I had an abortion in 1975 when I was a college sophomore. I've never told anyone in my adult life - not my parents, my friends and lovers, my siblings or my teenage daughter. I didn't tell my colleagues in the 1990s when I was working at Planned Parenthood, nor when I was urging women to tell their own personal abortion stories as the U.S. Supreme Court stood poised to chip away at Roe v Wade over the past few decades. Why is it I never told anyone? Shame, I guess. I was a smart kid in college, taking women's studies classes, talking a good game about women's rights. I even spent two long uncomfortable weeks refusing to shave my legs before I caved. And I had a brief and intense love affair with a student who lived in my dorm.
Within weeks, I suspected I was pregnant. But I had never been to a gynecologist or known anyone who was pregnant. There were several horrible weeks of ignoring the increasing signs as I chose to increase my focus on my studies. I don't recall any longer a lot of the details but will forever be grateful for the local Planned Parenthood clinic and two of the nicest middle-aged women there who helped me make the hardest decision I have ever made. To this day, it remains my most difficult decision. I had an abortion and went on to earn a degree, move to Washington, create a nice life, have a child when I was ready to care for one, spend years working on behalf of reproductive rights, and remain silent about choosing abortion.
It's hard to know after all these years if my shame was caused more by becoming pregnant or by choosing abortion. I know I wasn't equipped to care for a child then. I have never regretted that decision. As with all we do in life, each decision leads to another and guides us through life. I did the best I could at the time and regret mostly my decades of inability to share that pain with people who love me.
I feel compelled now to share this fact of my life because on Sunday Dr. George Tiller was murdered while serving in his church. I met him in the early 90s when I was working for Planned Parenthood, and was immediately drawn in by his warmth and kind manner. I remember wanting to tell him that I had once had to make the choice to end a pregnancy. But instead I simply told him that I understood the toll his work took on him. He was a good man, dedicated to ensuring that women and their families had a choice. He introduced me to a woman who was devastated to learn late in her second trimester that her child was missing most of its brain. He gave her a humane choice.
And now he's been murdered by someone who purports to be "pro-life." At a time when madmen are willing to kill to make a point, how can I remain silent about my own decision 30 years ago? When the killer pointed a gun at Dr. Tiller on Sunday, he forced me to tell my story. I urge all women across the nation to tell their stories. There are millions of us - mothers, sisters, daughters, doctors, lawyers, factory workers, college students and waitresses - who made a choice at some point in our lives to choose abortion. Some of us may regret our decision while others may celebrate it. But the fact remains that no one has the right to take that option away from us, and certainly not with a bullet. Until we begin to shout our stories at the top of our lungs - drowning out the cacophony of violence from those who are "no-choice," we will never secure the options for the women who follow in our footsteps.
Follow Tamar Abrams on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@Tamarabrams
That broke my heart as much as the event of aborting the baby itself. I didn't want another mother to raise it, I wanted to raise it and couldn't. I didn't want handouts of diapers and faith, I wanted to know that the child would be born into a secure future and decent life.
I didn't want state benefits or the coldness of unaffected strangers offering me tickets to buy food. I wanted warmth and familial care for the baby. Knowing I could go to work to support and feed us on my own, and he or she would be cared for by someone who loved it as much as I did.
But in all the picket line yelling, I never once ever was approached by an individual to be told, "You can have your baby and keep it and we can help you through the life of the child or until you don't need us anymore. No judgment, no preaching, no obligation. We just want to help you keep this baby alive."
I'd like to hear a story of someone who said that to a woman struggling with the decision to have an abortion.
I don't buy the argument that men or people not faced with an unwanted pregnancy should censor themselves. Every human being that dies unjustly affects me. "Never send to know for whom the Bell tolls, it tolls for thee" John Donne
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments. I totally respect your point of view and am so glad you were able to make it without rancor. On some points we agree: I loved my daughter from the moment I knew I was pregnant. She remains the greatest accomplishment of my life. I won't go into the areas where we disagree because those are obvious. My sense though is that we both believe that women should not have to make the choice to terminate pregnancies. Even in an imperfect world, not having to make that decision would be the best course. In order for that to happen, sexuality education and contraceptives have to be not only readily available -- but also openly discussed. Abstinence is also a very good choice, as my teenager and I have discussed. There has to be common ground from which people on all sides can make some progress here. If we each take an intractable stand in defense of our already entrenched positions, nothing will change and we'll be writing here for the next century.
This exercise has taught me that there is way too much anger, finger-pointing and pain around this issue. Healing can only begin if we start to listen to one another and allow small windows into each other's thoughts and beliefs.
If nothing else, we need to make more resources and help available to pregnant women and emphasize compassion to those who find themselves in unexpected circumstances. One groups efforts to do this stands out in my mind...Feminists for Life(www.feministforlife.org). They have a very strong pro-life argument but walk-the-talk by taking on universities to acquire more help for pregnant students and students who are mothers.
Thank you for taking the step to talk about your abortion. I'm amazed at just how closely our stories resemble each other. I've never told most people about my abortion my senior year in college in 1978. I told my husband before we married. I told a close friend. I told my two children (now 19 and 22) when they were teenagers. They were the best decision I ever made; so was my abortion.
My mom was a very active pro-choice supporter. Her mom almost died from a botched back alley abortion. It was the depression and Grandma already had five kids. She and my grandpa worked but it was impossible to support another child. I mention this because even knowing it, I couldn't tell my parents, not wanting to "disappoint" them. I couldn't tell my best friend - a staunch Catholic still.
I was on birth control , not sleeping around (but should that matter?). It was my senior year and I would have been giving birth right before finals and graduation. My boyfriend was just starting grad school. He offered to marry me and put off school. It was a no-win situation. I decided to end my pregnancy.
I went to Wichita to Dr. Tiller's clinic - they were the most compassionate, non-judgmental people. It's always bothered me that I didn't share my experience. I took advantage of having a choice, but remained silent for others. Thank you for encouraging us all to speak out.
Science has figured out a way for one human body to support another. You will find yourself attached to a person who is simply taking bodily resources from you and providing nothing tangible back. The government will enforce this edict, and anyone caught taking their other person off of support will be sentenced. That's EXACTLY what will happen if you have your way.
Before a certain point in a pregnancy, you are not looking at two people, but just one with a symbiont. AFTER that point in time, we may STILL have a societal point to allowing an abortion, since the fully grown woman with all the rights of citizenship takes precedence over the unborn who has no legal rights (having not been declared by the state to be a person until birth)
God bless your poor aunt.
If we don't speak out, there are people who will put women back in this situation.
"Some of us may regret our decision while others may celebrate it."
I understand that some regret an abortion, I understand that some are completely o.k. with their decision, but "celebrate" it? Are you joking?
Let's not let the mysogynist moral tyrants keep us in the shadows any longer. I am grateful to the doctor who performed my abortion, and hope that my government will do more to protect those practitioners who provide this very necessary (and extremely common) proceedure to women when the woman deems it necessary.
For anyone to dare to assume that this was an easy decision or that I haven't thought about it since, for anyone to presume to know my or any other woman's situation, for anyone to try and serve God's judgment on me...
Now to rile up all of the no-choice, anti-abortion men, like so many others, I find it curious that most "pro life" leaders are men. Why is that? And don't say that men are naturally more in a leader roll since it took women (and some intelligent men supporting them) to get women's right to vote. There was more research done on Viagra than most birth control pills. Insurance covers Viagra for men, but not birth control for women. Men do not always look out for the best interest of women. I don't believe that most of you are truly looking out for women in the abortion issue either.
your courage is infectous...
I wonder, for all the anti-choicers out there, if this woman's decision to not keep the baby alive, even if there was medical technology to do so, should be judged just as harshly as a woman who would have decided to terminate the pregnancy when finding out the chances of the baby living outside the womb were very unlikely?
I look forward to hearing the responses....
(Can't remember whose quote it is, but it's true.)
I am pro-life, but I understand that there are worse things than death. It is not always called for to preserve a life by all means possible; however, it is not licit to intentionally and directly kill a human life as a means of treating a condition.
This mother's decision for how to care for her baby during its short life should not be condemned, nor is her care decision even remotely equivalent to a decision to kill her baby.
The unique thing about Tiller was, that he was one of the few doctors who was providing late-term abortions, apparently with few questions asked, relying totally on the "wisdom of the woman". If we try, and many times, punish the young mother who, after delivery, throws her newborn baby into the garbage chute, then why not have some level of increased scrutiny regarding a mother who allows the same thing to happen to a fetus still in her uterus, who could easily live outside the womb if delivered.
It's not all black and white, and mothers-to-be or mothers-who-never where, it's not all about you.
I remember the first issue of Ms magazine when I was a teenager. They had photos of girls who had died of illegal abortions. I remember one young, young woman bled out sitting on a toilet.. It was pitiful and sad. Only the poor had to take this chance, the rich have always gone to other countries.
Randall Terry, the head of Operation Rescue is also against birth control and sex education. I guess his idea of sex is that woman should pay if they dare have it.
I ask concern citizens to spend more time worrying about the rights and treatment of already born children here and in all parts of the world. Why not advocate to improve those lives and stay out of the private lives of your fellow concerned citizens? Worry about your own sin and salvation, not ours. Thank you. My abortion never has and never will have anything to do with your life.
It's the guys in this story that never have to count the cost.
Why is is so incredibly hard to say no? Or to at least acknowlege it?
Its unfortunate that man has put him/herself in the position of judging and punishing others. God gave us free will, why is it that men want to take that away? If the hell fire is were women go when they choose to have an abortion and i'm sure most women are well aware of that possible fate, then thats her choice.
Education and resources are definitely needed to facilitate understanding. This takes time and money.
Peace!
It was impossible!
She finally did adopt a child from Honduras or Guatamala (sp?).
At any rate, she died of cancer last August and now the young boy is in the custody of her sister and husband.
He now has an American family where before he had nothing.
It's hard to adopt other American kids...I don't know why.