Like many around the country, I’m horrified by the reality that the Supreme Court is likely to overturn Roe V Wade. I remember marching, during the late 60’s and early 70’s on the east coast, to allow women the “right to choose”. I was so proud to be a feminist and was eager to support women’s rights across the board. I remember wearing my favorite tee shirt, at the time, which read “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle”. It was an empowering and exciting time. I believed things were finally changing for women and I wanted very much to be a part of it.
The leaked SCOTUS draft was a shock, even though there’s been much discussion about this possibility, since the loaded conservative majority on the court came to power. I think for me, it was just too unimaginable and too painful to even consider the end of Roe V Wade, so I refused to worry about it so far in advance of the anticipated summer decision.
I believe in the fundamental right for everyone to make all necessary decisions about their own bodies. I’ve always seen the Republican party as highly valuing personal freedoms but when it comes to a woman’s right to choose however, they seem to feel that it’s best for the government to make those decisions for us. I call BULLSHIT. If any woman is “pro-life”, that’s her absolute right. If another woman is pro-choice however, that too must be HER decision to make.
I had my daughter when I was 25 years old, 5 years after my marriage to my highschool sweetheart. Although the pregnancy wasn’t planned, we moved forward with the pregnancy nonetheless. When our daughter was 1 year old, we were both accepted into a Ph.D. program in California, which was 3000 miles away from our families. Graduate school with a toddler was not easy, but we managed somehow to get through it. We decided to return to New Jersey once we graduated, where both of our families were still living, as we wanted our only child to grow up with family. It was a few months later that I experienced a birth control failure. I had been using a diaphragm after our daughter’s birth, but apparently it had failed to prevent a pregnancy. I was a few months into my first job as a psychologist, and my first reaction was that we would add another child to our family. My husband, however, didn’t agree. Back in the 1970’s, it was still a time when mother’s did the lion share of child rearing. My liberal and feminist husband agreed to equally share the child rearing responsibilities with me however. Although nothing can ever be entirely equal, he did a good job of sharing the day to day responsibilities for our daughter. When we got the news that I was in fact pregnant again, he came to a different conclusion. Although he believed it was ultimately my decision to make, he clearly stated that if I proceeded with the pregnancy, he would not be willing to equally share in the day to day responsibilities that another child would require. He believed that since we were both starting out with new, full-time jobs, the demands of our jobs and the desire to be as present for our 5 year old daughter as possible, adding another child would place too much of a burden on our lives at that point in time.
I have to say I was really caught off guard by my emotions. Despite being pro-choice for my entire adult life, I wasn’t comfortable considering terminating the pregnancy. Those were pretty challenging days and weeks as we tried to firm up a decision. I finally made a decision which I hoped I’d be able to live with. In my heart I knew that if I had to be fully responsible for this child, I would end up feeling resentment toward my husband. Despite the reality that he clearly stated this up front, I knew that life with a newborn would be exhausting. How would I feel each time he or she woke up during the night and I had to drag myself up to nurse her. With our first child, although I was breastfeeding, we took turns getting up. Our daughter woke up every 2 hours for over a year so I knew only too well the hardship of not sleeping through the night. When it was my husband’s turn, he would get up and bring the baby to me in bed to nurse and then he’d take her back to her crib. Although my sleep was disrupted, I was always able to fall back to sleep effortlessly, typically in an exhausted stupor, once she finished nursing. To imagine my emotional state, having to get up each time the baby cried, was a very scary thought. I knew myself well enough to know that I’d end up feeling very resentful and angry if all the responsibility fell on me. I guess you can say the bottom line was, if I proceeded with the pregnancy, it was likely to be the end of my marriage. I did a lot of talking to myself about my pro-choice feelings and values and kept holding onto the long standing belief that terminating a pregnancy was not an evil thing to do. Knowing that the pregnancy hadn’t occurred due to us being irresponsible, made it a touch easier to accept. We had used birth control, essentially doing everything in our power to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.
I scheduled the abortion with my gynecologist as soon as possible, knowing that waiting would be too painful to endure. The night before the procedure, we had tickets for a Simon & Garfunkel performance. It was such a nostalgic evening, as we sang along to the familiar tunes along with a crowd of tens of thousands of people. I remember looking over at my husband and saying, let’s cancel the abortion tomorrow. Unfortunately, he didn’t share my last minute feelings so we proceeded to the doctor’s office for my 10:00am appointment. Needless to say, I hardly slept all night and was quite anxious but as it turned out, the doctor had an emergency and they needed to reschedule my appointment to later in the afternoon. My first reaction was that this was a sign that I wasn’t supposed to terminate the pregnancy. My husband calmed me down with logic and reason while holding firm to his decision, so we returned that afternoon and I had the abortion.
Do I regret that decision you’re probably asking yourself about now? Although I know it was the right thing for our family, at that time, I still think about that missed opportunity to have another child. My husband soon thereafter made up his mind that he didn’t in fact want to have any more children so I accepted that reality. I did require him to have a vasectomy however. I could not even imagine having to have another abortion should there be another failed birth control leading to a pregnancy.
I believe the decision to terminate a pregnancy is the most challenging and difficult decision any woman will have to make in her lifetime. I also believe that every woman has the right to make that decision for herself. The government has no authority to control or interfere with our body and the decisions we make. We have seen the erosion of our personal freedoms regarding Covid-19 vaccinations. Many were mandated with having to take an experimental vaccine if they wanted to keep their jobs, if they wanted to be able to pay their rent or their mortgage, or put food on their table. No one should ever be put into such an untenable position.
For women around the country, we have a decision to make at this time in history. Will we allow 5 conservative supreme court judges to decide the future of our reproductive health? HELL NO! If we want to ensure our right to abortion, we must raise our voices in order to be certain that we’re being heard. I’m ready to handover the baton to the millenials, the Gen X’s and the Gen-Z’s. Us baby boomers were responsible for the freedom to ensure the right to an abortion for all women. It’s time that the next generations stepped up. Would I be willing to march alongside these men and women in order to help secure the continuing rights for abortion. Absolutely. Would I be willing to march in their stead….NO. A good friend of mine was appalled by my decision to take a back seat to the younger generation. She said, “I hate to say this, but it sounds to me like you are being stubborn and stingy. You would have never said this before the vaccination fight…. Your thoughts seem so short sighted from the woman I used to know to be expansive and inclusive.” The truth is, she is right. I have changed in some inherent way since the pandemic. I’ve essentially lost my trust and faith in people. I still can’t wrap my brain around the reality that our public health agencies have allowed hundreds of thousands of people to die, unnecessarily, because they chose to ignore safe, effective, evidence-based early treatments in lieu of pharmaceutical profits. I don’t believe I’ll ever recover from that assault against humanity. Physicians around the country have been silent while their right to provide informed consent was being eliminated, leaving me with profound questions about the integrity of our medical providers. Ultimately we’re on our own to wade through the actual science which is becoming increasingly difficult due to medical censorship. This is a dangerous time to be an American and now with abortion rights on the line, it’s a dangerous time to be a woman.
Thank you for your honesty and bravery for sharing your story. The way that anti-abortionists paint the picture, you would think that women have abortions matter-of-factly, without a second thought. If this decision does occur as it appears it will, it will be a horrible setback and it will likely also be the opening of Pandora's box to disassembling many other hard fought equal rights. Truly a scary time.
Many cultures believe that the soul incarnates into the body when a newborn takes her first breath. Thank you, Michelle, for speaking honestly.