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• She said she had a rare but benign brain tumor, and surgery had failed to remove all of it. There is evidence that hormonal changes in pregnancy can fuel growth of these tumors.
• Now married, she said she probably would have continued the pregnancy if it hadn't put her life in danger. She was raised in a religious family and worries how her parents will react if they find out about the abortion.
• She said she and her fiancé used condoms and she was on the pill when she discovered she was pregnant. Her first reaction after taking a home pregnancy test was, "This has to be wrong!" She took a second test and got the same results.
• Two weeks later, when she was about five weeks along, she used $550 in savings for a surgical abortion at Rockford's only abortion clinic. It later closed.
• So early in pregnancy, she could have used the abortion pill instead of having a medical procedure. But that would have required a return visit to the clinic, something she said she wanted to avoid.
• Abortion protesters were picketing outside when the young couple arrived in the parking lot that morning. One protester was particularly persistent.
• "She was just blatantly yelling at my fiancé and I. I turned around and said, 'Listen, lady, you don't know what everyone is going through.' She was just saying that I was already a mom and I have all these options -- the opposite of what my doctor was telling me.
• "I looked at her and told her, 'I'm doing this to save my life.'"
• ___
• An unplanned pregnancy during an affair with a married man is what led a 36-year-old Minneapolis area teacher to have an abortion, on Aug. 3.
• They had been using spermicide for birth control, a method described as about 75 percent effective with typical use.
• A missed period and pregnancy test confirmed her fears.
• "I cried for like 36 hours," she said. Estranged from her husband, and with a young daughter, she said continuing the pregnancy was unthinkable.
• Though she and the man she was having a relationship with were raised Catholic, she considers herself "pro-choice -- I just never thought I'd have to make that choice myself."
• Minnesota requires a 24-hour waiting period, so she called an area clinic to schedule the abortion, spoke to a doctor and went in for the procedure the next day.
• She had friends and her partner had relatives who had protested at the same clinic. But on this day she didn't recognize any of the activists there.
• The protesters tried to hand her pamphlets as she drove into the parking lot, but

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