My grandmother’s illegal abortion was the best possible kind. In the mid 1950s, she suspected she was pregnant and visited her doctor. He took a look at her, saw an unhappy woman with four kids struggling to make ends meet on her husband’s social worker salary, and performed an illegal, compassionate D&C on the spot. “In a very matter of fact way,” my mom remembers, “she said it was a blessing that he just accepted her dilemma and helped her.” My mother grew up, never learning of her mother’s illegal abortion until my grandma chose to testify. “I think she felt it was a private decision,” my mother says, “a decision between her and her doctor.” Today only Vermont, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., have no legal restrictions on abortion. And there’s no abortion law at all in Vermont, which could be a problem if the state ever shifts from blue to red.
Choice is integral to my family history. Choice, somewhat ironically, affords me the ability to write this story. See, when I got pregnant at 18, abortion was legal; when, in 1962, my mother got pregnant at 18, it was not. My grandmother, a social worker at a Chicago-area unwed-mother’s home, pressed my mother to give me up for adoption. Visiting the home, my mother asked, “What is this like, when you give up your baby? Can I spend a couple of days with my baby and just get to know him/her?” She was told that “it's best not to bond with the baby” and that the adoption agency took the baby right away.
She decided to keep her child, despite her mother’s pressure. “I already was attached,” my mom says. She married my biological father; then she divorced him when I was about six months old, raising me as a single mother for the next seven years. “I felt strongly that a person ought to have a choice,” says my mom when she reflects on being a young, unmarried, and pregnant college student. Had abortion been legal in 1962 when my blonde, skinny mom got pregnant, maybe I wouldn’t be here. Maybe I would—even my mom isn’t sure what her decision would have been. Because of my mom’s decision, I am here now, writing this article about my grandmother’s choice, my mother’s choice, and my own.
