The “she” in question is Madeleine Albert Berenson, a freelance writer living in Boulder Colorado. The “what” she says better than I ever could is explain why a woman’s decision on whether to have a child when she becomes pregnant should be her business, and hers alone (via The Washington Post):
Twenty-eight years ago this month, I was 19 years old, single and six months pregnant. […]
I’ll never forget coming home from the People’s Community Clinic in a daze the previous December — disbelieving and terrified by what I’d just learned and completely unprepared for my boyfriend’s reaction to the news. When I told him the test was positive, that I was, in fact, pregnant, I saw myself disappear from his view. He looked through me, past me, as though I were no longer in the room. […]
I left, naively believing that in a week or so he would be sorry and come after me and that together we would work through the unexpected challenges of our newly defined and shared future.
To make a long story short: It didn’t happen. […]
[N]o one knows better than I do that an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy is an experience that should not be wished on — let alone mandated to — a worst enemy. The fear, isolation, financial hardship, emotional sacrifice and physical danger involved simply can’t be quantified. Sometimes they are all severe, sometimes only some are — every woman is different, and every situation is different.
But all of these factors are always there. And no one has the right to tell any woman faced with this profound circumstance how she should feel, what she should endure and what she must do. No matter how reasonable or justified or righteous any course of action may seem to someone in his or her own house, office, church or courtroom, at the end of the day, it is your own house you come home to, your own night you stare into and your own future you are choosing. Not theirs.
What was her choice? Does it really matter? It was her business, not mine.
Precisely.
Steven, I wrote a diary last year that speaks of this, what an unwanted pregnancy can do to a teenager and her son when we are forced into motherhood. You were kind enough to promote it and then to keep it on the recommended diary list.
I offer it up here again because Ms. Berenson is so right.
You stand so strongly for a woman’s right to choose and you understand so clearly what it is like for women to be put in the place of having to make a choice. If only we could clone you Steven, if only.
The Scars That Keep On Giving and Taking
It’s still shocking to me how many men who profess to be liberals, progressives and left leaning simply don’t understand at all, some are pro-choice by default only or keep repeating that they should be rare when they are already so rare a majority of women have no access or funding.
It’s still not uncommon to be called babykillers and worse by progressives, and the truth is, many of us women don’t know how to explain fully what it all entails, especially in this raging war against our reproductive rights that has now become commonplace in this country.
So I offer up a diary written that tries to explain in a story the effect it has on women, on this woman.
Thanks again, for your stance, for your understanding and for fighting our fight side by side with us.
My own experience as a 17 year old teenager impregnated by a 32 year old married man in a state that did not allow abortion at that time was extremely painful. I had no choice but to give the child up for adoption. At a later time in that same state (CA) when abortion became legal, and I was an adult,I had an abortion. While it was not fun (birth control is a better choice) it was certainly a less painful option for me.
Nadia, as you did, I got pregnant again and had an abortion, I was so grateful I had the choice, it has informed my opinion on women’s right to choose, we deserve to have dominion over our own bodies, period.
I have been so blessed. I have been pregnant once, and I have a beautiful daughter. I screwed around unprotected (it was the 80’s), but the one time I did pregnant, I had been married for years and hoped the child would help our floundering marriage. She didn’t. I gave my husband a say, and he opted to have the child. She was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but I never regret it for a minute. She is far more worthy of my attention that he ever was.
At any rate, I volunteered for the front lines at many clinics in my home town. I was a very active member of several pro-choice groups. My home town gave birth to Terry Randall and I will never forget him. I routinely harassed him and his followers. I ushered many a woman past violent and sometimes dangerous lines so that they could hear their choices and make informed decisions.
I have promised my own daughter that is she should get pregnant too soon, I would always find a way to get her a safe abortion. And yes, I have counseled her repeatedly on safe sex and birth control. I have the means to send her overseas, if need be, but I still worry about those without. I would support any movement that helped women get the care they need Because if things continue on this course, our girls won’t have access to reasonable medical care.
Berenson and I had a lovely email exchange after this column, really constructive.
I have to aske for permission to publish our exchange.
Please do. I’d love to read it if possible.
The proponents of forced pregnancy, as clearly shown in their writings over the years and in the language of the recent Supreme Court decision, believe that women are not capable of making sound decisions on their own. We must save them from themselves.
They keep telling us this, and we keep not believing that they mean what they keep saying.