Member-only story
My Abortion Story Doesn’t Matter
My Great-Grandmother’s Work as an Abortionist Doesn’t Either
In March of this year, I led a group of female writers through a 10-week program to write a personal story that was a “revelation’ to them. We performed our stories for an audience of other women. At that time, I chose to share my very private experience with abortion. Today (as Roe v. Wade falls), I feel compelled to share it with a larger audience even though it may be too late to matter.
I’m in a doctor’s office filling out a new patient form. The question stares at me, as if taunting me with its accusation. But I dutifully fill it out.
FOUR pregnancies, THREE children. It’s not the only time I think of him.Sometimes around August, I wonder who he might have become. That baby of mine.
He’d be 34 years old now. I imagine he’d have brown hair and hazel eyes. Taller than his father. Maybe with a cleft in his chin, like my husband’s grandfather or a twinkle in his eye like my beloved grandmother.
