After waking up at 5:45 a.m. on Nov. 6 and checking my phone, the way I view my relationship with sex shifted completely.

When I went to bed on the 5th, I still had hope for the right to make choices about my own body. When I woke up only a few hours later to a Republican president and Congress, on top of our already conservative Supreme Court, I knew I couldn’t treat sex the same way I had before.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 calls to eliminate medical abortion, deny access to abortion in emergency situations and limit access to birth control, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

While it is currently unclear how much Trump will push to enact from Project 2025, he has a strong history of following policy plans from this conservative organization, and may continue this despite his claims otherwise, according to a Nov. 8 USA Today article.

I’ve always been the kind of girl with a baby names list in my Notes app and a box full of my old baby clothes saved for the future. I never want to be put in the situation where I would need an abortion.

But I’m only 21 years old. I haven’t graduated college yet, had a real job or gone to grad school. I haven’t even found a man who treats me well enough to where I would consider getting to that point in a relationship.

It’s always been a comfort knowing that I would have access to abortion if I ever needed one. The idea that I could have my whole life thrown away because of one simple mistake, even if I did everything right, has become a crippling fear.

Additionally, I’ve been on birth control since I was 15. I had always struggled with extreme period pain, to the point where I would miss days of school because I couldn’t get off the floor.

If my access to birth control was stolen from me, my future career would be on the line. As a teacher, I could be fired for missing a day of school every single month. Birth control is the only thing allowing me to be a functioning member of society.

I know that I have a much better chance of being safe in Vermont, or at home in New York, than most other young women do across the country. I will not deny this privilege, yet I am still afraid.

This fear has caused me to question the entirety of my dating life.

I’m terrified that I’ll meet a man I like and will then find out he’s anti-choice. I’m terrified that I will meet someone who is proudly pro-choice and become pregnant, but my bodily autonomy and life are at risk due to the decisions of our government.

I’m terrified I’ll meet a woman I like and will be too scared to be with her because of the potential for LGBTQ+ rights to be rolled back.

Since Trump has been elected, the “4B” movement has gained recent media attention in America. This movement essentially swears off all relationships with men—dating, marriage, childbirth, etc., according to a Nov. 9 CNN article.

While this is intriguing to me, I have always been the girl who walks a fine line between being a hopeless romantic and a raging feminist man-hater. I might hate misogynistic assholes, but I still have hope of finding my Mr. Right—or rather Mr. Left.

For now, I don’t really know where I stand in my sex life. I am stuck between continuing to try to meet people because I do not want to live my life in fear, and wanting to be essentially celibate due to being afraid that I will be stripped of my rights.

Being a 20-something woman is already exhausting, I don’t need the added stress of not being able to make decisions about my own body.