I came away from her piece realizing that the short five-year difference in our ages (I'm older) makes for a split in our recollections. When I was in high school, I knew dimly that some girls who got pregnant did get abortions -- just how I had no idea, and the operation was a secret, a shameful thing. The girl had "let" some guy get her pregnant.
In college at UC Berkeley from 1965-69, we "knew" that abortion was possible, if difficult and maybe dangerous. I remember taking up collections to send friends to Tijuana for the procedure. They came back alive; I never knew if they were scarred physically or in their psyches. For myself I got lucky. My experiments with heterosexuality were unprotected but without lasting consequence.
When I lived in New York in the early '70s, abortion was still illegal in most of the country, but the Empire State had legalized it with a pro forma, overnight residency requirement. I remember hosting more than one friend for a three day stay. We didn't talk about it much, that I remember.
And then Roe v. Wade made abortion mostly legal in 1973 and, for those outside of that emergency, a non-issue. Abortion never truly became a moot question, of course, for young women and poor women and women blocked from access by other people's violent scruples. And now it looks as if this sad cycle may be played out again.
Many women won't stop getting abortions. The drive to save their own potential lives will continue to outweigh whatever drive they have to birth a child. But women will suffer more in the process.
EP invites other women to tell their abortion stories by telling hers. It's a worthwhile call.
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