At a recent gathering of friends, six of the seven of us mothers, a discussion began about pregnancy outside of marriage. While we agreed there would be little shame these days, we knew earlier generations of women had suffered terrible consequences from such unplanned pregnancies.

“Do any of you remember before abortion was legal?" asked the first grade teacher, a woman in her 50s. "Well, I remember. I knew girls who had coat-hanger abortions. It was awful."

We shook our heads in sympathy and disgust. Just imagining what happens during a "coat-hanger abortion" made my skin crawl.

"Thank God it’s legal now," said my court reporter friend, a leggy athlete in her 40s.

"How many of us have had abortions?" the first grade teacher asked suddenly throwing her hand in the air daring the rest of us to be honest.

The fourth grade teacher put up her hand. Then the daycare provider. Then the devout Catholic journalist, and the stay-at-home mom. Finally, I put up my own hand. Only one of us, a mother of three, sat with her hand still on her lap, her face frozen in awe as she surveyed the six raised arms around her.

"Wow," said the court reporter as she considered the terrified pregnant teenagers we had each been.

"Wow," I said thinking of all the babies who hadn't been born.

"We didn't have a choice," the court reporter said as if reading my mind

"We had choices," I said. "We could have placed our babies for adoption."

My friends knew I'd say that. I had adopted my two sons, both of whom were born to pregnant teens. Infertility followed my own abortion and adoption was the only way I could become a mother when the time came I was ready to become one.

I often thought about the choice I had made as a teenager. I have no regrets. I am the mother I am to the boys I adore because of all the decisions I've made in my life, including abortion. Still, my sons are my own because other pregnant girls didn't make the same choice I did.

I can't shake the nagging ambivalence I feel about that.

I had my excuses, though. Adoption was shrouded in secrecy and shame when I became pregnant in 1978. Abortion offered what seemed the only solution to a problem so big it seemed capable of devouring me.

It was abortion or end up like Janis, a student at our Connecticut high school who carried her baby to term and placed it for adoption under the stare of our snickering classmates. Even now, some 30 years later, if someone doesn't remember her name they call her "the girl who gave away her baby."

Abortion rescued me from that.

Many of us who gratefully sought abortion after it was newly legalized in the '70s are mothers now. And the issue has become more complicated than it seemed when we were young. For some of us, abortion is regarded as our liberator; for others it’s our burden.

My friend with the three children stirred and I noticed her eyes glistened with tears.

"I never told anyone," she whispered lifting her hand slightly.

"You, too?" I asked.

She nodded, a tear slipping down her cheek.

Each of us had dealt with the experience of abortion in our own way. Some of us struggled with the memory, others barely thought about it. But every one of us in the room had been shaped by it.

Abortion is part of who we are.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

Labels: Laura-Lynne Powell

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