>From: STella@xanadu.COM (STella)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Time to Buy a New Pressure Cooker?
Summary: a story from the bad old (and upcoming new?) days
Date: 3 Jul 89 22:15:06 GMT
Article-I.D.: xanadu.febZH#=STella
Posted: Mon Jul  3 18:15:06 1989
Reply-To: STella@xanadu.UUCP (STella)
Organization: Church of the Rusty Hanger

In article <750@umiami.miami.edu> mjvjns9z@umiami.miami.edu (Eric W. Arnett) writes:

>   The reason that so many women cling to their "right" to abortion is that
>they don't have the guts to face life without it.  
>   They want the freedom to bang away whenever they want but they don't 
>want to take responsibility for the baby-producing organs that they were 
>born with.

Eric, I'd like to tell you a story.  I know you may think it's about a
gutless woman, but I don't.  (In fact, there are parts of my "guts"
that I came to know far better than I wanted to....)  And I imagine
some who read it will see irresponsibility, but I don't.

This story is set about five years before Roe v. Wade, and it could be
set a few months in the future.

I was 20.5, attending a local teacher's college, and living with my
fundamentalist family (my dad time-shared being a drunk, a conductor
on the railroad, and a sutherndunker preacher, my mom was a
housewife).

My sexual partner and I used birth control every time -- all three of
them.  Maybe it was a hole in the rubbers we used, maybe it was badly
mixed foam, but whatever it was, I was late, and I was tossing
breakfast.  I called a pal, arranged to use her phone number and
address, and went in for a pregnancy test.

When the results finally came, it was true -- I was pregnant.

A year or so before, in the course of a rather vitriolic fight
(growing up in that family may be why I'm not worried about the flames
that sometimes come my way on the net...), my mother had assured me
that both my sister and I were unwanted.  (I never could have
guessed...)

I braced myself, worked up every bit of acting skill I had, and told
my mother about a friend I had, who lived at home, and had somehow
gotten pregnant.  After forbidding me to see her again, my mother told
me that "Of course, she should have the baby, continue living at home,
and let her parents help raise the child."

Well, that was an answer in terms of her values, and not one I could
accept.  I knew that it would have been better to have been born dead
than to be defenseless and trapped in a house with people who
considered you, at best, a nuisance.  (The worst was more than I'm
willing to get into right now, thanks.... This post is a bitch to
write _without_ all the background.)  I was a sophomore in college,
with no more marketable skill than three sexual experiences, and no
desire to enter that branch of retailing.  Minimum wage was either
$.95 or $1.25 and that was bad news.

The good news was that when my father came home, and my mother told
him about the hypothetical friend, he said "I'd kill her".  Since he'd
already pointed a rifle at me once, and once threatened to cut up my
sister if my mother didn't cook for him when he came home drunk (the
knife against my sister's leg suggested this was not a mere rhetorical
flourish), it occurred to me that perhaps that was the solution.  Tell
'em, get killed, and there'd be no unwanted baby.  Not even a 20.5
year old (gutless?) one.

I didn't _really_ consider this "good news" to be the living gospel,
though, and after spending a day or two in constant fear and prayer
(yeah, prayer -- back then I spelled ghod without the "h"), I realized
that the best solution for me, and for the innocent life I was in
danger of committing, was an abortion.  But this was 1967, and Planned
Parenthood was a little goosy about providing _birth control_ to
unmarried women living at home, much less able to provide abortions.

Thanks to the generosity of Enoch Pratt (philanthropist who funded our
public library), I was able to find books on conception, pregnancy,
and (peripherally) abortion.  None of the chapters on abortion were
_that_ helpful, full as they were of moral condemnation of the very
idea, but eventually, from the horrific descriptions of "fallen women"
who had illegal abortions, I understood that if the lining of my
uterus were made inhospitable to the efforts of the fetus to implant,
or the placenta were disrupted if it had, I would have a good chance
of losing the pregnancy, and some chance of losing my life.

I read as much as I could find about sterile technique, and set to
work.  I bought a crochet hook, a file, and some emery cloth,
flattened the crochet hook and sharpened it the best I could along one
side (I think it was about a size A), then polished it with the emery
cloth till my thumbnail could not detect any roughness. (My reading
had suggested that I really _did not_ want to perforate my uterus if I
could possibly avoid it....)  I wanted a scraping tool, not a cutting
tool.

I selected a coathanger, and folded it until it would hold my vagina
open, so that I would not pick up any bacteria while inserting my
homemade curette.

Since I could not find sterile prepacked gloves, and pressure-cooking
others was not a success, I bit, clipped, and filed my fingernails,
and purchased a few LARGE bottles of Listerine (thinking a few kind
thoughts about Dr.  Lister as I did).

I placed my curette and the coathanger-speculum into a brown bag, and
waited till my parents were out of the house.  Explaining to my sister
that I was working on a biology project, I took down the pressure
cooker, put my implements into it, and ran it at fifteen pounds for
about forty-five minutes.  When it was cool, I placed the unopened bag
in another, and put that package into my schoolbag.  The Listerine was
already in my locker at the college, and before I went to bed, I
trimmed my pubic hair to stubble, and prayed that if what I was going
to do was a sin, that god would let me know, and that otherwise, he
would guide my hand so I didn't injure myself.  When I woke, I was
comforted by a feeling that everything was going to be just fine.

Nervous, but not guilty, I told the folks about a meeting that would
make me a couple hours late "working on the literary magazine", and
left as normal.  After my classes, I got the Listerine, the bag, and a
box of sanitary napkins, and went into a restroom.  I had spent some
time over the last few days considering where to perform the
operation, and decided that the small restroom near the side door of
the student center would be best -- lots of foot traffic just outside,
so if I _did_ get into trouble, and could yell for help, I might be
heard, consistent but low-level use (because the other john had a
lounge and was more popular) so no-one would wonder why someone was in
the other stall for half an hour but if I collapsed on the floor I
might be found in time, and close to the magazine's office, so I could
go somewhere and sit privately afterwards if I was too shakey to start
my long bus trip home.  I used most of a bottle of Listerine on the
seat and porcelain, put the bag down on the purse-shelf, washed my
hands and forearms with soap, then rinsed with Listerine, and tore
open the bag so my tools were ready to pick up as soon as I'd finished
with my hands.  I sacrificed my toothbrush and more Listerine to scrub
my hands till they almost hurt, taking special care around the
fingernails and creases, and used most of the last bottle to clean my
pubic area as much as possible.

One more pause to ask god, who might well have been worn out with
listening to me over the last week, whether what I was about to do was
my will alone or his, working through me, and it was time to start.

Reclining across the toilet, I spread my legs, and carefully slid the
coathanger into place.  I think I poured a little more Listerine into
my vagina, but I'm not certain after this long.  A few deep breaths to
stop the shaking (well, reduce it some....) and I picked up the
crochet hook.  I hadn't been able to come up with a way of
pre-dilating my cervix, so getting the hook in was a little
unpleasant, but adrenalin, of which I had PLENTY, kept the cramps from
being as noticeable as they might have been.

After that, it was almost easy.  I held the hook _very_ lightly
between two fingers, and gently felt around till I knew about how deep
my uterus was, moved the hook from side to side, and generally poked
around till I had a feel for how much pressure it took to cause pain.
Once I had the feel for it, I scraped back and forth, side to side,
diagonally, several times, then did it some more.  I took my time,
about fifteen minutes, then removed the hook and the hanger, packed up
my supplies (I _still_ wonder what the janitor thought about finding
three BIG empty Listerine bottles in the trash!), put on a fresh
napkin from the middle of the box, and walked, shakey but not too
rocky, out to the snack bar for a _tray_ of cups of coffee and a pack
(my first) of cigarettes.  By the time I had finished drinking the
coffee, I had stopped shaking, and had decided nicotine was one fine
tranquillizer.  I hopped the buses for home and entertained my mother
with a description of the work we'd done on the magazine.

The next day, I made an appointment with a gynecologist the friend who
loaned me her phonenumber suggested, and told him what I'd done.  He
was _not pleased_.  He listened as non-judgementally as he could,
then, in a rather flat, strained voice said that I was lucky I hadn't
killed myself (I agreed) and gave me the most thorough gyne exam I've
ever had in my life.  When he was done, he gave me a prescription for
antibiotics, another for birth control, and took me from the exam room
into his office.

"Stella, if you quote me, I'll deny it, but PLEASE, if you ever are
tempted to do that again, come talk to me.  We can find some reason,
suspicious cells maybe, to do a hospital procedure, but PLEASE, don't
risk your life again."

I'd rather not.  It worked -- I didn't wrong that potential human by
allowing it to grow up battered, torn between an unwilling mother who
was not even a fit parent for a kitten (I still feel badly about some
of the mistakes I made with my first kittens eighteen months later),
and self-hating, other-hating religious-fanatic grandparents.

I am pro-choice, but I do NOT believe that women should be forced to
choose between committing a pregnancy against her will, her interests,
and any likelihood of happiness for the potential child, and aborting
herself in a public toilet.  Some choices just ought not to be
required, but if I ever face the same situation again, I will take
this posting to a gynecologist, and ask for improvements on my
techniques.  If SHe doesn't discover some reason for a non-abortion, I
will change gynecologists.

I do NOT recommend that women use this procedure, even after today's
Supreme Court decision, without discussing it with your gynecologist
(and if SHe's not helpful, get another one FAST), that's not why I'm
posting it.  But I want to encourage people to think, just a little,
about what illegal abortion can mean even in the best cases (and on
the whole, mine was far from worst-case -- I lived!), and though I'm
sure some of you will see it differently, I want to make a case that
sometimes it takes guts to follow your perception of the right against
that of others.

Love is the law, love under will!

STella@xanadu.com	1016 E. El Camino Real, #302, Sunnyvale, CA 94087

######################################################################
Newsgroups: talk.abortion