“When I got back to my apartment, there was a note on my bed, in the middle of all the blood, from my boyfriend—saying he had stopped in to see how I was doing. “
“I was strong. I was a strong and independent woman. Then I got married, and I thought: I’ll just be married and be a strong and independent woman. Then I got pregnant, and Henry came, and I was nothing but a strong and independent woman.”
I think if my mother were here, she would want Roe to remain in place so that no other young woman came close to the potential peril she avoided with the aid of another compassionate woman.
Last May, the author of “We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on the Quest for a New America” told the devastating story of her grandmother’s death from a self-induced abortion in The New Yorker. Decades after her death, the story remains as relevant as ever.
I was admonished to never speak about having given birth as an unwed teenager. I was supposed to pretend like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I was supposed to pick up my life before it had been interrupted.
“When my name was called, I was interviewed by the doctor who asked for the agreed-upon money and then demanded $200 more—or he would turn me away. I had about $75 more for food and cabs, and I gave it all to him. He called me a whore.”
“Most schools have no students in tenth grade, because the women rarely gave birth that year. Even for five, ten years after the revolution, people didn’t want to have a baby, because they didn’t know what would become of their lives.”
