The following stories are true.  The first two are the memories of friends – which I recorded and edited.  The final story is my own.  

               — E.G.

1 – DONNA

When my aunt found out that Aaron was Jewish, she told me to move out of her house.

It was 1951.  I was working as a probation officer in Cleveland, Ohio.  It was my first job after college.  I had been dating Aaron, a reporter for the local paper, for about a year.  

After I left my aunt’s house, I rented a room on the second floor of a house nearby where I had my own bathroom and tiny kitchenette.

Then I missed my period.  I had been using birth control, a cream called Norform, but my periods were usually very regular, so I was worried.  I told Aaron about it and we went to see a doctor who was a friend of his.  The doctor gave me a pregnancy test and it came back positive.  

So there I was.  I was pregnant, unmarried, and 23.

In that time and place, my friends and family would have considered it shameful if I got pregnant without being married, and also shameful to get married just because I was pregnant.  But more to the point, I just plain didn’t want to get married.  I wasn’t ready for it.  And I definitely didn’t want to have a baby — it was the furthest thing from my mind.  

So we asked Aaron’s doctor friend if he would do an abortion.  “Oh, no!” he said.  “I’d lose my license.”  He did tell us, though, that if a psychiatrist vouched that an abortion was necessary for my mental health it could be done legally.  

I remember the psychiatrist vividly.  He was tall and skinny and kind of bent over, and he and wore glasses with thick black rims.  He listened while I told him the full story about my relationship with Aaron, that I’m pregnant, and not only did I not want to get married under the gun, I didn’t want a baby.  Period.  I told him that I didn’t think I could handle having a baby.  I remember so well what happened next.  This psychiatrist looked at me and said, “I think you can handle it.”  And you know what?  That’s when I really came into my own.  Because it’s true, I probably could have “handled it.” But it wasn’t what I wanted.  He didn’t give a flying fuck about me.  It made me mad.  Really mad.  That’s when I knew I’d have to get an illegal abortion.  

So Aaron checked around and found a doctor who’d had his license revoked for giving abortions.  We made an appointment and drove out to his house which was in a suburb of Cleveland.  The street was lined with maple trees, and it was autumn, so the trees were full and bright red.  The doctor lived in a two-story white house with a deep front porch.

We knocked and the doctor let us in.  He was a middle-aged man, probably about 50.  There were a couple of chairs set up in the entry area where we sat, and the doctor asked me questions like: Why did I want an abortion?  Was I sure about this decision?  Things like that.  I told him the truth.  Aaron stayed in the entry area, while I followed the doctor into a room which might have once been a study.  It was setup with one of those high examination tables and stirrups.  I was way too nervous to really check it out.  I was scared.  I wasn’t scared about it being illegal, but I cared about my body.  I didn’t want to be hurt or injured.  I put my feet in those stirrups, and I remember feeling very vulnerable.  I didn’t know what he was going to do.  The details after that are a blur.  Afterwards, the doctor told me to expect passing some blood clots within the next 24 hours, at which time the abortion would be complete.

The next day nothing happened, no blood clots.  I called Aaron that night and told him that nothing was happening, I wasn’t passing anything.  So, he called the doctor and we went back the next day and he did a second abortion.  I was feeling fine, so Aaron dropped me at the place where I was living, and he went home.  This time, though, I started to cramp and bleed — lots and lots of blood, for hours — so much that I got really scared.  I thought I was going to bleed to death.  I felt isolated and afraid.  Other than Aaron, I had nobody to talk to about it, nobody to turn to and ask questions.  I frantically called Aaron and told him what was happening.  He called his doctor friend — the one who did the pregnancy test.  

That doctor came immediately that night to my place.  He examined me and gave me a shot and some medicine, it might have been antibiotics, I’m not sure.  The profuse bleeding stopped, but I kept spotting for six weeks.  I knew I’d better go see to a regular, legal doctor.  I went to an ob-gyn.  I was nervous about telling him that I’d had an abortion because I didn’t know if he’d report it to the police, or what.  But I felt like my health and maybe my life was at stake, so I told him the truth.  He examined me and told me I needed a D&C, which would clean out my uterus.  He arranged for me to go to a hospital to have it done.  

So, I had the D&C in the hospital, and that was finally it.  

The whole abortion ordeal definitely influenced my life.  To cut to the chase, after Aaron and I broke up, I married the next man I dated — Jack.  I thought to myself: You sleep with him and you’re going to get pregnant again.  Then what are you gonna do?  I didn’t want another illegal abortion.  And I was also thinking, I need to get married.  All my high school girlfriends were already married.  I was the last one.  I was 24.  So, we got married.  I never regretted marrying Jack — he was a very sweet and decent person — but there was also that pressure I felt, it was definitely part of the picture.  Jack and I had three children, and I was so relieved that they all came out healthy and whole.

For many years, I never told a single person about the abortion, not because I was ashamed but because it was socially frowned upon.  The first person I ever told was my second husband, Frank.  I fell in love with him, and I told him right away.  I wanted him to know everything about me.  I said, “I had an abortion.”  And he said, “So?”  

That was the right guy for me.

2 – LINDA

I was living underground in New York City when I found out I was pregnant.  It was 1970 and I was a member of Weatherman — a radical, anti-imperialist organization.  Some of us, including me, were doing anti-war organizing on college campuses.  Others of us were making bombs.

We all went underground because of the Townhouse Explosion.  Some Weatherman members had been constructing a bomb in the basement of a Greenwich Village townhouse, when the bomb blew up.  Three members of Weatherman were killed.  It was huge national news.  Right after that we all went underground.  We realized we might be arrested for having an organizational association with the Townhouse Explosion.  We went underground to figure out what to do and to avoid arrest.  

We severed ties with family and friends, got false IDs, and began living under false names.

What I remember about living underground in New York was having a large set of keys with me at all times — keys to the apartments of supporters who were willing to let me crash and hide out at their place.  Mobility was important because we never knew when the FBI would come around.  I had been living like this for a month or two when I realized I was pregnant.  I didn’t know who the father was.  I had been in a monogamous relationship with Scott, but there was a “smash monogamy” campaign in Weatherman, so most of the couples had broken up.  I didn’t have much sex after that, but I did sleep with someone other than Scott.  

The main thing I knew was that my life was not conducive to raising a child.  I was committed to being a revolutionary, to changing the world.  So, no matter what, I wasn’t going to have a baby.

I was trying to figure out how to get an abortion, which was illegal at that time, when I was arrested during an undercover FBI sting operation.  I was charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines to incite a riot, the riot being the Days of Rage action we had organized in 1969 in Chicago.  My parents bailed me out, but a condition of my release pending court was to live with my parents under house arrest.  I went back to their home in Fort Dodge, Iowa.  I was 23 years old.

It was very intense to be arrested and pregnant.  To be dealing with, oh my god if I don’t get an abortion, I’ll have a baby and might be in prison and what would that mean?  Would my mother raise this kid?  On top of that, I was rebelling against my parents at that point, so it was psychologically very weird to be back at their house again.  My parents were conservative Republicans and couldn’t comprehend my politics.  They didn’t understand my lifestyle; collective living and not getting married were unheard of to them.  Plus, here in Iowa I was isolated from all of my friends and comrades.  I felt a lot of pressure to get the abortion quickly because I knew I might go to prison, for how long I didn’t know.  I felt really stressed out and alone.  

Immediately, I told my mom that I was pregnant.  She was a very straight, middle-aged, middle-class woman.  But she understood that I didn’t want to have a baby and that I couldn’t take care of one, so she was supportive of my decision to get an abortion.  It was a big deal for her to say, “Sure, I’ll help you get an illegal abortion.”  We didn’t tell my dad.

Through my attorney I made arrangements to get an abortion while I was in Chicago for a court appearance.  I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere without one or both of my parents, so my mother and I flew to Chicago to go to court.  After the hearing, she and I walked over to a nearby Woolworths.  It was a hot, sticky summer day and I remember sweating through the nice blouse I’d put on for the court appearance.

We entered Woolworths together, and as my mom pretended to shop for thimbles and thread in the notions aisle, I went into the bathroom, then out the back door.  A car driven by a man I had never met was waiting for me outside.  The man told me to get in back.  “Lie down on the seat,” he said.  “Don’t get up or look up until I tell you.”

We started to drive through Chicago.  With my head pressed sideways against the seat, I could see only light and dark shadows pass by the window.  I began to worry.  How would the abortion turn out?  Would I go to jail or prison?  Would I ever see my friends again?  I was nervous because the abortion wouldn’t be in a doctor’s office or hospital, but on the other hand I had confidence in my attorney hooking me up with the right network of people to make this all happen.  But what if I was putting this network in danger?  I knew that the FBI had been following me prior to my arrest, and I didn’t know if they still were.  We had taken precautions to see that we weren’t being followed, but I really didn’t know for sure.  Lying silently on the back seat, my mind was a sea of stress and anxiety.

Finally the car stopped and the driver said I could get out.  We were in a neighborhood of old, tall apartment buildings, brick and sandstone.  I followed the man into one of the buildings, we went up to the second floor, and he knocked on an apartment door.  A black woman in a turban answered.  I followed her up many flights of stairs to another apartment where I met the doctor, a white man.  This second apartment was completely empty except for the kitchen where an ordinary kitchen table had been modified with medical stirrups.  I felt comforted because at least the room was clean and the doctor had on an immaculate white medical smock.  He was kind and reassuring.  I got up on the table and the doctor did the procedure right there.

After the abortion, we drove back to Woolworths.  My mom was still inside, pretending to shop.  How she managed to pull off the fake-shopping act for several hours, I don’t know.  But there she was in her crisp navy dress with a blue and white scarf around her neck, carefully examining baseball gloves in the sporting goods aisle.

It was such a relief to get the abortion over with.  And really what my mother did was quite amazing and brave, doing this clandestine errand with her daughter.  We hugged briefly, not wanting to bring attention to ourselves.  Then we took a taxi to the airport and flew back to Iowa.

3 – EVE

I was pedaling my white ten-speed from our apartment in Santa Monica to UCLA when the nausea hit.  By the time I reached campus, the feeling had subsided.  The next day the nausea was worse, again occurring while I rode my bike to school.  I thought maybe it was caused by the fumes from the trucks and buses and cars that passed.  Or maybe it was stomach cancer.  Eeks!

That day after class, I biked over to visit my mom at her job on campus.  She had gone back to school after raising her kids and was now a post-doc fellow in neuroscience.  I locked up my bike and took the elevator up to her lab.  We chatted for a while, and then I mentioned the nausea.  Without a pause, she said:

“Do you think you’re pregnant?”
Oh.  That thought hadn’t crossed my mind.  “I guess it’s possible.”
“Well, get yourself a test.  Do you have a gynecologist?”
“Of course.”  (I didn’t.)
“And let me know if you need anything.”
“Mom, please.  David and I can take care of it.”
“I know you can, dear.  I’m just offering.”
“Okay.  I know.  Thanks.”

Yup.  Pregnant.  I was 20 years old and it was 1974.  David and I had been living together for less than a year.  He was 29, an assistant professor in Anthropology, with sole custody of his 5-year-old daughter.  The three of us lived in an apartment with a view of the ocean, green shag carpet (really!), and rent so low it’s embarrassing.  Our life worked and we were basically happy. 

“What do you want to do?” David asked.  “I’m up for another child if you are.  We could get married too…uh, if you want.”  

There was only one thought on my mind:  How soon can I get the abortion?

The answer was two weeks.  Two weeks of morning sickness which, it turns out, yields slightly to Saltine crackers and 7-Up.         

The funny thing is, I don’t remember the actual abortion.  I have a memory of going to a doctor’s office in Westwood, and the doctor telling me that she was going to perform a Vacuum Aspiration.  She said that I might have some cramping which would feel like menstrual cramps, but that the procedure would be essentially painless and short.  My next true and clear memory is being in the passenger seat of David’s VW and saying, “I would really like to eat some meat.”

We drove to Zucky’s, an old-fashioned deli in Santa Monica, where I ordered bratwurst sausage and sauerkraut.  I remember this because, while I wasn’t a true vegetarian and did eat fish once in a while, that was it.  But this day, right after the abortion, I wanted meat.  Like, really wanted it.  Like a craving or a need.  I wanted to eat something that bled.  So we had lunch at Zucky’s and then we went home.

There was no coda to my abortion.  No hemorrhaging.  No infection.  No guilt.  If anything, it felt like an initiation.  Like getting braces on your teeth in junior high — not something you want or wish for, but once you’re there it’s almost like joining a club.  My friend Holly had had an abortion the year before, and just a few months prior to mine I had accompanied my friend Cristina to get one.  It was a safe, legal, minor medical procedure. And it saved me from adding more children into a world which I believed already had plenty.

** This essay is dedicated to Norma McCorvey—aka Jane Roe; to the Jane Collective, which from 1969-1973 helped women in the Chicago area get illegal abortions; and to my cousin Katherine Morrison, ob-gyn extraordinaire, who has risked her life and livelihood to provide low-cost, full-choice health care options for women.

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