Up close: An abortion story

     "A small cat was trying to kill a rabbit. The cat gave up and the rabbit hopped away."

         Jane Collins

Sometimes, at a time of peril, there is rescue and survival.

Across America people are marching today in protest of laws making making abortion inaccessible or impossible. The signs and petitions speak to a right, one affecting every American. It is a wholesale issue. But a woman who becomes pregnant experiences it retail, personally, one woman at a time. Depending on the time, place, and circumstances, it can be a welcome blessing. Or it can be a catastrophe.

Today's Guest Post is by a college classmate. She tells the story of her pregnancy crisis. She calls herself a "semi-retired writer" having written speeches for a Harvard dean and books including For the Love of a Soldier: Interviews with Military Families Taking Action against the Iraq War. She has a blog at: https://alicet4.com

Guest Post by Jane Collins              

It was 1971. I had just graduated from college. My only income came from making and selling paper mâché puppets in Harvard Square. That was enough to pay my expenses, since I shared a house in the country that had no running water, electricity, or telephone. When my housemates and I needed to go to town, we walked two miles and then hitchhiked from the main road. It was a good life: my first taste of freedom. I felt calm and happy, full of possibility.

Jane, with her mother and baby, 1977

Then I found out I was pregnant.

I panicked. To say I was not ready to raise a child is a huge understatement. I had just left a long term but unhappy relationship and had begun to see the love of my life, but we were so different that I wasn’t sure it would work out. And I wasn’t sure which boyfriend was the father.

I’d been using a diaphragm and spermicide. This method of birth control is supposed to be 92 to 96 percent effective. I was among the four to eight percent of women who get pregnant anyway. At this point in my life, pregnancy was an existential horror.

Abortion was illegal in New Hampshire. We had to get to New York, where Planned Parenthood was charging $250 for abortions. We did have that much, but only just. My new boyfriend and future husband owned a functional car. One of his friends loaned us a biofeedback device, which somehow measured your brain activity and beeped to let you know when you were calming down.

We went straight to the clinic. I attached the electrodes of the device in the waiting room. The nurses were fascinated with it and asked me a lot of questions, which I answered by talking about meditation. The procedure didn’t take long and didn’t hurt much. The nurses said I was the only woman they’d seen who smiled all the way through. I wasn’t happy. I was ending a life before it could begin. But it felt completely necessary, and I was at ease with the decision. I still am.

Most of the women in the recovery room, though, were weeping.

Afterwards, I felt weak and shaky, and I was bleeding quite a bit. A friend was letting us stay at their house in Long Island for a couple of days. To get there, we had to cross a bridge with a toll we hadn’t expected. We stopped the car and searched under the seat cushions to scrounge enough coins to pay the fee.

The only thing I remember from that stay in Long Island is watching a small cat try to kill a large rabbit. They were evenly matched. The cat hung on to the back of the rabbit’s neck while it hopped across the street. Then the cat found its footing and dragged the rabbit back across the street. This happened several times. Finally, the cat gave up and the rabbit hopped away. 

Jane and a granddaughter

 A couple of years later, I married the man who drove me to New York. We’ve been together for fifty years, through richer and poorer, in sickness and health. We have three children and three grandchildren, all of whom are way above average, and whom we love with all our hearts. None of our family would be here now if I had let that first pregnancy come to term.

There are many things in life that are beyond our control. Pregnancy should not be one of them. If you don’t like abortion—and nobody likes abortion—fight for free and easily available contraception. That would keep this sad procedure to a minimum. But women will not stop getting abortions if they need them. Having a baby determines everything for a woman—at least it does for women who are not rich. If you are forced to have a baby when you don’t want to, you are not a free person, and America is not a free country.