At the age of 10, I lived in Madrid. The first thing I remember about the event was watching my mother carry a basin-full of blood out of our housekeeper’s room. There was so much blood, and it scared me. The Spanish doctor came, and I heard he and my mother shouting at each other. He was screaming that Angelita (our housekeeper) was just a stupid peasant girl who got what she deserved. Then he stomped out of our apartment, slamming the door. An hour later, a tall African American was at the door. He was a doctor from the US airbase. He went into Angelita’s room and spent hours with her.
What I came to understand later was that my housekeeper had become pregnant. Her fiance was still doing military service and wasn’t allowed to marry, and so, because abortion was illegal in Spain at the time, she had gone to a backstreet abortionist who had almost killed her. When she made it home, she was hemorrhaging badly. My mother called our Spanish doctor who refused to treat her. Finally, she called an American she had only ever met once, and that brave doctor came up from the base, risked his career and probably jail-time, and saved her life. He did it in response to a call from a virtual stranger.
14 years later, despite practicing birth control fanatically (you can imagine, considering my childhood experience), I became pregnant. Despite the fact that I was with a man I loved, I decided – in consultation with him – that neither of us were ready to commit to a life together or to have a family. I went for an abortion. My lover came with me. Sat with me. Held my hand. Asked me, just before I went in whether this was truly what I wanted.
The doctor was an older, spry, witty woman. She was businesslike but very kind. When she had finished the D&C, I asked to see the fetus. She was surprised, but agreed. A lovely, brawny nurse helped me down from the chair and I hobbled, still cramping, over to the counter to look at the small collection of cells in the jar. For me, it was important to acknowledge exactly what I had done. I didn’t want to allow myself the opportunity to ignore the consequences of my actions. Although I have always been pro-choice, I have never entered into the debate about when life starts. To me, this is a non-issue. In that jar, life of some sort had clearly started. This did not cause me to regret my decision, or second-guess my motives for the abortion. It simply made me cognizant that I had done a serious thing and it was important that I take cognitive and moral responsibility for it.
25 years later, I am married to the man who held my hand in that waiting room. We have never had children, because neither of us have ever felt the call to have them. He has no desire to be a father, I have never had a desire to be a mother and, in addition, I carry a strong genetic marker for something quite nasty which I do not want to be responsible for passing on.
I still don’t regret having the abortion, but acknowledging the graveness of the act has caused me to be far more vigilant and informed about the birth control I practiced.
My challenge to anyone who is morally offended by abortion is: show me you really care about ALL the lives involved by being a strong and vocal champion of sex education, social support and easy access to safe and reliable birth control. By far the best and most civilized way to reduce abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.
Until Christian conservatives in the US put their considerable energy into preventing unwanted pregnancies, instead of abusing the people who choose to have abortions or the people who facilitate them, I will doubt their REAL sincerity that they are ‘all about life’.
Until then, to me, they will simply be ‘all about dogma’.
To this day, I still clearly remember being that 10 year old little girl, watching some privileged bastard dismiss Angelita’s life as worthless. I remember my mother’s outrage and fear. I remember Angelita’s scared, pale, sweating face, as she lay on a bed surrounded by bloody towels. I knew then WHO anti-abortionists were protecting. And it wasn’t me, or my mother, or Angelita. To them, we were all disposable.
This was written in response to ‘The Day I Went for An Abortion‘ post, over at the Good Men Project
Thank you for sharing such an intimate life experience in such an eloquent way. I’ll be sharing this with as many people as I can.
Really amazing. Thanks for sharing and I’ll be sharing it too!
Thank you!
I am ferociously pro-choice and pathetically inarticulate about it. It’s all well and good to score a point (fun fun) in an argument but far more important to sway someone to consider another point-of-view. I normally find myself foaming at the mouth and uttering obscenities. Not so useful in the swaying department.
I think I will commit the last few paragraphs to memory and use them when I’m engaging someone about this topic – something we all seem to be doing more frequently. I love your challenge/call to action to those opposed to abortion. So much less in-your-face aggressive then I am and SO much more effective.
Oh, believe me, most of the time I’m not this rational.
Thank you for sharing RG. I have always been pro-choice and I’ve no idea why. I remember a devout Christian asking me at school once my thoughts on abortion. I told her that I was pro-choice because if it ever came down to it I would want the choice. She called me a murderer. I remember replying that she was free to think that but until she was brutally raped only to find herself pregnant to her rapist I would consider her opinion ignorant and uninformed. I was ostracised for the comment.
I think it was only a month later that I found a girl from my home room crying at the train station. When I asked her what was wrong she told me she had just had her third abortion. She was only 14yo and as a 16yo I was floored. She explained her story and I put three people at fault.
The first was her mother who taught her that to be in a relationship with a man was to have sex with him and then failed to take her daughter to the doctors for contraception despite knowing she was to young to procure it herself.
The second was her boyfriend who refused to wear condoms. The third was herself, for not caring enough about herself to say no to her boyfriend when he refused to care what his actions would do to her.
It resulted in a big talk about relationships, sex, and taking care of herself. I basically told her that if her boyfriend loved her he would take care of her. That he was so selfish after the first abortion to still refuse to wear condoms was a clear indication he didn’t care for her. That she needed to care for her own well being and ensure that if she was going to have sex she had taken all the steps to protect herself, not only from another unwanted pregnancy but also from STI’s.
A few days later she came up to me at school, gave me a huge hug and thanked me for missing my train home to be there for her. I don’t know what happened to the boyfriend, I don’t really care. All I cared about that day was that I was 16 giving a 14 year old a talk that her mother should have done from the start. That I was a high school student explaining to a fellow student what our teachers, doctors, parents, community elders should have been explaining to all of us.
Ok that turned into a bit of a rant. Sorry RG. But thank you again for sharing your personal story and opinion. You got it right yet again. 🙂
RG,
Education and compassion, I like it…
~TFP
“…..show me you really care about ALL the lives involved by being a strong and vocal champion of sex education, social support and easy access to safe and reliable birth control. By far the best and most civilized way to reduce abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.”
This says it all. I don’t understand why people don’t get it. I’m pro-choice for the simple fact people don’t have a right to make that decision for me as I don’t have the right to make it for them, but the answer for non-rape abortions is education and support.
Thank you for sharing RG. Thank you.
Just thought I’d share a website I stumbled upon today RG.
http://www.whatcontraceptiveareyou.com.au/
It asks you to fill in a survey about your life and preferences and then gives you a list of what contraceptive best suits your lifestyle. It also provides a printable letter to take to your doctor with all the information for them to discuss which option would be best for you.
Great link. Thanks for posting it.
I really wish I needed it. I don’t and not because I am past childbearing age either (damn it).
Two years ago, while still nursing my 2nd child, I became pregnant.
As a mother of two I knew that I loved children – and didn’t want anymore. Yes, we could afford a 3rd child and we were experienced enough to know we could handle #3. But I was over forty and simply did not want to have another child. Period.
I’d always wanted two kids, a boy and a girl, and I had that. Our family was complete. Having another child would have forced me to stop breast-feeding #2 sooner than I would have liked. It would have precluded all of the amazing travel and experiences that we’ve had with two kids who don’t have a younger sibling (s/he would just be turning two by now). It would have changed our family dynamics and added challenges that we didn’t want.
MY body. MY choice.
My husband felt the same way. He went with me to the Planned Parenthood Clinic and waited in the reception area. The nurse showed me the sonogram. Having seen the same images for my children, I knew there was life there, potential for another human being. And that new human didn’t have a place in our family.
I have never regretted my decision. I look at my children and know I made the right choice for my family and myself. And I trust the hearts and minds of the millions of women who have made the same choice millions of times before me, even in the decades and centuries before abortion was safe and legal.
OUR bodies. OUR choices. Period