Confession Time
In my radical youth there were so many causes to be involved in from abortion to civil rights to the draft to the ERA to freedom of speech to Vietnam to the President's right to declare war. And it seemed at times so few of us fighting because we had college and new careers and marriages and babies. You could at the time avoid the draft if you were in college, then in college and married, and then in college, married, and a parent. Many a coed sacrificed herself.
And then none of that worked. Vietnam just sucked all the young men away to become cannon fodder. Birth control at the time was condoms. All else was illegal unless you were married. And one of the biggest black market drugs around was birth control pills. And if a married college friend found herself pregnant to save her husband she gave you her script. They came without instructions. And so almost as many young women got pregnant on them as those not taking them.
And abortion was illegal.
Mind you that did not prevent you seeking one out. My college had a medical school. My roommate was premed. And she shared there was no reason to use a coat hanger. You could force a miscarriage by taking double the birth control pills for ten days and then stopping. And for the next three days doing everything active you could. Participation in gymnastics soared.
Then you either wound up in the emergency ward because of excessive bleeding or had your doctor check you in for a D&C or you wound up in the morgue. This was billed safer than the classic knitting needle which was more upper class than the coat hanger. And cleaner than Juarez, Mexico, though some went there for the D&C. You had to have a fake ID so you didn't require parental permission. And you, under no conditions, wanted to go the college infirmary. A weekend away was desired so you had to have permission (most likely forged) to spend the weekend off campus. And you had to have a friend to go with you in case you passed out on the hotel bathroom floor. A friend who knew to take you to that emergency room.
I went to Boulder, Colorado with my college roommate. I will forever remember that hotel room. And later I would be the companion for other friends. It wasn't that we wanted an abortion. It was that we did not want to be pregnant. There was so much to do (see paragraph one) and being pregnant would prevent ALL of that. And especially graduating from college. We were going to college to get degrees; not a prelaw husband.
Bottom line is laws don't stop abortions. They kill women who don't want to be pregnant just then. When a years later I shared with my mother what I had done she shared losing her best friend because of an illegal abortion. And she made me promise to make safe and legal abortion a priority in my causes. It went with the Equal Rights Amendment.
And it strikes me as Trump and the GOP get to remake the Supreme Court that women still do not have equal rights. And they want to take away the right to control our bodies. Make our own choices. And the young women today have never known the horrors we lived through. And they don't have all our "folkways" experience shared in the dorms.
Yes, it is easier to be pregnant and unmarried these days but Trump is also cutting of insurance for pre-existing conditions (pregnancy), and birth control to prevent that, and access to affordable women's clinics.
Are you ready for the blood bath?
I feel your despair. Powerful writing. Shared. In my time a girlfriend got pregnant because she was raped by a taxi driver. She had taken the taxi because she had taken a late train and did not want to hitchhike or walk in the dark. The taxi driver claimed she had “asked for it” because she sat next to him in the passenger seat instead of in the back. He had opened that door for her so she got in. She was from a working class background and not used to taking cabs. The judge sided with the driver. It was 1964. The rapist was a married man with three children. We tried finding out about going to Sweden where abortion was legal but it was not that simple. She ended up going into a private home for unmarried mothers, planning on adoption, ended up keeping the baby, a girl.
ReplyDeleteAaah, the homes for unwed mothers. There was one in an old house right on the old town square in Albuquerque. Tourists walked by it all the time. And generally the child was taken from her at birth. Best to never see it. That would be difficult they said. What isn't difficult for women. Now in the US there are laws in some of the states which give the rapist rights to prevent you from aborting their child. And the animals even have been granted parental rights. Imagine having to see your rapist every other weekend when he visits the child he forced you to bear?
DeleteI tried to reply to you last night on my tablet which was not even recognizing me as me. That seemed the ultimate indignity. I thing sometimes that is what the GOP wants to do; just erase us all except as we function as blow up dolls.
ReplyDeleteThis home was not an institution, thank goodness. It was a regular private home with just a few young women at a time. Still. My friend’s life was forever altered. She had been working as an au pair in France, had a French boyfriend, really liked it there, planned to go back. She ended up married in the Netherlands because the sister she had moved in with answered an ad that the parents of a young man had placed without him knowing it! She had another daughter with the husband, many years later one more. We lost touch, my Mom told me about the third child. I have often wondered what she would tell the firstborn about who sired her. And if the daughter would want to meet her half siblings on father’s side.
ReplyDelete