eros, logos: Right

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Right

I wrote recently some of the circumstances of my first abortion. That was only the outer layer of that experience. I'll write the rest now. (Here, as ever, the reason why.)

I was 17, desperately poor, and I had no family or education. I had thought deeply about contraception and about abortion before I was ever in a potition to need that knowledge personally. I was before I ever had sex committed to the consequences of it, and I knew that abortion would be the result, should all safeguards fail.

And they did.

My family is amazingly fecund. I have no children, and I think now I never will, because I cannot understand the desire for children apart from the desire to bear the children of one beloved man, and there is now no one whose children I would wish to bear--apart from my own complicated feelings about such a choice, at this time and place in my life.

And so I became pregnant, and I knew right away that this was so, and I waited.

When I had the news confirmed for me, I remember sitting alone, on the stairs in my friend's house. I needed to go away for a bit; I had just called and made my appointment for my abortion.
I sat there with my arms crossed over my still-flat belly, and I wondered at the awful power of nature. I felt awestruck at the idea that should I do nothing at all, --in other words, should I do what I usually do, when it comes to the practical--it would very soon be too late to do anything. I carried within myself at that moment the capacity for another life, another person. I felt myself a container, a vessel now filled, and potentially a creator. And how wonderous, the knowledge that mere biology and the passage of a brief window of time creates a person!

I thought about this, though I was firmly convinced of my inalienable right to become a mother only when and how I should choose to do so. I had complete confidnce in my moral certitude; no one could or can shake that, because I had already thought and deeply about this choice.
But I still felt the need to take those few minutes, after arranging my abortion. I felt wonder at this thing, this reduction to pure biology--this enslavement women alone are subject to.

On that day my boyfriend, younger than I, came to my house. I was already supporting myself, and he was not. I was 17 and he was 16, and we had been lovers for a year or so. My female housemate was driving us, and my boyfriend was bringing money for half. He withdrew it secretly from some bank account his parents had for him, the accumulation of many birthday gifts and christmas gifts from his large and loving family. I had no family; and the half that was my contribution was more money than I made in two weeks, and almost as much as my rent payment. I knew I would not be eating well for some time; and in fact to have that much money available on that date I had had to cut back in many ways. It took everything I had, to have just that much money on that date. I had no savings and I would need to eat dinner at friends' houses for a week after, I knew, and I had arranged that already. I would not be able to eat apart from that one meal each day.

I could have asked him for the entire amount, but I did not. It would certainly have made things easier for me, and though he loved me, I asked only for half. It was half my biology, after all, it was equally our contribution, and I am never able to ask easily for anything.

My boyfriend arrived that morning, of course he hugged me and kissed me, because he loved me. I'm sorry I'm late, he said, and he handed me the money.

As I counted it compulsively,--when you are poor you do that, and it's like checking constantly for your passport and your planeticket and your keys when you travel, which i always do, although i love the uncertainty of arriving in an unknown country where i do not speak the language and have no where to stay that night--- he said, it's 40 dollars short.
I stopped at X, I had to buy the new albums by Z and Y.

I felt my legs give way under me, literally. I sat down. I spoke to him as I never had before---though I loved him, I always knew he could not appreciate me or see my worth, though he loved me. So i spoke to him for perhaps the first and only time, as my equal, and very seriously.

You don't understand
When I say I have no money, I mean I have no money.

I have no money, J.

This was not something that could be postponed. How much longer to wait, to get an appointment at the clinic? How much more would I be throwing up in the mornings? How much more would this thing inside me grow, before I could do what was necessary? How much longer would I live with the knowledge that I now was not one, but two?

So then I went to work. What else is there to do? He stood there nd then he helped me. I emptied pockets, all of mine, I knew already I would find nothing there.
I pulled up the cushions on the sofa, I collected change--not mine, for that was all gone already, had been, to make my half, I took the change that guests had left. When I had all I could find, I had to sk my housemate---also poor,like me---for a loan. He didn't do that. Nor did he call a friend, or one of his many brothers.
But he was very young.

I asked her finally for what I needed. She did not have it.
We woke our other housemate and he emptied his pockets and his wallet, gave me what I needed, although I knew very well he also needed that money like I did, to eat. I promised I'd pay him back, and I did, as soon as I was paid again, although it was not easy for me to do, and I had to depend for more days on the kindness of others to feed me.

I went to the clinic, and the only shame I felt was when I paid, shoving nickels and quarters and crumpled dollars across the desk. I felt shame then because I was looked at with pity, and I cannot bear that, never have been able to.

It was painful, the operation. They wouldn't let my friend or my boyfriend in, and I clung to the hand of a stranger, a nurse, I suppose they are assigned that exact job.
I felt during the procedure, despite the pain, that what I was doing was right.
On the way home I needed the car stopped, so I could throw up.

I have had another abortion, since, and it was my choice also, although abortion is a choice only in the sense that it is 'an option', for now, in some places and times. I was with someone who loved me very much and whom I loved too. There were none of the practical difficulties of poverty or youth as in the first one.

I wanted to have that man's child--but only one day, and not then, at that place and time. That was also the right thing to do. The decision to abort is in one sense not a decision: you simply do what is right, and it is not right to become a mother until you want to be one and most important, are capable of being the sort of mother you would want to be.

You likely take away from my personal story here only the recognition that I was very poor once. But the important thing here for abortion is that I chose this, to abort, and all women always should have that option--and it is never one entered into lightly, never.

The rhetoric of 'choice' obscures the reality: it is a right. It is a right because it is about the determination of one's destiny. It is a right because it is about autonomy. It is about the right to own one's own body, in every sense, a right that men have and a right that women are entitled to, despite these accidents of biology that make only one sex subject to the enslavement of biology. The mind has no sex, and our rights are due to the fact that we are all persons, although some of us are biologically female and some of us biologically male.

Feel free to leave me judgmental comments.
I will take deep pleasure in answering you, and deep pleasure in my extraordinary luck, to have thought all this through already, before I ever had to exercise my right.

If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
Rose F. Kennedy

posted by O @ 19:19


3 Comments:
At 30 September, 2006, Anonymous said… And think of those women who did not ever have to scrape up the money, those who would just charge it, take it out of the savings, delay paying something else...or the guy was able to take care of it. What a weight to bear as you venture forth into womanhood. Not as heavy as child but to have lived through the drving uncertainty of it all. Wow. -p At 24 October, 2006, Anonymous said… thank you, very much, for telling your story. thank you for not being ashamed. At 02 January, 2007, Gracie said… i would never judge you O. never. goddamn what a story. you make me feel you with your words and i just want to cry.
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