I’m pregnant. I just found out. I’m having an abortion on Saturday at 10 a.m.

Those are three text messages I sent to my closest friends, in that order, last weekend, a few hours after I went to the Rite Aid near my boyfriend’s apartment to buy an at-home pregnancy test. I’d walked to the pharmacy in a pair of awkwardly fitting denim cutoffs and the shirt I slept in the night before, with the singular goal of ruling out pregnancy as an explanation for why my period still hadn’t shown up a week after it was supposed to. I had all my usual pre-period symptoms — cramps, sore breasts, insatiable hunger — but no period. I assumed the lateness had something to do with my horrific and sporadic eating habits, as I subsist mostly on Hot Cheetos and red licorice. That probably seems delusional; it probably seems less so when I mention I’ve had a copper IUD for a year.

So, no, it didn’t seem outrageous to think my period was just reconfiguring itself, as it has many times in the past. What did seem outrageous, though, were the two blue lines that showed up on the first pregnancy test I took when I got home — the ones that indicated I was pregnant, making my heart start pounding so loud I really could hear it in my ears, just like in the movies. I left the bathroom with the test in my hand and went to go show my boyfriend, who held me while I cried and shook and tried to catch my breath. I took the second test to be sure, then sent those first two text messages to my sister and my friends. I sent the third one after I went to Planned Parenthood to book an appointment I hoped I’d never have to make.

*

Those three text messages are also the sentences that best describe my current situation, in the days before I’m scheduled to have an abortion. I’m pregnant. I just found out. I’m having an abortion on Saturday at 10 a.m.

I have no idea what Saturday will be like because it’s not Saturday yet. Just as I’ve had no psychic abilities at any other point in my life, I have no way to predict what I’ll be thinking or feeling immediately before or after my arrival at the clinic this weekend. I assume I’ll wake up early, wonder what I should wear because I’ve never had an abortion before, pick something in a rush and then hold hands with my boyfriend as we make our way to Planned Parenthood. I’ve stopped trying to think past those mundane actions, though, because no amount of surmising will get me any closer to knowing how Saturday will feel before it’s Saturday.

And, it seems, no amount of background information — no critical mass of other women’s stories or screenings of “Obvious Child” — will give me much insight into how I, Jenny Kutner, will feel about my abortion when it happens. Still, I have been looking for background information, and I briefly tried to defy my stubbornly non-psychic brain by reading what other women have written about their abortion experiences.

There is, of course, a sort of collective narrative that has formed, especially amongst pro-choice women like myself. Here’s what I noticed about that larger collective narrative: It contains very few stories about what women experience just before their abortions. Mostly we only hear about a procedure in its aftermath. Right now, I do need to hear about the aftermath. I need to be reminded that on Saturday I will wake up pregnant and on Sunday I will not; I need to be reminded that my life will go on once I carry out this decision that is totally and completely right for me, not everyone, and that is totally and completely right for so many other women who have made or will make the same choice. But right now I’m not in the aftermath. I’m in a part of the abortion experience that feels just as crucial as the abortion itself.

I understand why people might not want to write about this part. To talk about having an abortion before it’s happened is to open oneself up to personal attacks at an already vulnerable time. After all, to tell any part of a personal abortion story is to portray oneself to anti-choicers as a “baby-killing slut,” as one friend put it. That shouldn’t be. But, what’s more, the crux of pro-choice thinking is that what a woman does with her body is personal and private and subject to no one else’s input. As Internet trolls will inevitably offer their thoughts, an abortion story told in advance of an abortion might seem a plea for another opinion, which undermines the pro-choice logic behind it.

I’ll say now that I’m genuinely not seeking out or accepting additional input, just as I don’t think any other woman who tells her story is asking for the two cents of hostile strangers. No thanks in advance for any efforts to make me change my mind, “choose life” or what have you. I am resolute in my decision, because it is the right decision for me.

That’s not to say I don’t feel as if I’m between a rock and a hard place. I don’t want to have an abortion, which is why I got an IUD — to give myself a 99 percent chance of not having to consider the procedure for a decade, or ever. (Clearly the IUD failed, so I guess I’m the 1 percent.) What I definitely, definitely don’t want, immeasurably more than I don’t want to have an abortion, is to be pregnant or have a child.

So I’m not going to. At least, not right now.

*

I was always going to have an abortion in the case of a hypothetical pregnancy. Now, I’m having an abortion in the case of a real one. There is nothing, logistically or financially, getting in the way of me having the procedure, something I kept reminding myself while I sat at Planned Parenthood last weekend. For too many women, mine is an unimaginable opportunity. That’s especially true in Texas, where I was born and raised, and where some of the harshest abortion restrictions in the country have decimated access to reproductive healthcare. That’s why, after having the initial thoughts of, How the fuck did this happen and Why me, why me, why me, my only other thought was, Thank goodness I’m not at home.

I moved to New York nearly a year ago, but before that I lived in Austin for four years. Last summer, on a day at the end of June not long before I moved, I waited in line for a gallery seat inside the Texas Senate chamber, where Wendy Davis had spent nearly 11 hours filibustering a bill that would require the state’s abortion clinics to meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers. The bill was intended to force abortion providers to close their doors, and was then the latest in a series of right-wing efforts to prevent Texas women from accessing healthcare. Two years earlier, during the previous legislative session, Governor Rick Perry had signed a coercive “emergency” measure requiring women to submit to invasive transvaginal sonograms and patronizing explanations of fetal development 24 hours before getting an abortion.

The sonogram bill, along with H.B. 2 — the bill that was eventually passed after Davis’s filibuster — diminish the rights of more than 10 million Texas women. I was at the capitol last summer, wearing orange, because I am a Texas woman — but I could not consider myself one of the women under attack. In a practical sense, H.B. 2 never would have limited my access to an abortion because of privilege.