Pro-Life or Pro-Choice……Part Three

 

There was another abortion.  I would like to say that there had only been one but no, there had been a second abortion two or three years later.

I had broken up with the first boyfriend. He had the audacity to tell me that we “almost’ had a baby together. “ Really…did you just say that to me”.  How dare he?!  He did not have the right to say that to me when it was his choice not mine.

Well, boyfriend number two was an alcoholic but I did not know it.  I hadn’t’ known any alcoholics before him.  Breakfast for him was a beer and a joint.

Then the cocaine started.  One night he was so high that he came into the bedroom and started choking me.  I got away from him…grabbed my car keys and barefoot in my flannel pajamas drove to my mother’s home at 3:00 o’clock in the morning.  That was it I was done. 

Shortly after that I found out that I was pregnant.  There was no way I could have a baby with a man who was an alcoholic and addicted to drugs.   This was not what I had envisioned for the father of my child.

This abortion was done in the doctor’s office on a local anesthetic , which meant I felt it.  I felt the baby being ripped out of my body.

It haunts me to this day…….  to be continued……

Pro Life or Pro Choice……

PART ONE

Our country seems to be divided on this issue. But, Is it possible to be both pro-life and pro-choice?  I think so.   In order to explain that paradoxical statement I will have to tell you a story…my story….few people know this story.  It is something that is not easily shared with the world.

You see most people seem to think that when a woman makes a choice to have an abortion that it is done candidly and light-hearted.  And that once the act is committed you never think about it again…but that is not true.

My very first T.V acting job was in a CBS Afterschool Special called,” I think I’m Having a Baby”.  Jennifer Jason Leigh played the lead and I was one of the classmates along with Ally Sheedy.  One of my lines was, “Abortion is just another word for murder”.  And at the age of 17 I really believed that. 

And then I was 19 and found out I was pregnant.  My boyfriend said to me that if I had the baby I would never see him again—nice huh?  We had only been dating 3 months but it was long enough for me to get pregnant.  In those days I used the diaphragm–not the most effective birth control as you can see.

I went to the doctor office on a Friday—I was 8 weeks pregnant . If I wanted an abortion it had to be on Monday or I could not have it.  I was in shock and my actions were pretty robotic. I made an appointment for Monday.

What did my mother say?  She said nothing. She was with me at the doctor’s office and she said absolutely nothing one way or the other.

I was alone…emotionally alone.  My mother had moved out and took my younger sister to live with her and her boyfriend and had left me with my aunt and my aunt’s nephew.  My Catholic grandmother lived next door, and my uncle lived next door to her and my other uncle lived in the house next door.  No one had known that I had a boyfriend, let alone that I was pregnant.

And so my mother said nothing.  Monday came my boyfriend picked me up and we went to the hospital. That was over 28 years ago and to this day I can picture the lobby, the waiting room—sitting there waiting for my name to be called as if I was waiting for the executioner and I was. 

I did not want to be there.  I did not want to have the abortion.  I just wanted to run away but instead I asked my boyfriend if he was sure about this? He, of course said yes.  I would have been so happy if he had so no, let’s go but that was not the case.  And my name was called—and off to the gallows I went……TO BE CONTINUED