Things went very fast between Raphaëlle and Simon. A week after hooking up on a dating app, they went out for a drink. A few days later, they were together and, five months later, moved into the same apartment in Bordeaux. But 10 months into their relationship, when a little "+" showed up on a pregnancy test, it was still a little too fast for them.

What do you do when an unexpected pregnancy upsets a couple in the early stages of their relationship? Abortion, legal in France since 1975, can be a formative experience for a couple, leaving after-effects or giving rise to eternal questions about what life could have been like in this alternative scenario.

On that evening in December 2018, abortion seemed the obvious decision for Raphaëlle, 27, who works in communication, and Simon, 29, a director of photography. But the timing for a surgical abortion, the only one possible in her case, was four weeks. Time enough for the first signs of pregnancy to appear and for doubt to set in. "One day, we were 70% to keep him, the next day 70% to abort," Simon recounted. "One evening, he came home a little tipsy from a night out at the office, telling me, 'Come on, let's keep him,'" Raphaëlle recalled. Eventually, she put an end to the pregnancy. But those few weeks were decisive. "This event forced us to have very engaging conversations after only a few months of being together," said Simon. "It sealed a kind of pact between us: Within two or three years, we're going to have children."

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