Legislators in La La Land
It was 1968. She was fourteen. She had sex, for the very first time, with her one and only boyfriend. He wore a condom—but discovered, after the fact, that it had broken.
When ignoring the symptoms didn’t make them go away, she finally scheduled a pregnancy test, under an assumed name. With the unthinkable confirmed, afraid to tell her parents, she turned to her teenaged friends for help; something besides marrying the jobless boyfriend and dropping out of school.
Armed with detailed instructions, and several hundred dollars the boyfriend stole from his employer in a single act of desperation, two teen couples drove through the night across two state lines to a specified phone booth in a hotel lobby. A call was placed. A secret password uttered. Shortly thereafter a “chauffeur” appeared and took the young girl and her boyfriend on a ride. Blindfolded.
Their destination was an apartment in a large complex. The procedure took place on a double bed in the bedroom. The “doctor” and the “nurse” did their best to comfort her, but that young girl would tell you it was not painless. There was no anesthesia. The chauffeur returned the couple to the hotel, where their friends were waiting in a room with two beds. After one night’s rest, the teens made the return journey home. She bled, in secret, for days. But she was one of the lucky ones. She recovered.
The young woman in the story is not a fictional character. Neither is she unique. But our state legislature and our governor have chosen to either disbelieve such creatures exist or to not give a damn. Criminalizing abortion will not stop abortion. It will make it more expensive and less safe. It will jeopardize the well-being of women, young and not-so-young, who are so distraught by an unwanted pregnancy they will take their chances in the proverbial dark alley rather than bear a child whose future is dim and who dims the future for all those involved. It has been the case whenever legal abortion was unavailable.
What might stop abortion, or at least acutely minimize it, is an unabridged sex education that begins in elementary school and continues until graduation, easy access to birth control regardless of age or gender, the cessation of demonizing young women for something natural that has been going on since the dawn of time, and for lawmakers to put their money where their mouths are by guaranteeing all children, planned or otherwise, can get the emotional, physical, and financial support they need until they are of age to care for themselves.
Of course, abortion is an awful thing (unless you are the unsanctioned provider of a lucrative illegal service). But so is the inadvertent sacrifice of a terrified teenager’s life. Or a baby born into endless poverty.
Now, in all fairness, there are likely some legislators who are too young to remember life before Roe v. Wade. And those old enough, might have no first-hand experience.
For those of you who think this new Arkansas law will prevent loss of human life, please re-read the above story, and imagine a less hopeful ending. The butchery has hardly begun.
Until we, as a nation, can provide rational, supportive alternatives, abortion needs to be safe and available to women who feel they need it. And wouldn’t it be lovely if these women could talk honestly about it with people they trust, without fear of being judged immoral—or incriminating a sympathetic healthcare provider?