Growing up I always knew the one thing, above all else, I would want to be a mother. I had the characteristics that made it almost impossible to deny--empathy, compassion, and an inexplicable need to protect those who couldn't protect themselves. I once dreamed of the children I would have--down the number of my brood, their names and what they would look like. Seeing a baby never fails to make me smile. I can be on a date and see a baby and become completely enraptured with the strange infant instead of the hot guy buying me food. I am as close to what anyone would consider to be a woman who will grow up to be a mother to as many children as I could bear. Only, there is a few things stopping me.

I have so many health problems--Rheumatoid Arthritis, Asthma, Anxiety, Depression, and so many other health issues that I'm at a predisposition for. When I realized that having my dream family--all the scenarios of finding out I'm pregnant, telling my future spouse we will be parents--all of it suddenly became irrelevant. With the realization of my own health and the problems a pregnancy could cause it, I knew that I wouldn't want to go through with a pregnancy. At first it was so heart-breaking I almost couldn't breathe. I couldn't look at a baby without wanting to cry, reach out for it and tell them how much I wanted to have one just as beautiful, happy and healthy as them one day. I would have moved mountains and parted the seas to have a family.

But, I have options. At least, I did. Almost in a silent move to further complicate women's health and reproductive rights, Texas--the one place I was born, raised and the only place I know as home passed a law that has made it nearly impossible for me to adopt. According to the breaking news article from Human Rights Campaign's website: "HB 3859 enshrines discrimination into Texas law by allowing discrimination in two directions: against prospective parents, and against children in their care. State contractors who provide child welfare services can discriminate against qualified same-sex couples seeking to care for a child in need -- including LGBTQ couples, interfaith couples, single parents, married couples in which one prospective parent has previously been divorced, or other parents to whom the agency has a religious objection."

This is an insult to an already touchy subject amongst many Texans. Texas refuses to better educate our youth on Sexual Education. Our state is notoriously known for our failing abstinence-only sex-education and how our teen-pregnancy rates are the highest in the country. Ask anyone who has attended one of these sexual education classes--myself included. We are not educated about sex, or how to protect ourselves our our options. We are taught basic anatomy of the reproductive organs, the reproductive systems and the in's-and-out's of pregnancy. We are taught that there is oral, anal, and vaginal sex. We are taught the only way to prevent pregnancy and STD's are to abstain from sex until marriage.

This isn't helping--and the fact that Texas is a Red State which has been passing anti-abortion laws since 2013 is making this educational system much more concerning. If we refuse to teach our kids how to protect themselves, they will go out and endanger themselves instead. If we restrict access to contreception and a safe-place for people to seek the proper care they need to maintain their reproductive health, we will only be allowing more young girls and women to fall pregnant with no other choice but to carry to term, even if it is a risk to their lives and their financial stability.

So when people badger women who go to free-clinics to seek birth control and are instead harassed for getting an abortion they are trying to prevent ever having--imagine their fear when they can't access their birth control? Imagine the fear when they realize there is no safe way to have an abortion? The only option is to go through with the pregnancy against their own wishes and hope for someone to love them as much as they wish they could.

Except, the number of people who would--the same sex couple wishing for a baby, or the inter-faith couple who can't conceive, or the strong, independent woman who doesn't want to wait for the right person to come along and give her the family she knows and wants--they are no longer able to give that baby you forced out into life a life you believe they deserve.

I can't give a baby a place in my heart right now. And as long as I live in Texas, I never will be. Why?

I will more than likely enter an inter-faith relationship. I am also a part of the LGBT community. And if my life has taught me anything, a majority of religious groups don't really like my views on our shared religion--so I'd be denied before having a chance to prove to them that gender, faith, martial status or lifestyle does NOT determine how fit you are to be a parent--your capability to love, sacrifice, and do all the things I would do to have a child of my own--that is want makes a parent.

So, as long as I remain in Texas--I will never be able to have my dream. As for the many others of families waiting, and hoping to complete the family they've been dreaming of--their dreams, too, have been shattered.