My Mother’s Abortion

[kpete]

My Mother’s Abortion
By BETH MATUSOFF MERFISH

ON June 25, I sat with my mother and sister in the gallery of the Texas State Senate to support Wendy Davis, a Democratic senator, in her filibuster against legislation that would limit abortions after 20 weeks and impose new regulations that would leave just a few abortion clinics open....

My mother, Sherry Matusoff Merfish, sat and yelled in indignation beside my sister and me in the Senate gallery. She has two graduate degrees and has built an immensely satisfying career as a political fund-raiser devoted to the election of women who support abortion rights. She also embodies maternal warmth.

My mother chose to abort her first pregnancy, in 1972....

........................

What the movement for reproductive rights needs is for the faces of freedom to emerge from the captivity of shame. To my mother’s generation, I ask: Speak openly about the choices you have made. To all women: ask your mothers, grandmothers, godmothers, aunts, sisters, daughters and partners about their reproductive histories. Show that abortion has myriad faces: those of women we love, respect and cherish. You have the power to cement in the minds of your communities and families the importance of reproductive freedom. You have made decisions that are private, even anguishing, but the weight of this political moment demands that you shed light on those decisions.

The opposition is frightening, as more states try to restrict abortion, but there is tremendous power and safety in numbers. You are part of a society of women who have been incredibly courageous; I ask humbly for yet another show of that bravery.


the rest:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/08/opinion/my-mothers-abortion.html?_r=1&
http://whiskeyfire.typepad.com/whiskey_fire/2013/07/what-you-can-politely-say-about-your-abortion.html

[sinkingfeeling]

1. I agree. I will talk about the 'justification' for my abortion in 1977 and

about my mother's illegal, back-alley abortion in 1938.

[MiniMe]

2. I was growing up at that time, and I still remember the stories of the girls/women who died

Or could never have children. The repukes are making the docs somewhere (don't remember the state) tell women now that if they have an abortion, it will interfere with their ability to have kids in the future. That was the reason for making abortion legal, not for putting it to the back alleys again. These laws they are trying to pas will not stop abortion any more than it stopped it before it was legal, it will just make it worse for women.

[lapislzi]

3. Powerful.

Funny, I will talk to almost anyone about my abortion except my daughter, who, at 19, is certainly old enough to know.

I guess it's time.

[kpete]

4. its not easy to talk to Family members

and NONSENSE to have to deal with government interventions...


peace, kp

[REP]

5. Abortion has never been secret nor shameful in my family

Everyone knows about my grandmother's two abortions - she told everyone, especially when she was on a pro-choice picket line! She was born in 1895; her abortions were in the 1920s.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

6. definitely a movement that needs to happen. Great essay!

[LWolf]

7. My mother's abortion

1962 and illegal almost made me an orphan and ensured that I would remain an only child.

[lindysalsagal]

9. Same as my mothers' abortion.

She was a divorced teacher and would have lost her job and probably us had she carried to term.

She did it for me. She risked her life for me.

That's why the abortion legislation is nonsense: The procedures will only become illegal and dangerous.

[Grammy23]

8. My aunt had an abortion in either the 1920s or early 1930s.

She had gotten married to a man who turned out to be a "cad". This according to a newspaper article I read about their divorce that took place 3 or 4 months after they were married. Imagine that?! There really was a newspaper article about their divorce and yes, it identified her EX as a "cad".

In any case, she discovered she was pregnant by this man and her sister-in-law who was a nurse, helped arrange for her to go to a doctor in their town who performed an abortion.

This all happened long before I was born and the only reason I know about it is that my older sister told me after I was an adult. To my knowledge, no one else ever told me about it or discussed it in my presence.

My aunt never married again and lived out her life with her mother. They lived like two sisters (my grandmother was young when she gave birth to my aunt) and she worked for the same employer for 40+ years. She was very religious and to my knowledge didn't even date again. Knowing my aunt, this was, without doubt, one of the most painful episodes of her life. To suggest that women enter into these decisions lightly or without regret or remorse is to ignore the thousands of women who live with what they chose to do. Choice being the operative word. I do not think she would change her choice but was human enough to think of that experience many times in her life. I include in that memory, the choice to date and then marry a man who turned out to not be the man she thought he was. Life is complicated. Choices are difficult. Sometimes we just have to make our best effort to do what is "right at the time" and go forward from there. To think that someone else (the state) should make that choice for you is unthinkable to me.

[raccoon]

10. These 2 paragraphs I have to quote:

"I was shocked: at 18, I naïvely believed that only other women — not my family and certainly not my mother — needed this right that our family had long supported. We had volunteered at Planned Parenthood and canvassed for candidates who supported abortion rights. My mother said she wanted to reassure me that I had no reason to doubt her support in any situation I might face in my own life. Although it took a few years for the shock to wear off, knowing made me even more proud of her and more determined to defend reproductive rights.

Recently, I heard my mother reveal her experience to four friends who are devoted to protecting women’s right to choose. Strikingly, two of them revealed that they had had an abortion, and the other two had close friends who’d had an abortion. None had told my mother before. "


(froom the nytimes link story)