Roe v. Wade: A Personal Story

The news of the impending revocation of Rose v. Wade has shaken me. I fear that there are too many unprivileged, poor, and underserved young women who have taken this right as a given. It is they who must be reminded of historic reality and rise up. They must be the ones to remove the old white men and their sycophants seeking to take away freedom of choice. Maybe my story of a choice before this freedom can be the motivation for a few.

Those of you who are friends, colleagues, or follow me know what a wonderful life I’ve lived and a career in which I’ve flourished, both of which have enabled me to also be of service to others. But none of this would have happened if I had been forced to have a baby at 17.

I got knocked up in the middle of my senior year in high school. The relationship was a stupid infatuation with a community college athlete wannabe. I was starting to get my college acceptance letters and suddenly all the dreams that had been cultivating were threatened when I missed my second period. I was sharing a bedroom with Mable and 6-month-old Ouida. I knew that was not the direction I wanted my life to take.

My father and I had one of those serious kitchen table conversations I used to watch him and my mother have when she was alive. I’d heard about abortions, that they were illegal and dangerous. My best friend’s younger sister had survived one. It was my only recourse. Pop accepted my decision, agreed to help, and reached out to my friend’s mother. Arrangements were made.

I had yet to have my first gynecological exam, so I was clueless about what I was about to experience. Lying on a coffee table covered with towels and old newspaper, a woman inserted a catheter on the end of a coat hanger into my cervix. It hurt and I immediately began to bleed. She told me it would be like having a period. My father paid her and took me home.

I bled dark, clotty blood for 4-5 days and began to have chills and fever. Pop took me to the emergency room at Compton’s Dominquez Hospital. I was admitted and diagnosed with a life-threatening parenteral infection. I remained hospitalized, given antibiotics via IV, for 3 days. On the day that Pop came to bring me back home, he arrived with several more college acceptance letters. There were tears in his eyes and I wasn’t sure if they were of joy or sadness, or both. But I was relieved to be on the way back to my dreams.

As we’re already realizing here in the US, regulations that force women to travel, require mandatory counseling or waiting periods, lead to loss of income and unplanned costs and make abortion inaccessible to women with low resources. Those women who choose to take dominion of their bodies are forced to seek out clandestine, unsafe options. In 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 130,000 women attempted self-induced abortions or obtained illegal abortions, resulting in 39 deaths. In 2021, the WHO reported that in developed countries, 18% of abortions are still unsafe and estimated that 30 women die for every 100,000 unsafe abortions. Those who survive still risk long-term health complications such as infertility, poor wound healing, and psychological damage.

A study from the University of Colorado Boulder found that a blanket ban of abortion in the U.S. would lead to a 21% increase of pregnancy-related deaths overall. Ending Roe won’t affect the number of abortions performed, only the number of safe abortions performed.

Forced to make a decision like the one I made, why must the choice of women without the means to seek a legal abortion be one between life and death, literally and figuratively? How many women will not be able to become who they choose to be? Stand up, young women! Take this torch members of your grandmother’s generation have held high and become activists with your voice and vote to keep it there.

In faith and gratitude,