My mom couldn’t wait to get me birth control. Growing up, she’d gently yet boldly say things like, “Every woman should have access to birth control” and “Whenever you’re ready, we’ll get you the pill.” Her feelings were so ingrained in me that I thought all moms were all about getting their teenage daughters birth control.
Despite this, I still went behind her back to get it at Planned Parenthood when I started having sex in high school. It wasn’t my mom’s fault — I was sneaky about everything, including going to raves around the Bay Area in the ’90s. And while I knew my parents wouldn’t approve of my drug use and all-night shenanigans, I didn’t know why my mom was so passionate about birth control.
Just shy of my 17th birthday, I was in my bedroom doing homework at our home in Oakland when my mom knocked on the door, entering while En Vogue’s sassy tunes flowed around the room.
“Honey, your father showed me a recent charge on the emergency credit card,” she said.
My pulse quickened. I put my pen down and turned to face her, wondering what it could be. Was it the AAA charge from when I locked my keys in the car (rave emergency)? Was it my new Adidas kicks from Foot Locker (fashion emergency)? Or was it my secret visit to Planned Parenthood to get birth control (emergency)?
“It was a charge to Planned Parenthood,” she said.
Not my slickest move. It was a passive way of telling my parents I was having sex. My skater/raver/tagger boyfriend and I had had one-minute sex a few times with condoms. And because of my mom’s adamancy about birth control, I’d wanted to get my hands on it ASAP. It felt like an emergency to get the pill — I was terrified of getting pregnant.
My mom told me she was glad I had taken the initiative to get birth control and said that when I needed refills, we could find a regular OBGYN through our health insurance. Surprised by my mom’s calm reaction, I felt terrible for not being more open with her about it. I told her I’d already started using it and was kind of excited that the doctor had told me that the pill could lessen menstrual cramps and clear up acne. My mom had also been excited about the possibility of the pill reducing her cramps when she was 19, she said.
Before the pill, she and her boyfriend from high school had used spermicidal foam and pulling out as birth control. After high school, my mom lived with her father in small-town Ohio while she went to college and worked part-time. She had gotten the pill, but when her supply ran out, she didn’t refill it right away.
She knew she was pregnant after missing a period. Instinctively, she just knew.
When she told her boyfriend, his response was “What are you going to do about it?”
Her response was “What are we going to do about it?”
There weren’t many options for unwanted pregnancies in the ’60s in the days before Roe v. Wade. You had to know people. My mom panicked as she scrambled to find help.
My mom felt like she wasn’t in a position to take care of a child. She also knew her boyfriend wasn’t “the one.” They agreed that they weren’t ready to get married — which is what you did back then before you got pregnant, ideally — and that they didn’t want to see the pregnancy through. There weren’t many options for unwanted pregnancies in the ’60s, in the days before Roe v. Wade. You had to know people. My mom panicked as she scrambled to find help.
She couldn’t tell her mother, who was divorced from her father. My mom had chosen to live with her father because her mother was too controlling. Plus, she was Catholic, and an unwanted pregnancy would have been a disgrace to the family. My mom also didn’t feel like she could tell her father or even her girlfriends, since they were all married and on their way to being pregnant in the socially approved way. Women who had sex before they were married were seen as loose, and my mom didn’t want to feel worse about herself.
Becoming antsier as time slipped by, she told a male friend from work whom she trusted. He was older, and she thought he might know of someone who could safely perform what was taboo: an abortion. Ideally, she had wanted a doctor, but doctors who performed abortions could get arrested. Her friend had found someone—a doctor, though she didn’t know much about his background, not even his name. Her boyfriend came up with the money — about $250, a pretty penny back then.
My mom’s friend drove her to a house where a man greeted her. The view out a window as she walked through his home, was, in fact, of a back alley. The man led her to a room in the back of his house.
My mom said, “It seemed clean. The room was in order—white sheets, and the instruments looked sterile. The doctor was nice. He probably served his community and knew what to do.” My mom didn’t ask any questions, because “you didn’t ask questions.” She had no choice but to trust him.
But the doctor asked her a question. He asked how far along she was. “Three months,” she told him. She lied; it was more like five months. She was desperate and didn’t want to lose her one chance—her one choice.
My mom remembers the procedure as being quick and not too painful. She went to sleep when she got home. Intense menstrual-like cramps woke her up. Contractions. A downward pressure made it feel like she had to go to the bathroom. She went to the bathroom, and something came out of her. It all had happened fast and painfully, and some details had been blurred—some rendered vivid—as is the case with trauma. The bleeding wouldn’t stop. She’d already used several maxi pads. She was alone.
She got in a taxi to see her OBGYN. He told her to go to the emergency room. He didn’t ask any questions. She didn’t ask questions. My mom thinks the doctor must have known what happened but was afraid to help her. Still bleeding, she called her male friend, but he couldn’t come. So she called her father, and — no questions — he took her to the ER.
The emergency-room doctor performed a D&C, a dilation and curettage procedure to stop the uterine bleeding. Her father stayed by her side while she recovered in the hospital for a couple of days. My mom said, “He didn’t talk and wasn’t angry. It was shocking, because he was such an authoritarian. He was just present.”
It was the closest she’s ever come to dying, but she has no regrets.
The doctor said my mom should still be able to have children — a huge relief. She also realized that her boyfriend, who didn’t visit her in the hospital or talk about it afterward, was a jerk. She went home, and it wasn’t mentioned again—life went on. My mom’s body healed, but the memory remains like a scar. She bottled up the emotions and felt grateful to be alive and to be able to have children when she was ready. My mom didn’t know the difference between getting an abortion at three months and five months of pregnancy, which, she assumed, is why she hemorrhaged. It was the closest she’d ever come to dying, but she had no regrets.
“I was probably just lucky,” she said.
Until abortion was legalized in 1973, some women weren’t as lucky as my mom, and they didn’t survive their illegal abortions. When a medical procedure isn’t performed correctly, complications are more likely, including when someone doesn’t receive proper post-op care. That goes for any elective procedure for anyone. Complications are rare when an abortion is performed safely by a doctor who has all the essential information.
My stomach turned, and my heart broke, when my mom told me her story that sunny afternoon. Of the women who lived to tell, many still won’t for various reasons.
In some states, abortion is under scrutiny. Ohio, where my mom had hers, recently banned abortions after five or six weeks — after a heartbeat is detected. The latest battle in Missouri is over a license from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services for the state’s only facility that performs abortions, Planned Parenthood. A St. Louis judge is allowing the clinic to continue operating (for now). And things could always be worse for women, Northern Ireland worse.
My stomach turned, and my heart broke when my mom told me her story that sunny afternoon. Of the women who lived to tell, many still won’t for various reasons. My mom still doesn’t talk about it among her girlfriends, but she told me, and with her permission, I’m telling you.
“That’s why I’m not mad at you for doing this,” she said to me. “I’m so relieved you have safe options.”
I nodded with her, relieved I had safe options too.
“Those were very different times. Worse times for women,” she continued.
It made me realize that abortion is about choice, and it’s also about life—my life, my mom’s life, every women’s life.
Sadness, surprise, gratitude, fear, sympathy: they all swirled around inside me. My family could have never existed. I could have never existed. My mom didn’t have the choices I had in 1997 (and still have today in California). It was a lot to take in. Compared to the emergency my mom had experienced, what I’d treated as an emergency was the result of insipience. It made me think about what life would be like if I accidentally got pregnant and how, like my mom, I wasn’t ready to raise a child. I was still practically a child myself. I’d feel trapped in my own body. Nobody should have to feel that way, especially about something as magical as childbearing. I got angry when I thought about someone else telling me what to do with my body. How would they like it if someone told them what to do with theirs? It made me realize that abortion is about choice, and it’s also about life—my life, my mom’s life, every women’s life.
My mom leaned over to hug me while I sat in an emotional stupor. Her embrace lifted me to standing, and I hugged her back, eager and fully. It had been too long since my mom and I had hugged. She was soft and safe and smelled like chamomile.
I felt a tightening in my chest like I was going to cry, but just as I was about to, she pulled away, saying, “I love you, sweetheart.” If I’d opened my mouth to say it back, I would have started to cry and wouldn’t have been able to stop, so I stared into her, holding back, toughened by the strength she’d just given me. I decided then that every woman should be able to choose what to do with their body. Period.
