If you read my letter at the end of FALLS BOYS then you have an idea of how decisions made by people around me impacted my childhood. ⁣ ⁣ I’m glad my mother had other children, even despite her addiction and without the support of stable relationships. After all, I love my brothers and sisters, but...⁣ ⁣ I’m also glad she didn’t have a sixth child. At nineteen, I was depressed and angry. Possibly suicidal. I never tried it, but I thought about it a lot. Sometimes in our lives we think that’s the only escape. If she’d had another kid, I’m not sure what that would’ve done to me. I was already so tired and hopeless with the responsibility that was on my shoulders from decisions I didn’t make. ⁣ ⁣ I think a lot of anti-abortion people are under the impression that people who don’t want children should “just stop having sex” or my personal favorite “just pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” ⁣ ⁣ But they don’t. People have sex. People get pregnant. Sometimes they don't want it. And sometimes they can't deal with it. The people in their lives deal with it instead. They raise their kids’ kids, or in my case, I raised a brother. Relatives deal with it. Employers deal with it. You deal with it. Taxpayers deal with it. And future generations will deal with it. Your kids and grandkids will deal with the repercussions of communities who are, right now, losing the power to control the size of their families. You may not care that your neighbor doesn’t have enough money to feed their kids ("that’s their problem, they had sex after all, right?"), but that poverty spills over into desperate acts that may affect you or your family someday, because poverty is the mother of crime. ⁣ I know some of you don’t care to hear this, and fair enough, but since you support my career, I think it’s right to let you know I support a person’s right to choose, no matter the circumstance. I will continue to vote for public servants who support choice and gun control in every election, and I will continue to donate to causes and campaigns that do the same.⁣ ⁣ (And just putting this out there...abortions would be almost non-existent if access to birth control were easy and free 👍🏻)