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I was a teen-ager, so completely uninformed, that I didn’t really quite understand how sexual acts were performed. I was a teen-ager with such a crush on an older fellow (A WWII Vet of 24) that I allowed him to do whatever he wanted with me, which hurt a heckuva lot, caused much bleeding and kept him coming to the door. And, of course, I got pregnant. Telling parents was out of the question. Nothing to do but find a way out, ask the right people the right questions, get my older sister to fork up some money, all of which meant --quite literally -- a back-alley abortion.

Inside Boston’s Beacon Hill, the streets wind dark and narrow, the houses are ancient. Some are mansions with priceless lavender glass windows dating from the eighteenth century, some are ready to fall down upon themselves, and some appear to have already begun to do so. It is to one of the latter to which I am directed.

A small, dark, foreign-looking man in a business suit answers my knock. “You wait here,” he says, and leaves me in a little room with a day-bed kind of couch, covered in dark cordory and occupied by a very large grey cat. There is a saucer of milk on the window sill for the cat, who pays no attention to me at all.

Then, the man comes for me and we go to another room, painted in a dark cream color and outfitted minimally with an examination table, a cabinet and a sterilization tray complete with shiny, lethal-looking instruments. Waiting for me at the foot of the table is a short, squat, bald-headed man wearing surgical scrubs and mask. From behind the mask, he says, “OK, now don’t be scared. I’m Dr. A, and t his will be over for you very quickly. It will be painful, because I am not going to anaesthetize you, that is not what we do in these situations. You will have to bear with me, follow all directions and remain quiet, evern when it hurts. Are you ready?”

It hurts. It makes that first time with my “date” feel llike a love-pat. It hurts in a different way. The “date’s” pain was sharp. This is blunt. It hurts all the way up inside of me, a terrible dull rending of my soul being torn out of my body. I’m on my own. I wish I could cry, I want to die, and then it’s over.
Dr. A. Says, “Good girl, that was good. You did that really well. Good. Everything is good. Now you go in the other room and rest for a bit and thenyou go home and rest some more. You will bleed for a few days, don’t worry about that, it’s OK, it all went very well, you will be fine”

He gives me some pads. I manage, somehow, to get off the table and find my way back to that room with the little couch. The cat is still there, now lapping at the saucer. I visualize it full of blood, the cat licking a saucer full of blood, with maybe a few chunks of fetal tissue added. I curl up on my side, trying to survive till it’s time for my older sister to pick me up.

The next day, I do, in fact, pass a rather large piece of fetal tissue. It comes out of me looking for all the world like a chunk of raw calves liver, and when it comes, it is accompanied by a spurt of blood. I tell my Mother that I am having really bad menstrual cramps along with a terrible cold, and stay in bed for almost a week, surreptitiously crawling to the washing machine to launder the blood-soaked bath-towels I’ve been using, while Mother is out doing her daily grocery shopping. There is so much bleeding, I’m beginning to be scared, but my fear of telling parents is greater than fear of death, so I just lie there, wondering if I had just murdered a boy or a girl. Today, of course, I am quite aware that I had been hemorrhaging severely enough to have bled to death. But that was a long time ago.

When Roe vs. Wade became law in 1973, can you imagine my gratitude? Not for myself, because that was in the past, but for the many, countless many other girls or women who would not ever have to go through what had happened to me. Roe vs. Wade, Oh God, this meant that women now had choice, had control over their bodies, over their fate -- had control of what was right for them, and what was not.

Did I think every pregnant woman who was inconvenienced by pregnancy would choose to abort? Of course not! Some would give their infants up for adoption, some would choose to rear them as single Moms, some would give their babies to willing parents, and some would co-join with the baby’s father and actually become a true family. And the choice for any and all of the above was that of the WOMAN. What a blessing, what a step out from under the opression of an out-dated culture that saw women as -- if no longer chattle -- then still, most definitely, as inferior beings who had no right to their own power. Up to Roe vs. Wade, it was still OK for a man to impregnate a woman, and then walk off whistling, rather proud of his masculinity, but under absolutely no obligation to ever even see the woman in question again. Pregnant? Hey, that was her problem.

Now, for the first time, a woman was seen as an independent, person with the intelligence and ability to choose what course of action was correct for her as an individual. And, choosing whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, choosing to do what is right not only for herself, but for the infant, became a fact of life.

Oh, the joy with which I prayed for them all, for all the ones who would make that decision towards the highest good not only of themselves, but for highest good of all involved. What a blessing. It took survivors like me to truly understand the true meaning of Roe vs. Wade.

And now, women are facing a return to the early nineteenth century. Several factors are in play, the first one being the appointment of completely neo-conservative Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. A former Texas Supreme Court Justice, it’s pretty apparant to Belt-Way Insiders that Gonzales, after completing a suitable stint at Justice, is actually slated for a spot on the United States Supreme Court.

After all, Rehnquist in eighty years old, and neither Ginsberg nor O’Connor are getting any younger. Besides Gonzales, in the wings are such anti-abortion conservatives as Janice Rogers Brown, famous for her anti Rove vs. Wade stance, and J. Harvey Wilinson, III, who currently sits on the ultra-conservative Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. And there are many more avowed neo-cons standing in line, not only for the Supreme Court, but for Circuit Courts all over the U.S.A. just waiting to overturn not just Roe vs. Wade, but many other hard-won civil liberty rights.

Think I’m kidding? Want an example? On Saturday, November 20, 2004, in its first sign of post-election power by abortion opponents , Congress approved a bill that would permit hospitals and HMOS to avoid state requirements that they provide abortion services.

And the icing on the cake, the cherry on the sundae is President Bush’s selection of Dr. W. David Hager to head the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. This position, by the way, does not require Congressional approval

Because this committee has not met for more than two years, its charter has lapsed, which means that Dr. Hager, in conjuction with President Bush, will now fill eleven resultant vacancies.

This particular FDA committee makes crucial decisions on matters relating to -- amongst other things -- contraception and medical alternatives for sterilization and pregnancy termination.

Now, here’s the scoop on Dr. Hager, the author of “As Jesus Cared for Women, Restoring Women Then and Now.” This book blends biblical accounts of Christ healing women with case studies from Hager’s practice. His views of reproductive health are far outside the mainstream of reproductive technology. Dr. Hager is a practicing OB/GYN who describes himself as “pro-life” and refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women.

Dr. Hager, together with his wife, wrote another book, this one titled, “Stress and the Woman’s Body.” In this one, he suggests that women who suffer from premenstrual syndrome should seek helop from reading the bible and praying.

And, finally, as editor and contributing author of “The Reproduction revolution: A Christian Appraisal of Sexuality, Reproductive Technologies and the Family,” Good old Dr. Hager appears to have endorsed the medically inaccurate assertion that the common birth control pill is an “abortifacient.”

So,, we have come full circle. It is only a matter of time before we brand a scarlett letter on the foreheads of that women who choose abortion, and pretty soon after that, why, we’ll just burn ‘em at the stake. Harlots, every one.
Please, please, all who read this, contact your legislator. And do it now. Do not put this off. The future of your daughters depends on your action now. Like Homer said, just before he wrote the Odyssey: “The man who acts least, disrupts the most.” And, please do note that in this quote, Homer did not recognize women as even existing...... That’s gotta change, folks, or we’ll be right back where I started: In a back alley of Boston’s Beacon Hill, watching a cat lap milk from a saucer that I envisioned as filled with blood.

Doris Colmes, MSW