I spent a couple of years as an abortion counselor, first at the Elizabeth Blackwell Health Care Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and then at the Amherst Medical Center, in Amherst, Massachusetts (both now closed). Although people might think this an unlikely thing to say, being an abortion counselor was a fantastic job. I felt privileged to help women through an intimate and important moment in their lives. I learned a great deal, and if I needed to distill those many lessons into one sentence, I would say this: life, love and sex can get chaotic and messy. Okay, two sentences: women generally do not make major life decisions—say, around reproduction—lightly.
While I feel in the fiber of my being that my autonomy and equality rest on the right to make decisions about my body, and thus my reproductive agency is essential, the stories that move me, as a woman of privilege (who would have likely been able to obtain a humane and medically safe abortion even if the procedure were illegal) to continue to speak out not simply about the laws but about the issue of access to reproductive health care, including abortion services, come from my experiences working with women at these clinics.
Here’s a story: a woman came in and she was nearly five months pregnant. She had not known she was pregnant. How could she not have known? First off, she had a nine month-old baby she was breastfeeding. Secondly, she had other young children (three of them, I think). Third, her husband had lost his job, so she was very much focused on the stress of not having any money and wondering what the future held for her young family. Last, she was a rather large woman so the pregnancy didn’t immediately “show.” I think you could add a little denial in there, too. Even without denial, I have to say I believe she did not realize the situation she was in until she was really in that situation.
At that time, she had to go out of state in order to obtain an abortion. The logistics—leaving her family for a little while, getting to Kansas from Massachusetts, and going through that procedure—were arduous. She could not afford the surgery. She could not afford to raise another child at that time. Here was a moment when the relatively newly formed Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts stepped in.
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That fund had, as its first donor, a woman who’d become pregnant before Roe, before abortion was legal. When she was in college and found herself pregnant, she really had no idea where to turn. Someone helped her locate the procedure and “loaned” her the funds. While she was unable to pay that loan back directly, her gift to ARFWM was, she wrote, in essence, her payback. She remained anonymous until after her parents died. Along with all the hardships in terms of access—then, and also now—there’s a stigma to abortion, often, that complicates the experience, and the issue.
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These days, while abortion is officially protected and legal—we’ve got Roe, still—restrictions abound. The Hyde Amendment yanked federal funding and Obama essentially endorsed that status quo as part of the health care reform negotiations. We will not see that funding restored any time soon, if ever. Meantime, many states have enacted laws that make obtaining abortion services increasingly difficult. Examples include waiting periods, parental or spousal consent, mandatory “counseling” that may be misleading (at best). Most recently, Nebraska lawmakers gave final approval to a first-of-its-kind measure requiring women to be screened for possible mental and physical problems before having abortions.
Add to this, the shrinking numbers of clinic sites to secure the procedure and the shrinking pool of medical providers able—and willing—to perform abortions, and you begin to see the word right could end up in air quotes—and already belongs there in many counties and states.
The married woman with young children and an unemployed husband’s story may not move you, personally. You may gasp at the incest survivor or the Catholic girl who’d be forced into marriage and motherhood if she disclosed her pregnancy to her parents or disowned and tossed out if her parents discovered she’d chosen abortion without telling them. Secrecy and shame are pervasive for so many people for so many reasons. Adding barriers to access is not adding insult to injury; it’s injury, period. And that’s why I am asking that you not only read this but urging you to click here and donate—any gift, large or small—to the National Network of Abortion Funds virtual bowl-a-thon if you are so moved. By giving to NNAF, you’re simply handing a woman who has made a critical decision in her life the chance to follow through as she sees fit. You’re endorsing access. I think you’re also endorsing dignity.
