She’s walking home at night with her best friend. They go their separate ways when they reach the green mailbox. It’s dark outside, and all she can see are the streetlights up ahead.

Suddenly a car pulls alongside of her; the passenger jumps out. The girl turns to run, but it’s too late as she’s pinned to the ground, beaten and raped. They don’t kill her; they just leave her there naked with tear stains streaking down her face, mentally scarred, soiled and maybe even pregnant.

She refuses to have the rapist’s babies. She can’t live her life with a reminder of what happened that night attached to her hip. She arrives at the hospital, suddenly in a panic. Will she choose to get an abortion? If the protesters and inconsiderate people got their way in taking the women’s right of abortion away, she might have to live her life with a baby she wants absolutely nothing to do with.

This story isn’t true, but it could be. Imagine your daughter, niece or granddaughter being faced with the toughest decision of a lifetime in her teens, not to mention the harsh expectations of how to go about the situation. Whether she gets an abortion or is a mother in her teens, she will be frowned upon, and she knows it.

Abortion has been a huge controversy in America since the beginning of the twentieth century and will be until the day women are allowed to make all decisions for themselves. People call it murder, but with a pregnant teen who has probably thought about killing herself to avoid the decision, is it worse to never give birth or to end a life that has already been born? She is between a rock and a hard place.

According to the National Abortion Federation, women between the age of 15 and 19 account for 19 percent of abortions, and there are 1.3 billion unintended pregnancies resulting in an abortion.

Think about a 16 year old adopting. If she were to want to adopt a baby, she would be frowned upon and rejected. A lot of people don’t think a 16 year old is qualified to raise a baby. A little hypocritical when you think about a 16 year old girl being forced to have a baby she doesn’t want or think she can take care of.

Think about a teen putting a baby up for adoption. They say, “Well, have you thought about adoption?” Of course she’s thought about adoption. She’s probably thought about time traveling too, but what girl is gonna want to get fat, throw up for about nine months, go through the pain of giving birth to end up with stretch marks and no kid? What about when she’s older and has kids of her own and she has to live with the guilt that one of her kids is out there with another set of parents? How do you tell your kids they have another sibling somewhere in the world?

Think about birth control. Many pro life people will say it’s just another way to murder the kid, but what are you murdering that’s not there? Would you rather the mom murder an actual fetus or herself with other kinds of pills, alcoholic beverages or drugs? Because that’s murder. And she might if she feels that suicide or getting rid of the baby is the only option she’s left with.

Think about abstinence. This belief doesn’t apply to everyone. Not all women believe in God. Not all women who believe in God wait until they’re married to participate in sexual intercourse. This isn’t like back in the day when you could marry at 13 and have kids by age 14; It’s a new time and age. Asking for abstinence is asking a woman to wait 20 plus years. It’s technically not uncommon, girls just aren’t getting married until their twenties or later. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 16 percent of 18-year-old girls have lost their virginities. Whether a girl feels like she needs to have sex to be accepted or she just can’t push aside her feelings, girls are gonna  going to do what they want.

Teens don’t always know how to go about raising kids. Baby daddies often flee the situation, resulting in a mom fleeing because she feels scared and/or deserted. I am terrible with kids; it would be worse for me to bring a kid into this world and attempt to raise it at this moment than letting it die peacefully before it’s ever born.

The decision is always going to be the lesser of two evils, but if she’s your daughter, niece or granddaughter you should stand by her side and support whatever decision she chooses. This isn’t just a woman’s decision, this is a woman’s life. Give her the right to make a decision she can live with.