My Grandmother's Desperate Choice
~snip~
As a child, I knew only that my grandmother had died when my mom was still a baby. The one time I asked what had happened to her, a bolt of panic flashed across my mothers face. A household accident, was all she said.
I was twelve years old when she finally told me the truth. Some friends and I had got into a long after-school discussion about abortion, prompted by the gruesome posters that a protester had staked in front of the Planned Parenthood in our Vermont town. I had already begun reading my mothers Ms. magazines cover to cover, but this was the first time Id encountered a pro-life position. When I hopped into my moms car after school, I was buzzing with new ideas. I had almost finished repeating one friends pro-life argument when I saw the look on Moms face. Thats when she told me: the household accident that had killed her mother had, in fact, been a self-induced abortion.
Her hands were tight on the steering wheel as she spoke. I realized later that it wasnt the topic of abortion itself that made her so uneasyshe was a nurse and a Roe-era feminist who usually responded straightforwardly to even the most embarrassing health questions. Rather, her anguish arose from sharing a truth that shed been brought up believing was too terrible to speak.
Sitting beside her in the passenger seat, I struggled to absorb the meaning of what shed told me. I had only just grasped what abortion was a few hours earlier, and was still trying on this new pro-life idea. O.K., I said, but what about the uncle or aunt I never had? Mom whipped toward me, face taut with a rage and fear that I somehow understood had nothing to do with me. What about the mother I never had? she said.
Read More: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/my-grandmothers-desperate-choice
bobbieinok
(12,858 posts)Read the entire article.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Because the catastrophic consequences of illegal abortion have been purposely silenced by conservatives, so that all we ever hear, all anti-abortion people think about is crying over imaginary "babies", and accusing women of murder. And sluttiness.
Permanut
(5,654 posts)think that overturning Roe v. Wade will bring an end to all abortions. More willful ignorance.
More info about "back-alley" abortions in the 40's and 50's:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/solinger-abortion.html
Edit to add that I understand the OP was not about back alley abortions; choices then were all life-threatening.
Warpy
(111,367 posts)Antiabortion laws kill women. They have no other function.
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,723 posts)Solly Mack
(90,789 posts)luvMIdog
(2,533 posts)She told me she was young and very terrified of having a baby. She said she went in the bathroom and used these sticks. It's a wonder she lived to tell the tale
Stonepounder
(4,033 posts)When wages were high and unemployment was low and the country was booming.
And abortion was illegal and women died.
And Jim Crow was the law.
And young women who got pregnant 'out of wedlock' simply disappeared for a while.
And homosexuality was illegal.
And when AIDS showed up we did nothing because it was 'that gay disease'.
And women didn't work in 'men's jobs'.
And spousal rape was an oxymoron.
And lynchings were not uncommon in the South.
And America was a Christian nation.
TxDemChem
(1,918 posts)Thank you so much for posting this article. I never want to see an era where women are in the same predicament as Win. Just utterly cruel, especially for the surviving family members.
MLAA
(17,338 posts)Your story touched me deeply. Thank you.
iluvtennis
(19,880 posts)StevieM
(10,500 posts)But of course, this woman was somebody's grandmother. So many women suffered needlessly in pre-Roe vs. Wade America.