To me it‘s simple. It‘s a matter of life and death. If we don‘t help women they will die. They will suffer. I take offense at any anti-abortionist being called pro-life. I am pro-life. I‘ve saved the lives of women. —Reverend Robert Hare, Ally for choice
Of course, as a man I have never really had the prominence a woman would have, because in the Women‘s Movement a man really hasn‘t much of a place [laughs]. I‘m not being bitter, it‘s just a fact of life. —Lawrence Lader, Activist for choice
Feminism is for everyone!
If you can‘t help me, I‘m going to take the rented VW and drive it off a bridge and commit suicide.
“If the right of privacy means anything it is the right of the individual to be free to decide to bear or beget a child.” That was Baird v. Eisenstadt.
If single people have the right to birth control, how can they not have the right to have sex? If people have the right to sex and birth control under the right to privacy, then I figured they should also have the right to abortion for the same reason. —Bill Baird, Activist for choice
PREACH!
To show you how dumb people could be – in Freehold, New Jersey, the Commissioner of Welfare, a man by the name of Marcus Daley, said he was going to jail unwed mothers under the charge of fornication. The law said, “Crimes Against Chastity”: If you print, publish, distribute, or give any information about any contraceptive means whatsoever, it was a crime. A felony crime!
She had the mistaken idea that if you take a piece of coat hanger, wrap it with adhesive tape, so it‘s not quite so sharp, and you scratch the wall of the uterus to induce bleeding, you‘ll abort. But she slipped one half inch and that coat hanger went through the wall of the uterus, into a major blood vessel. She hemorrhaged to death.
I cannot begin to stress how vital it is that abortion be kept legal and safe!
Look what we have done to countries that are now eager to have family planning programs with abortion as a back up, which they desperately need. Our pious administration has denied that, resulting in thousands of children dying of starvation. This is what happens to all those unborn eggs striving for personhood that they say they‘re protecting.
The fertility of the human species is so enormous that during the female reproductive life there are some 400 possible pregnancies, and the implications are enormous for our continued existence on Earth. Every time a human being comes into the world it puts a strain on the planet. There are thousands of children who die of starvation every year, in spite of Mother Teresa.
We cannot talk about these things enough. Women must be reminded, the citizenry of our world needs to be reminded, we must have control of our reproductive lives. When you create a situation in which control over women‘s bodies and minds is put at the mercy of those in power, you also institutionalize the misuse of power against them. When the dominating pious attitudes of the fundamentalist religions become law, they put women & children at risk.
When we relegate abortion to the underworld we are putting dangerous tools in the hands of naïve people or greedy people. When women are at the mercy of a cutthroat system, anything can happen to them.
#abortionishealthcare #keepabortionfundedsafeandlegal
...to help her abort, someone had put kerosene in her uterus.
Oh my god. #keepabortionfundedsafeandlegal
In the business and professions code in California it was a felony to write or talk or give any information about any means or method for inducing abortion. That was the law, and that applied to medical schools, public health departments, everyone. You could not talk about abortion or contraception.
⬆️Trumpy‘s gag rule before 1973. Well guess what, motherfucker. You are out of luck because I refuse to be silent!
So, we have this thing called “legalized abortion,” and that gives those people out there another reason to insist that it be illegalized, demeaned and discredited by using semantic tricks.
The words “legalized abortion” are anathema. We don‘t have “legalized tooth extractions” or “legalized vasectomies.” The only medical-surgical procedure that carries a stigma is abortion. All other medical-surgical procedures are protected by existing laws, and if they were applied evenly and equally, we wouldn‘t need specific laws concerning abortion.
The word “abortion” was not used by the mass media until 1962. It was always “illegal operation.”
If you could‘ve seen the form a woman had to fill out if she “claimed” rape! If she “claimed” rape or “claimed” incest, she was dragged in the gutter by what she had to do. And at the end of the form there was a very threatening statement saying something like, “Anyone guilty of perjury is liable to up to six months‘ imprisonment. That form was in effect until we were able to expose it.
I just get furious at any of these religions that demand you give over your health and well-being, your civil rights. I believe that Catholicism is a fundamentalist religion, and that powerful fundamentalist religions dictate what really goes on in the United States.
THEY DO.
I was brought up in the Catholic Church, where the rule for women is that they are incubators. I felt such an assault on my own personal rights as a human being. To be categorized by ironclad, written-in-stone law that says my uterus is going to dominate me was absolutely unthinkable.
I agree...religion is trash. It has no place inside anyone‘s body!
...became so desperate she jumped in front of a subway train...survived with a fractured skull, fractured shoulder bones, fractured pelvis, and spent four months in the hospital. Her child was delivered about three months later—perfectly normal. I thought if a woman was willing to go to that length to avoid a pregnancy she didn‘t want, then something really ought to be done, and I became an active advocate of abortion from that time on.
To say that they are adoptive people out there who are just eager to have these children, well, sure if they are blonde, blue-eyed little girls of documented genetic heritage, well, that may be true, but that isn‘t true for a Black kid. That isn‘t true for a lot of kids. And the process is so goddamn slow that by the time it actually takes place, they are already damaged individuals.
Trust womxn to make their own decisions!
I just thought it was bizarre how these people would think that they knew how to perform abortions with coat hangers and lye. I couldn‘t understand that.
It is imperative that abortion is legal and safe!!!!!
So you see, the problem is that anywhere abortion is illegal, any woman who has a miscarriage can be suspected of an illegally self-inflicted abortion. And that affects the entire medical care of women who are pregnant if abortion is criminal; doctors are subject to legal prosecution themselves, and so they become paranoid. And if doctors are affected, women are affected, especially those who are unmarried.
I miscarried, and I needed to see a doctor because the bleeding didn‘t stop. I got into a whole situation of being in a country where none of these things are acknowledged at all, and could find no doctor who was willing to treat a woman for this sort of thing if she was unmarried.
Attacking abortion is also attacking anyone who miscarries.
And I guess the first thing you did in those days was to start asking friends. You know, start making phone calls and asking if anyone had an abortion, or this and that.
In times of witch hunts or sexual repression, when people talk about events, they always talk about ~other~ people. That‘s a kind of code that you must understand.
All peoplx need sexual and reproductive healthcare. Abortion is part of that care. Never think ‘it won‘t happen to me‘.
The minute I had one experience with illegal abortion, I knew it had to be legalized. That‘s why I‘m sitting here telling you thirty-five years later. I tell my students constantly that all they have to do is know what it was like – and they better get on the bus, they better get to Washington.
You always hear horror stories about the dirt: dirty fingernails, instruments that were not sterilized, but I think sometimes the horror had to do with other things. I think for many people the illegality was very frightening, not only in the sense of what the punishment might be if you were caught. It seems to me that any woman would feel a lot of fear about the possibility of the operation being stopped in the middle.. a very ghastly thought.
I was very relieved that I have managed to get out of this mess. I had no feelings of being guilty or having been a murder, or…I had none of that.
#shoutyourabortion
It felt absolutely clear to me that I had to have the abortion.
Bust stigma!
I never thought about it after that. In the beginning, maybe, yes, for a while. But I really never think about it. Especially now—what‘s to think about?
#shoutyourabortion
I never knew another woman who had an abortion in those years. I felt that there was no one to turn to. Only in the past ten years did I know any other women who acknowledged they had had an abortion. My generation just did not talk about it.
We NEED to talk about it! #shoutyoursbortion
My first reaction was really suicidal. I couldn‘t think of anything else to do, commit suicide or have an abortion. Those were the only two viable options as far as I was concerned.
Abortion is also mental healthcare!
I think it is so essential for women to have the choice of having a clinical abortion where you are safe, and where you are treated with dignity, you don‘t have to go through that terrible pain, and it doesn‘t cost all that money and you‘re not going to die if something goes wrong, and the guy is not going to run away and let you bleed to death.
Yes! And abortion should be FREE!
The doctor told me I couldn‘t get an abortion without my husband‘s permission; he would have to sign for it! I told him that the reason I came all the way down here was to get ~away~ from the man! I couldn‘t hop a plane and go back and have him sign this! I cried and I wept and I begged him to do it anyway.
If abortion had been legal that first time around, I never would‘ve married Jack. I knew abortion wasn‘t a “nice” thing to do, but I would‘ve done it. I didn‘t love him. I didn‘t even look up to him in anyway, and he certainly wasn‘t a “catch.” My life would‘ve been very different. I would‘ve had been spared the fifteen years of terror in marriage.
No matter what had happened, I don‘t think I would‘ve reported them because I felt that they were necessary…these abortion people.
Abortion healthcare providers are always necessary! Safe abortion is necessary!
People have said to me, “How can you be in favor of abortion? If you‘d had one, you wouldn‘t have these beautiful children.” But I would have had them. I just would‘ve had them later. And I would‘ve found a nicer man to be their father. I would‘ve been more prepared and all our lives would have been so much easier.
We decide! Each and every single womxn is capable of making her own decisions!
It‘s horrifying, now that I know what a gynecologist is supposed to do. I went back to the dorm and cried and cried. I took scalding hot baths for days and tried to throw myself down the stairs – I heard that was the way women had miscarriages – but that was difficult to do without hurting myself.
Abortion access is vital! #keepabortionfundedsafeandlegal
Imagine: Marilyn Monroe was a national heroine, the ultimate sex symbol, and girls everywhere were supposed to dress up in strapless dresses and four-inch heels but we weren‘t supposed to have sex. We were supposed to have love and romance. It was doubly confusing to me, because I had been encouraged by my mother to dress and look very attractive and seductive. I was attractive to men, but I was not supposed to be attracted to them.
I don‘t remember being emotionally involved in it at all. All my feelings were cut off. It was something I just needed to do, and I did it. It was just something I needed to do, and I did whatever I needed to do to get it accomplished. I just didn‘t want to have a child then, and I‘m glad I didn‘t, because it would‘ve meant bringing a child I resented into this world.
#shoutyourabortion
I hated the people who were against abortion. I hated them. It was like they were sentencing women. To me, having a child at that point would have been a jail sentence. A very foreboding thought—to be trapped—to be held down for so many years. It was unthinkable that people were forced to do that. Or being jeopardized by having illegal abortions that were very, very dangerous, with coat hangers or whatever.
The child suffers when it‘s alive, not when it‘s not formed yet. I feel strongly, and that‘s why abortions were nothing to me. I never felt guilty.
Preach!
It was a great relief not being pregnant anymore.
#shoutyourabortion
Those years are so vivid to me that seeing these kids who are uninvolved in the issue…abortion has always been there for them. They don‘t know what it was like before, and what it might be like if it‘s taken away. They just don‘t know what it was like.
#keepabortionfundedsafeandlegal #abortionishealthcare
There was no conflict about it. I absolutely did not want a child. I don‘t weep for it, I don‘t pine for it, I think I did the right thing. I don‘t have feelings of admiration for these young kids who decide to keep their babies, I really don‘t. They can only raise miserable children, and I feel bad about that. They can have an abortion now without the pain and fear that I had.
A woman shouldn‘t be forced to have children, because maybe a man wants to have the child or maybe the man wants to keep the woman barefoot and pregnant, at home, and his property.
Yeah that‘s a BIG NO. It‘s the goal of evangelical men!
I was so tormented I was willing to do anything just to end it. I thought I was going to be killed or I just wanted to die, and I just didn‘t care anymore.
Abortion is also mental healthcare.
When I first met my husband to be, I did go to a doctor and I did get birth control pills and my future husband Paul found out I was taking them, and he made me throw him away. In his mind, he thought that if I was on birth control pills, that meant I could go to bed with anybody I wanted to and I never get pregnant. Therefore, birth control pills gave girls the opportunity to be promiscuous!
#womxndontneedpermission
Did all these little things in code. He talked to a pharmacist that he knew and he say, “You know, I have a ship that is now full of cargo. Do you know any way to…” And the right person, he figured—and it was true— would understand his code and say, “Oh yeah, I‘ve heard of these ships, and I do know people who unload them and I‘ll check for you.”
Back rooms: voices from the illegal abortion era | 
