The Crucial Right to Legal Abortion
I’m reflecting on how crucial the right to legal abortion has been in my life.
I needed an abortion in 1978. I was married to a violently abusive man. I had a three-year-old son and became pregnant again after a condom failed. I realized I couldn’t escape from my husband or support myself if I had that baby. There was no legal abortion in the state where I lived, so I went to a clinic in another state and had an abortion. Soon after, I left my husband.
As for contraceptives, I had to stop using the birth control pill because it damaged my thyroid. I tried the then newly invented Dalkon Shield IUD for women who had never been pregnant. It caused me weeks of pain, and then I hemorrhaged and had to have it removed. (I later learned that the Dalkon Shield had killed or disabled over three hundred thousand women globally.) That left only the diaphragm, condoms, and the rhythm method—all unreliable.
Canada
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of women
(Present Time 208, July 2022)