Mom’s family had abortions … I think five or six … from a lady on the corner. I have a friend who lives on that corner of Jamieson and it amuses me to think she might live in the very house where I lost a number of potential relatives.
No one talked about the abortions when I was young. I was sheltered. In fact, in 1981, during my first month at an out-of-state college, I had reason to look under “A” in the yellow pages and phoned Mom to alert her that abortion was evidently legal in Indiana and even advertised in the phone book.
“Good god, child. It’s legal in every state. How do you not know this?”
“I don’t know. I thought if everybody talks about the ‘abortion controversy,’ then it can’t be legal. If they made it legal why is it still a controversy?”
I wasn’t having sex until years later, so I didn’t have any skin in the game. Or ova. So I didn’t form an opinion. Why decide what other people should do? I was pro-none of my business.
And then years after that I was at work and saw that a male co-worker’s cubicle was decorated with heavy-handed anti-choice propaganda. Like, pro-clothes-hanger-heavy-handed. Yet this man had no skin, ova, or sperm in the game. Still, he had views. So I took the opposite stand just to even things out.
I’m sure someone else has already speculated that the Texas law that encourages a $10,000 bounty on people who help women get abortions should include the men who don’t use condoms. (No lambskin in the game.)
So now Texas reverses course back to 1973, when I was 11 and didn’t even have a functioning uterus in the game. I guess I should have done more.
2 responses to “Abortion”
Well, we qre trying to give Florida a run for their money in the crazy race and I think we have well and truly won. I’m with you as I think we’re the same age so I was very clueless as well until it happened to a friend. I was lucky enough to never have never had that happen, but I can’t be sure I wouldn’t have done the same thing. And the older I get the more angry I get about all these men thinking they get to set the rules AND offer rewards for anyone who turns in someone who has one. How is it possible that not only are we moving backwards, but there are so very many people think that’s a good thing. (Unless it infringes on their life in any way.) Scary times.
Lisa – I always comforted myself regarding Roe v Wade by thinking that progress once made isn’t often un-made (conveniently forgetting the Dark Ages). Evidently I was wrong, at least in Texas.