I am a psychiatrist and I wrote Exploring Your Unplanned Pregnancy because I wanted women to benefit from what my patients, over the years, have taught me about unplanned pregnancy. They trusted me with their insights. They confided in me the questions they were asking themselves and their concerns about the effect their decision would have on their life and others. Their questions and the consequences they experienced have shaped this book. Besides women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy, I have worked with their parents, single mothers, women who have had abortions, birth-mothers, adoptive parents, people who have been adopted, people who have wished they had never been born, and people who were glad they were born. I suspect that they would stress the need for you to think carefully about your unplanned pregnancy to make your own best decision.

Davidson College taught me the importance of critical thinking. My experiences as a medical student at the Medical College of Georgia and as a psychiatric resident at Sheppard Pratt Hospital gave me faith in the resilience of the human spirit and a belief that courage can expand our lives even in the face of adversity.
As a psychiatrist writing Exploring Your Unplanned Pregnancy I found that so many people deeply care about women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy. Gynecologists, psychiatrists, counselors, nurses, editors, and psychologists showed they care about you by carefully reading my manuscript and making thoughtful suggestions.
Books have helped me at turning points in my life. I hope this book will help you. When I think of books that have changed my life, I think of Anne Frank’s diary, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s letters from prison, and Robert Frost’s collected poems.
James Baldwin, Lillian Smith, Paul Tillich, Ezra Bayda, Dawna Markova, Geneen Roth, Pema Chodron, Elizabeth Matthis-Namgyel, and Aura Glaser are authors whose thoughts resonated with me at pivotal times in my life. That their thoughts resonated was more important to me than who they were or what kind of credentials they had.