Abortion - The way it Was in 1949
Abortion was, of course, illegal, but if you knew the right people and had the money (in small bills) a way could be found. I had been on my own since before I was 18. I had been asked to leave home because my mother and stepfather had had a child and they felt there was no longer room for me. I was cautioned by my stepfather that if I got pregnant, I needn’t bother with any further contact with them or my baby sister.
I lived in two rooms and shared a bath with two other apartments. Many times, at the end of the month, my cooler was bare. I say cooler because I didn’t have a refrigerator. I had an ice-box for which I couldn’t afford to buy ice. In the winter, I hunkered close to a space heater and listened to the rats run up and down inside the window casing. I fought a continuous invasion of cockroaches. DDT misting bombs cost the enormous sum of $5. In those days I made $114 a month at my job in a bank.
I couldn’t even think about a baby – about having a baby. I was too busy trying to stay alive. So when I became pregnant, I knew there was no other option. I had to have an abortion.
My abortion was performed in Seattle – the heretofore “silent ones” will know where it took place, in what building and what doctors were involved (there were four) – bless them! The facilities were clean, the doctor competent; the lack of anesthetic, because of legal consequences, was inhumane. The pain was of different nature than labor, and in many ways, worse. You couldn’t move and you were cautioned no to do so, because it might cause an accident, a perforation of the uterus. I was so frightened, and I shook so badly, that the doctor told me, in a rather brusque way, to compose myself. It cost $250 – more money than I believed to be circulating in the entire world.
It was July and terribly hot for Seattle. I still remember the dress I wore, and how, poor as I was, I could never wear it again. Mostly, I remember feeling numb with fear and shame over having broken the law; but even more, I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the act itself.
Later, during a marriage of 20 year’s duration, I had two children. After each birth, I suffered a post-partum depression. Later still, this was diagnosed as manic-depressive illness and has been chronic for two decades.
Do I regret my abortion? No. Would I do it again? Of-course – though my age precludes the possibility. I will go to bat any day to defend the rights of my little granddaughter – the right to make a decision regarding her genetic legacy – this progenitor of the illustrious, and all too often, the perpetrators of suicide.
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