At 15 years old, Ryn, whose full name we’re not using due to privacy concerns, discovered she was pregnant.
She’d had unprotected sex with her 22-year-old boyfriend, who had told her he was sterile because of a childhood injury.
“I remember I came out to the porch to smoke a cigarette,” Ryn said. “It was the first snow of the season. I’m watching the snowflakes come down and I look down at the tests and it’s positive. And I’m like, ‘No, that’s wrong.’”
Coerced into marriage
That moment shifted the trajectory of Ryn’s life. Her parents threw her out of the house and she dropped out of high school. She moved in with her boyfriend’s family, who pushed her to get married — to avoid her boyfriend being prosecuted for statutory rape…