'I wish women chose not to have abortions - but I can understand why they do'

Evie Lastra West was pro-abortion when she found herself pregnant at 19 with her second child. But a visit to a crisis pregnancy centre altered everything. Words: Kelly Rissman

- Kelly Rissman

Twelve years old is a hard age for anyone – but it was particularly tough for Evie Lastra West, who struggled to “fit in” at her new southern California school in 1990.

She hadn’t thought much about her Mexican-American identity at her old private school, but now her fair skin and light hair made her stick out like a sore thumb among her classmates. “I didn’t look like them. I didn’t act like them. I didn’t talk like them. I didn’t dress like them. Nothing about me was like them,” she told The Independent. Evie started getting bullied, which led to her involvement in a gang for her own “survival”. It wasn’t long before she began dabbling in crime, drugs, alcohol and sex. Then, at age 16, she learned she was pregnant.

With a great family support system, she didn’t have to hide the news. She knew she could rely on her parents to provide anything she needed: nappies, formula, clothes, money. “I think my mentality was just so immature that I didn’t consider all the factors that came with being a mom,” Evie said. In February 1994, her son was born. After a week back home with him, she was already tired of being a mother, with no interest in caring for or bonding with her new baby. “I’m bored out of my mind,” she thought at the time. “I don’t want to be here.”

All she wanted was to get a babysitter so she could go back to school and hang out with her friends. But life didn’t go as she’d hoped. Her son’s father went to prison on drug-related charges, and she began dating another gang member. She stopped coming home on weekends. “I was literally spiralling out of control,” she said.

By 1996, her mother had had enough. She sent Evie and her son to Cleveland, Tennessee, to attend her alma mater Lee College, a private Christian university. It was a desperate bid to remove her daughter from “temptations”. After getting on a plane – without saying goodbye to her parents – Evie found herself in an empty apartment 2,000 miles from home.