My best friend was raped at a picnic when we attended the University of Florida many moons ago. I was there and had no idea that she was being attacked until she returned to our party area. Our picnic was at a well-known lime pit outside Gainesville. Set in a manmade valley, the pit was a bowl of surreal blue water surrounded by hard peaks of excavated white dirt.
Not long after, she and I camped on a secluded piece of land in the piney woods of Suwanee county. It was the weekend before her abortion. I still have photos of her – head in hands, crying in front of the campfire. I’ll never forget her distress.
My friend C was a free spirit. She was brilliant. A classics major. She played banjo, wore flowing outfits in the style of Isabella Duncan and had the best biting mirth of anyone I knew. At the time, she was a playful bisexual. The only daughter in a strict military family. Daddy was an Army colonel on an upward path.
C shaved her head as some sort of tribute to the abortion. Out there in the woods, I recall that she wore camouflage green. She could have been an army recruit.
It changed her. After the abortion, C stayed away from men, involved herself in two lengthy and frustrating lesbian relationships. Then she married – once, twice, three times. We lost track of one another but I know that by her third marriage, at age 50-something, she had never born children. The joie de vivre that lit her eyes slipped away and her smile drooped.
Everyone is affected differently after an abortion. Some women cannot filter the emotional impact of the procedure. It wears on them. With my friend, the abortion was the ripped away manifestation of an attack on her person. She chose to remove the expression of that force.
When my mother was a few years younger than my friend C, she too became pregnant. To this day, I don’t know whether it was a mistake or a crime. She did not want a child. She had a year to go in high school and plans for her life. She was unmarried.
Joan was brought up in a South Florida family with an Irish Catholic mother and an Ashkenazi Jew father from New York. Her mother’s Catholic beliefs outweighed all decisions. Joan, who was my birth mother, was sent to a Catholic Charities home in Northeast Florida. She waited me out, knitting, playing cards, planning. I came early.
Joan’s mother was by her side and after my birth, they returned home. I remained and was sent to the home of a local physician. It took longer than usual but by the time my adoption was finalized, Joan had joined the Navy, transferred to California, married and had the first of her three legitimate children.
Two anecdotes in the life of one woman illustrate that the debate is not simple and it is often much more complex than a medical procedure.
I cannot say that I am pro-abortion. To do so would be crazy, the ultimate deceit. What I will say is that this debate is about the most personal of decisions and that the right for people to own their body is in almost all cases, irrevocable.
We must win this onslaught by a posse of politicians against our bodies.
In my mind, one of the first battles is defining terms. This is not simply about abortion. When we couch it as pro life or anti abortion, we are conceding to their terms.
This is about drawing lines. It is about choice. It is about autonomy. It is about the singular right of every human. Anything less is slavery.
GO BLINDLY 
Agreed. It’s about autonomy.
The “dusting and cleaning” operation was mine at 18-years-old, on Memorial Day in Puerto Rico, and although the somewhat traumatic abortion has had me looking back over time, the timing was right. I had no decent ability to bring a child into the world.
It’s an overpopulated world of humans, too, with too many pushing other birds and animals to the edge. Our urban sprawl outpaces Nature’s ability to heal and assure safe habitats. We consume too much and expand too much. We’re selfish and intrusive; so fewer of us —when children aren’t planned and wanted —is a good thing. Let’s have more wilderness instead.
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