I wasn’t prepared for what Catherine was about to tell me.
“I’m going to try to get pregnant next week,” she blurted out without any context.
Catherine just turned 19 years old. She still lives at home with a controlling mother. Her father killed himself when she was young. She doesn’t yet know how to drive and has to beg for rides to and from a menial job. She’s never had any romantic relationships, but she’s recently started slipping away from home to meet men for sex.
Just last week, she told me about how one such man — who she met online — picked her up and took her to a camper about an hour away from her. (She told her mother she was at a friend’s house.) They had sex for a couple of days, then he abruptly brought her back home — and then he disappeared from her life.
Now, she’s met another man online and she plans to meet him Sunday night. She’s never seen him in real life, but she’s planning to make sure he gets her pregnant. And she looked shocked when I told her that this plan was stupid and selfish.

What kind of person are you if there’s not a word to define you?
Love & Hope — Episode 4:
We can’t have real freedom without also allowing discrimination
Peshawar murders show need to support those who share our values
Joe Rogan isn’t insightful to me, so I just don’t listen to his show
In praise of the weirdos who most people don’t really seem to like
We often don’t see who loves us until it’s too late to be an option
Police or storm troopers: What’s become of U.S. law enforcement?
We rarely have wisdom we need ’til it’s too late to avoid mistakes