Now I’m fighting back, for myself and my family, against the people who shaped my state’s cruel abortion bans.

By Maria Puerto

Today, a mother of two whose life has been torn apart by Texas abortion laws filed a lawsuit against Students For Life. Here, she tells her story in her own words.

The people who pushed for Texas’s abortion bans don’t know my name. But they should know my story.

I was barely 22 when I found out I was pregnant. I was feeling lightheaded at work when one of my colleagues asked me: “Have you taken a pregnancy test?” 

In my mind there was no way I could be pregnant. I had been taking daily birth control pills, and I never missed a dose, not even for a day. I didn’t have the money to buy a pregnancy test, so my colleague got it for me. 

It was positive.

At first, I only told my boyfriend. I couldn’t bring myself to tell my mom, but she already knew. We share a bathroom in our tiny home, so my mom started noticing that I hadn’t gotten my period.  In the end, it was my boyfriend who confirmed her suspicions. She was furious, especially when she found out I was considering abortion. 

“This is not what we do in our community,” she said. “We get married, we buy a house, we have kids.” 

In her eyes, I’d done everything wrong. In my culture, you don’t talk about abortion because it’s a sin. You don’t talk about contraceptives because you’re considered a slut. 

It didn’t matter anyway. It was 2022. Abortion was already illegal in Texas and I had no way to travel out of state for one, let alone pay for it. And I was too scared of the repercussions if I did.

When you get pregnant in Texas, you lose the right to make your own decisions. My only option was having this baby. 

I was living with my mother at the time, working at a convenience store for $7.25 an hour and going to college part-time on a scholarship. A single parent with five kids, my mother had cleaned houses for $35 a house for years to put food on the table. Now, with my mother disabled and aging, it was my turn to give back a fraction of what she gave us. 

But in those first few months, I was so sick, always running to the bathroom to throw up. A professor referred to those episodes as “unexcused absences.” Then, I could no longer lift the five-gallon water jugs or the 30-packs of beer my job required at the store. Nothing went unnoticed. My manager was fed up, and he fired me. 

I lost my scholarship. I lost my job. I lost my future.

When I was around six months pregnant, my body got swollen to the point where I almost couldn’t walk. My doctors seemed scared for my health. Eventually, they said I needed to be induced early. I labored for 48 hours. After I gave birth, my baby had to be admitted to the NICU. But because I had no car, I had to figure out how to go back to the hospital every day, by myself. Each time I left, I felt like a horrible mother. 

Less than a year later, I was a new mom and just starting to piece my life back together with a new job when the cycle repeated. Sitting next to my boyfriend, I texted him the news so no one else could hear it: 

“I’m pregnant again.”

“HOW?” he responded. 

Once again, I had no words, no answers. I never missed a pill, but birth control isn’t perfect. Once again, I felt trapped, like there was nothing I could do. No way to travel. And even less money than before. 

My heart dropped when I learned I was having a daughter. I know all too well what it means to be a woman in Texas. To be sexually abused as a child by a relative for years, from the age of seven. To be turned away by the police because too many years had gone by before I had the courage to say what happened to me out loud. To be denied an abortion when my boyfriend and I found out I was pregnant and then have every door slammed in my face because I was carrying the baby Texas made me keep. 

The depression that consumed me during the second pregnancy was unimaginable, nothing I’d felt before. I felt myself slipping away. Around this time, my boyfriend slipped away, too, the same way my father had before him. Disappeared. 

During the birth of my second child, the pain was so overwhelming that I actually thought I was going to die. I remember thinking, Who is going to take care of my babies?

Today, my children are three and one. Don’t get me wrong, I love being a mother. When I am with my kids and I watch them play, for a few fleeting moments I can forget all the stressors in my life. But then we go to the supermarket. As we walk past the toy aisle or the fresh produce stands, the stark reminder of how little I can give them pulls me back to reality. Once again I am reminded how much more—how much better—I want for them.

Financially, I am ruined. I cannot work because I cannot afford childcare. The medicine my mother needs takes up too much of my meager income. The waitlist for housing is too long, so the three of us have been sharing a room in my mom’s house. The room has no space for decorations; it barely fits a full-sized bed.

I was so young, with every direction in life still an open possibility. But because I got pregnant, Texas laws chose my way for me. And now, I am left to care for two children, with no support and no clear path towards a better future. 

At night, the small limbs of my two children occupy every corner of our bed. As I watch them sleep, I wish for the chance to give them their own space. Sometimes I sleep on the floor because it’s the only way I can. I try not to be angry but it isn’t easy. In my community, my state, my country, I have long avoided speaking up, knowing my cries for justice would only be met with violence. My own childhood trained me to think and feel that way.

But I recently decided that silence is not a strategy for survival. My strength and resolve are growing. I think about the Bible verse “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” I tell myself: You must be able to overcome this.

I will remain anonymous to protect my family. But now I want the people who did this—the politicians, the activists, all the people who say they care about Texas women and Texas families but who only act to make our lives impossible—I want them to know: YOU did this to me. To us. 

I’ve filed a lawsuit against those who helped build these horrible laws—and then had the privilege to break them in an attempt to trap women like me who still need help. If I win, I will use the money to help raise my kids to the best of my ability.

***

My name is not Maria Puerto. But that is what you will call me. 

My “real” name—the one you will never know—was never mine anyway. It belongs to a man who abandoned me before I was even born. And over the last four years, Texas’s abortion bans ripped every last shred of myself that I had remaining.

Today, I am many things. A daughter. A sister. A born and bred Texan. A sexual assault survivor. A single mother of two. 

And I am a woman with a voice.

Please add yours with mine.

 

Learn more about my lawsuit here.

If you want to help support me and my family, you can donate here. 

And if you want to help raise awareness about these laws, which help no one, please share my story.