So often I see people discussing this basic human right of bodily autonomy as if any one person’s experience should be definitive. It should not be.
I had one of the first Roe abortions, at 17. I have regretted it all my life.
In July of 1973 I was hanging out in the hills above Santa Cruz when I met Bill, the father of the child I would never have.
We lived together that summer and in late August it became clear that I was pregnant. We had split up by then. Not because of that, but more out of incompatibility and the age difference. He was, by then, engaged to marry another.
By September 1973 the very first post Roe abortions were available. Somehow I ended up in New York City, at my Aunt Naomi’s spacious apartment overlooking the park and the Museum of Natural History. A place I had adored as a child. But I had not lived as a child for a long time.
Still, I was 17 and alone.
For me, the pressure was so subversive I didn’t even realize the full magnitude till years later.
The aunts and every other adult just assumed the abortion was fore ordained and I had no ability form a position much less an argument. They simply could not imagine me, the “troubled” kid, making any other choice. After all, abortion was legal, and the Lenox Hill Hospital was one of the best.
I may have been living as an adult but a 17 year old brain is not fully developed. I was not quite of legal age but that did not matter much. My parents had forfeited any claim on me years before. I just didn’t have the words to express my feelings.
There was only one person who stepped up and just listened without judgment. His name was Steve Potash, but everyone at the last high school I ever attended just called him Coach.
He met me at the benches near the wall around the edge of Central Park and just listened. To my concerns about the fact that I had been partying as usual after I became pregnant but before I knew.
And the complicated situation with the father. But also how I always wanted kids and all I would have to do is nothing. He didn’t tell me what to do. Just listened and gave me a hug and held my hand. Some years ago I heard that Coach had died. But he will always live as a hero in my memory.
The day before my appointment at Lenox Hill I spent several hours in the Natural History Museum. In the hall where they had models of the entire reproductive process in humans from zygote to birth. My baby was no more than a dot at that point.
Then, early the next morning, I made one of the worst mistakes of my life. And understandable. And not necessarily avoidable under the totality of the circumstances. But unalterable and the source of never ending regret.
As it turned out, there would be no later chance to have children. I developed PCOS after the abortion. And had lost both ovaries by age 30. I have only held a baby once in my life…
And you know what? That was about me and me alone.
I am unwavering in my support for reproductive rights for all women. Because public policy has nothing to do with one personal story. And because my wrong choice at 17 has everything to do with me and absolutely nothing to do with the other 150 million American women and girls who have their own needs and their own story. The law must protect all women.
Human rights are nonnegotiable. And none is more fundamental to us as biological beings than this one: a woman’s right to decide when to bring a child into this world.
There should be no coercion of any kind, either for or against. The decision belongs to the pregnant woman alone. As does the relief, or even the regret.
Individuals have the right to different feelings and the right to express all of it, even the parts that are conflicting or hard to take in.
As long as this is a political football we can never have a deep and nuanced conversation, one we need to have as a society. We need to do as a society what Coach did for me. And then support the choice without reservation.
Birth control should be free and easy to get. Maternal care and support for mothers on every level should be a top priority. No woman who WANTS the child should ever have to make an impossible decision due to poverty or fear.
And the women who make the decision to get an abortion should be supported too. No guilt. No shame. And decent after care if needed.
Women must have bodily autonomy. Full stop. And some, but certainly not all, may have mixed feelings or even regret. This is, above all, personal.
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Bels- I am so sorry you've lived with that regret. I had never wanted children, so I have no regret for my 1 abortion. It was bad timing and the wrong guy. Had things been different, I might have made a different decision, but it was what it was.
I couldn't agree with you more: A WOMAN HAS TO HAVE THE RIGHT TO MAKE HER OWN DECISION. These religious wrongs that think they can cram their beliefs down everyone's throats are bullies at best and I, who am an atheist, contend that I am a better christian then they. charlis
I knew a woman who was pregnant as a teen; her family flew her to the Caribbean before RvW to have an abortion...at 8 months >:-( She did not want an abortion, and essentially had to deliver the baby and know it would be killed. Like you, the decision was not hers: it was made for her by adults.
NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO DETERMINE WHAT A PERSON CAN DO WITH THEIR BODY.