Pre-Roe v. Wade: What abortion was really like.

Tomorrow at a House hearing on reproductive rights, three members of the House will testify about their pre-Roe abortions. That is, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash, will explain to the mostly male attendees about women’s reproductive lives prior to the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in 1973, Roe v. Wade. I’ve been there. I’m old enough to have gone through the experience, perhaps with a bit more luck than some other women, but with the same fear, secrecy, cost, and distress. In 1967 I was 23 years old, and had decided to end an intimate relationship with an older man who was purportedly divorced. Dear readers, he was not, but that’s nothing unusual in the male sexual lexicon of lies. My contraception failed following what I believed to be my last encounter with the man, and I anxiously consulted a prominent, ageing Fifth Avenue ob-gyn who had purportedly marched with Margaret Sanger. The doctor examined me, took some tests, and proclaimed me not to be pregnant. My monthly bleeding continued, much lighter than usual. And this was confusing, and apparently fairly common. The weeks went by. I became nauseated. I demanded that the doctor reexamine me, and she finally agreed that, yes, I was pregnant. And getting more pregnant every day. She declined to help me find an abortionist. My erstwhile boyfriend tried to call a variety of purported illegal abortionists for an appointment, but he was deemed suspicious because of his gender (he could have been with law enforcement) and was hence unable to schedule a procedure for me. My girlfriend gave me the name and telephone number of a preeminent ob-gyn in Union City, New Jersey, who performed abortions, and I scheduled an appointment, taking a bus to his office. He confirmed my pregnancy and scheduled me for a Saturday morning abortion in his office. That is, the doctor had a routine ob-gyn practice Monday through Friday and then performed abortions every Saturday morning, seven or eight each week. I remember the cost—$350—which was provided in cash by my boyfriend. And I remember asking to be the first patient that morning because I had a plane to catch to spend the afternoon with my parents looking for housing on the campus of a university where I was about to begin graduate studies. The doctor gave me a shot to numb the pain (it didn’t) and warned me not to make a sound that could frighten the other pregnant women waiting in the next room for their turn. Then followed twenty minutes of hell, cramps, and other uterine pain accompanying a procedure known as a dilation and curettage (D&C), whereby the uterus is scraped clean of its contents. I swore silently that I would never let another man touch me again as the interminable tremendously painful abortion procedure continued. The doctor indicated I was too far along for a D&C, but once it had been begun, he had to complete the procedure. The Fifth Avenue doctor was wrong about the duration of my pregnancy and I had been right all along. When it was over and the doctor escorted me to a recovery room, he asked if I were a nurse since I had not cried out during the painful procedure. I told him I was not. I guess many of the women, even younger than I, tended to scream and otherwise react audibly to the pain of the procedure. But I had girded my loins, so to speak, and used all my concentration to focus on the perfidy of men in general in order to remain silent. The doctor gave me a prescription for penicillin and instructed me to telephone him within a week to tell him if I had any negative aftereffects from the abortion. I did not have any aftereffects although I eventually had multiple miscarriages before finally having a child just before I turned 40. I don’t believe the miscarriages were related to the illegal abortion. But I will never know. The doctor in Union City is surely dead after all these years, and I wonder at my good fortune in locating a concerned, competent, caring doctor to give me another chance at a life that was yet to unfold before me over the decades. I could have been butchered. I could have been rendered sterile. I could have been left for dead. That doctor and thousands of others through the years prior to Roe deserve a medal for their courage in helping women choose whether or not to bear a child. The men who currently legislate reproductive laws that control women’s bodies are misogynists in the extreme by comparison.