Seventeen years old, living away from her family, and freshly out of a relationship she described as “toxic,” Gemma Howard was struck with fear when she learned she was pregnant. Though she knew she wouldn’t have an abortion, the fact that she could legally kill her preborn child crossed her mind. Abortion would alleviate her immediate concerns, but she knew none of her fears or potential future challenges would be justification for killing her baby.
“I was in a relationship for about a year and it was not a healthy relationship,” Gemma told Live Action News. “It was toxic, hurtful. I decided to break it off. It was a week later that I found out I was pregnant. … In the week leading up to finding out I was pregnant, the father was constantly asking me if I had gotten my period. I was already freaking out wondering, ‘What if I was pregnant?’. When I did find out, I was terrified. My life had changed forever. It was scary. I could have an abortion if I wanted to. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but it was there.”
Am I truly pro-life?
Raised in a Catholic family, Gemma had always been pro-life. When she found out she was pregnant, she asked herself if she was truly pro-life or not. “It was an interesting thing to figure out,” she said, “because in lots of ways I was raised that this is just how it is. It isn’t until you face a crisis that you’re like, ‘Oh, do I actually believe what I have said I believe for the past 17 years?'” But Gemma knew that an abortion would be killing her baby and she knew it wasn’t a solution.
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Gemma was, however, scared to tell her parents and worried that they would be angry with her for becoming pregnant at 17. To her surprise, and despite the initial disappointment they felt, her parents rallied around Gemma and gave her their support.
Parenting or adoption
Gemma had chosen life for her baby, but she also didn’t want to put her baby through a custody battle. Her doctor, who is pro-life, mentioned adoption. After much consideration, Gemma decided adoption would likely be the best option. It would allow her to continue pursuing her dream of becoming a pilot, she wouldn’t have to worry about co-parenting with or possibly marrying her ex-boyfriend, and her baby would live in a home with two parents, which Gemma knew to be important.
“For months I went back and forth and I decided to place her for adoption,” said Gemma. “I still vividly remember the phone call when I literally told the people I had chosen to be her parents — that moment broke me. Even through the fear, there was this part of me that was like, ‘I created this life, but I wouldn’t get to be a part of it or a part of her memories.'”
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It was shortly after she decided on adoption that the tragic news came. Her baby’s father, who had a history of mental health concerns, had taken his own life. It brought on a whole new level of confusion, she said, along with feelings of guilt and shame. Through all of the emotions she was feeling, she knew one thing — “I couldn’t give up my baby.” She was five months pregnant at the time.
Gemma called the couple she had chosen to raise her baby and told them she had changed her mind. Gemma explained, “They were so kind and so loving and they told me, ‘Okay. You’ve got this!'”
Welcoming Josephine
With four months to go before her baby girl’s arrival, Gemma moved back home to prepare. At 37 weeks pregnant, she accomplished her goal of earning her pilot’s license — studying six hours a day for two weeks and seeking out scholarships and assistance getting to and from her lessons. She gave birth to her daughter, Josephine, who turned two this July, and has been working hard to build a life for herself and her daughter.
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Gemma is now working full-time as a legal secretary at a law firm and is living near her parents and her five younger siblings in her home state. She is also teaching cello and is currently focused on finding a new home for herself and Josephine. She has support from her parents and her ex-boyfriend’s “adoptive mother” — his third grade teacher who had taken him in and raised him.
“I’m a dreamer I think and since I was young I’ve had an insane imagination and things I wanted to do,” she said. “I wanted to be an astronaut on Mars up until a few years ago. I had to realize it will look different, but I need to take baby steps to try and pursue my dreams.”
Babies and dreams
Gemma is a strong believer that women and girls can have both their babies and their dreams. She wants other young pregnant girls to know that pregnancy “is the scariest part [of motherhood] because it’s all unknown.”
“It’s okay to cry and it’s okay to be scared, but don’t let that fear scare you into making a decision [abortion] that you would probably regret for the rest of your life,” she said.
“Life begins at conception and life is worth protecting and it’s never okay to eliminate someone based on potential suffering — that was a huge one for me,” she explained. “If I had gone down this road of fear — she will not have a father, I’m going to have to tell her that her father committed suicide, I’m going to have to explain to the man I hopefully marry about all of this — that didn’t give me the right to kill my baby. That was not a justification. … The second I held my daughter in my arms — I don’t even know how you describe the feeling. This is the most incredible thing that has ever happened to me. Even today there are times people will ask me, ‘Do you wish you could go back and change it?’ It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and most days are not easy, but there’s no way in the world that I would ever change having my daughter — which is a feeling I didn’t expect during my pregnancy.”
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She added, “One thing I would say [to a pregnant teen] is it’s okay to grieve the loss of what you thought you were going to have [in your future]. Dreams change. I think for me, I was terrified because I have all these things I wanted to be and I realized most of those might not happen. But through grieving what I lost, I found a way to create new dreams. I’m doing things I never thought I would do because I was okay with letting things go.”
Gemma wants her story to be one of hope, but she also doesn’t want to sugarcoat teen parenting.
“My line has always been, ‘God can write straight with crooked lines,'” she explained. “With patience and surrender and with hard work, my lines are being written straight.”
