Dear Pastor

This is the second time I am writing to you. I hope you will answer me. I am 23 and pregnant.

everything is going wrong. I was not in a relationship with the guy who got me pregnant. I had sex with him because I needed financial help. so I was talking to him about it. He offered to give me $6,000 if I had sex with him. I told him I had never had sex for money. he said I should look at it as a gift.

He went away and came back with a condom. I saw when he put it on, but the condom broke while we were having sex. I am three months pregnant. I said I will not keep this baby, but he refused to give me money to kill the pregnancy.

This would be his first child. I am hoping to leave Jamaica soon. I don't want to have a child. I haven't told my family I am pregnant but my stomach is showing. I don't know what to do. I don't even like to see the man who got me pregnant. I asked him if he had put a hole in the condom. he said no, and the condom was not old. I didn't feel when it broke.

What should I to do? Please, answer me quickly.

K. L.

Dear K.L.

I can only encourage you to carry the pregnancy. Inform your folk that you are pregnant. You don't have to tell them about the circumstances in which you became pregnant. They would cry shame on you. They wouldn't have expected you to sell sex. You didn't like the guy but felt it was safe if you had used a condom. I am sure that you have heard that no contraceptive method is 100 per cent safe. in this case, that has proven to be true. Ask the man if his folk would be willing to take the child, and relieve you of the responsibility of training that child. I doubt he would want you to give up the child for adoption, but this is a matter both of you have to discuss.

Please do not abort the pregnancy. Perhaps by the time the child is born you will decide to keep him or her. This might be your only child. So, although the circumstances under which you became pregnant is not something you are proud of, you never know what could happen in the future.

Pastor