Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Abortion is forever



After working on Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles, for a year it was published in late winter. The copies went to my daughter in the States. She sent them out to Supreme Court Justices and any legislator fighting to make abortion illegal.

Only when I returned to Geneva in late September, did I get a chance to hold in my hands the copies we sent to my home there. There is always a bit of shock when I see what I wrote published. Feeling the paper is different than reading the book on screen.

I started to read it. What struck me was the inevitability of abortion. In one chapter I had written how one hospital in Arizona had performed about 300 abortions annually before Roe v. Wade. The woman needed to be certified as having their life in danger. That could mean psychologically as well as physically.

It doesn't take too much imagination to believe that the doctors had to stretch the truth.

It also does not take too much imagination to think of all the hospitals across the U.S. who did the same.

Although I am long past the age that I might be faced with the idea of having to consider an abortion, I want women to have the right to decide for themselves.

It sickens me when I see committees made up of men, studying women's health issues and then legislating them. The unawareness of those that want to stop legal abortions of the realities around the issue is just plain frightening for the lives of hundreds of women faced with unwanted pregnancy.

No one should say abortion is a good thing, but sometimes it is a best choice out of many bad ones. Abortion will never be stopped, I tell people when I send them the book, anymore than Prohibition put a stop to drinking or the making of alcohol. Women with means will go where it is legal. Women without will submit to anything or do it themselves and once again hospitals across the country will have to reopen those 20+ beds they kept filled for women dying from the illegal abortions.

For anyone wanting a copy of the book, send me a comment.

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