Safe to Talk: Abortion Narratives as a Rite of Return

"I now understand why women have died from abortionsit was the secrecy that killed them." (from personal correspondence with D.M.) Defamiliarizing Assumptions] America's worst-kept secret is its 1.5 million women who annually choose to abort their babies.2 Worst-kept, because everybody knows and everybody is talking about it; secret, because everybody knows and nobody's talking about it. "I was secretive about it, only telling a very close woman friend of mine from high school. I did not tell the man until after the abortion. I told my boyfriend that I had minor surgery and couldn't have sex for two weeks. I did feel secretive about it at the time." (from personal correspondence with M.P.)3 "I did not tell many people about this abortion. I was deeply ashamed to be in this situation for a third time. How could a bright independent woman be in this predicament AGAIN?? I spiraled into a deep depression. I contemplated suicide and engaged in self-destructive behavior." (from personal correspondence with K.C.) "I was 22 years old, eight-and-a-half years ago. At the time, there didn't seem to be any safe environments for speaking about it. My doctor knew, and my two closest friends. I never told the father, as we weren't in a relationship. I'm not sure if this was a smart thing to do or not, but I went through it by myself." (from personal correspondence with C.J.) "I filled out an insurance claim just to see if they might pay it, and of course, they didn't. I wish I hadn't filed that claim. I hate knowing that some huge organization knows such personal information about me. I don't feel good about it. I certainly don't feel safety in their knowledge." (from personal correspondence with S.V.) Many women experience abortion without remorse or guilt; indeed, they celebrate it as a motivator to get on with the business of life as usual.4 For others, the subject of this study, (in which I asked women to speak about their abortions in terms of contributing factors to their decision; pregnancy loss; secrecy and silence ; trust; subsequent sexuality, self-esteem; and relationship with the baby's father), an abortion signifies multiple sacrifices. Among them, women cited: a potential child; youthful innocence; parenting or familial fantasy; relationship with the baby's father; trust; and the sense of control or security. These varied responses depend on personally constructed meanings and expectations of loss, death, parenthood, womanhood and pregnancy, (Madden, 1994: 87) and whether the fetus had been considered a "child." "In the small Idaho ranching community where I grew up there was ah old woman, the matriarch of one of the wealthier ranching families, who had had a number of illegal abortions in addition to several children. When she was dying in the hospital, her last words, whispered to one of the nurses, were `Oh, all those little babies! I'm so sorry. What can I tell them? Will they forgive me?"' (from personal correspondence with V.M.) "I still cry at the thought of the ordeal, but I am still confused as to whether it is grief over the loss or grief over the becoming of what everyone said I would." (from personal correspondence with M.K.) Though a woman may perceive her abortion as an occasion of profound loss, she is deprived of the opportunity to publicly grieve in our high-tech pronatalist culture where death is never an acceptable peri-natal outcome. As a not-mother, the woman who has an abortion is marginalized. "Our lives remain untheorized" (Morell, 1994: xv). The not-mother is unspeakable, unknowable and uninteresting in a world where "sources for gratification are denied women if they are pursued in lieu of children" (Morell, 1994: 59), and where "feminist culture has not produced alluring images or thinkable identities for the childless" (Snitow, 1993: N145). Often, a woman who has an abortion conceals her actions, and may never find a safe venue for mourning. …