erin looks to the floor for refuge from her mother's prying eyes.
For Erin, the next three months are the hardest: It doesn't take long for word of her pregnancy to spread around her Christian high school.
The kids are fine, even excited. It's the parents who treat her differently, reluctant to look her in the eyes or even speak to her.
She wonders why. She didn't do
SEE PREGNANCIES ON PAGE 6A