Joannie told about
hearing her mother’s screams
from the bedroom
and
when she went in
to help, she saw her father with his hands around her mother’s neck.
During the
Vietnam War on 8 June 1972, an iconic photo was taken. It showed naked
nine-year old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running away from napalm bombs.
A picture is
worth a thousand words. The anti-abortion movement uses photos of fetuses to
make the point that babies are being killed.
Not used
as often, but still seen on posters at pro-choice protests, is an equally
discomforting if not shocking photo of Gerri Santoro on the floor, next to the
bed in a Norwich, Connecticut, motel. She is naked, in the position of a frog, blood coming out of her vagina. Her head is turned to the right.
Her right hand is covered
with what might be a pair of underpants. Her purse is in the lower right-hand
corner of the photo.
She is dead.
She bled to death
after her boyfriend failed to abort her 8 June 1964. The medical
examiner ruled her death was caused by an air embolism from an unskilled
surgical procedure.
Why Gerri Needed an Abortion
Gerri Santoro
was 28, married,
the mother of two daughters, Joannie and Judy.
She might
have passed into oblivion if Ms. Magazine
had not printed that photo in April 1973 along with a story about abortion. According to Roberta Brandes Gratz at Ms., they thought the
woman was anonymous.
Leona,
Gerri’s sister and a Ms. subscriber,
recognized her sister. Her first reaction was horror at her sister’s
exploitation.
Over the years her opinion changed.
In 1993 she
participated in a pro-choice march carrying a sign with that photo and the
words, “This was my sister.” Gerri’s photo, when she was a smiling, healthy
woman, was on the other side of the sign.
Leona
participated in a documentary called Leona’s
Sister Gerri, made by Jane Gillooy (See my post in a few days) in 1995. Her daughters,
brother and best friend, Joyce Garboni, also appeared.
Gerri was
one of five girls in a 15-child family of Ukrainian descent. They lived on a
Connecticut farm.
Leona described her sister as a kid who loved to climb trees. A brother
remembered Gerri rushed through morning chores to be able to get to the
bathroom first to have enough hot water.
Joyce
Garboni was her best friend from the day they met on the school bus. During
high school, they worked nights at a factory making condensers for radios,
which gave Joyce enough money to buy a 1949 Dodge. The girls would cut classes
and change in the car from the school dress code requiring skirts into jeans.
Often, they went to the Windham Diner.
Joyce
planned to marry in September, after graduation. Gerri kept saying that she
would beat her friend to the altar even though she didn’t have a boyfriend.
Then Gerri
met Sebastian (Sam) Santoro at a bus stop. They married 18 September 1954, one week before Joyce did.
The saying,
“Marry in haste,
repent in leisure,” applied to her marriage. What Gerri didn’t repent were her two daughters,
Joannie and Judy.
Sam had been put in an orphanage along
with his brother
when his widowed
mother could not cope with
four children. His mother kept her daughters, which may have explained his
treatment of women. The reason
behind his actions
did not make Gerri’s beatings
any lighter. His daughters were not exempt: Joannie
and Judy often had a belt applied to their behinds, far too much, according to
Gerri’s brother.
Joyce told how negative Sam was about everything, liked by no one.
He worked
in a meat room and was subject to terrible headaches, which Gerri used to
explain his negative attitudes.
Sam believed
if they moved to the better climate
in California, it would help his headaches. Although Gerri was reluctant,
she gave in, driving herself and her daughters across country after Sam had
settled there. Joannie remembers how much fun her mother made the trip.
California did not improve
her marital situation.
An Abused Wife Looks for Happiness
Joannie told about hearing
her mother’s screams
from the bedroom
and when she went in to help, she saw her father with his hands
around her mother’s neck. When Sam saw Joannie, he told her they were playing a
game, an excuse that she heard more than once. Her mother seemed to go along
with it, although Joannie wasn’t convinced.
Coming home from
school in the spring of 1963,
Joannie found their car packed.
The two girls and Gerri returned to
Connecticut without saying goodbye to their father.
This period
was a happy time for Gerri’s daughters. Joanie remembers how much she loved
the bedroom in her grandparents’ farm house where they lived without their father. She loved how her mother came in mornings and
rolled up the shade, the flowers, the smell of the grass.
Judy’s memories of that time were how her mother always
smelled of Juicy Fruit gum.
Gerri
found work at the Mansfield Training School where she met Clyde Dixon. They
became lovers.
Joyce said
she understood why. He was everything Sam wasn’t, a talker, pleasant, except he
was also married.
Looking for an Abortion
Gerri found herself pregnant.
She asked Joyce if her husband could get her some ergot, a fungus that grows on
rye which had been used through the ages by midwives and doctors for abortions.
She claimed it was for a friend.
Joyce believes
that the ergot wasn’t for a pregnant
“friend” but for Gerri. Over the next few
weeks she debated confronting Gerri. The day she decided to do it, she went to Gerri’s
house and found her friend not well.
When Gerri told her that the “friend” was no longer pregnant, Joyce dropped the
subject.
No one knows if Gerri was ill from the ergot or not. We know she did
not abort the baby.
Time was running out. Sam had written a letter saying
he was coming home and he wanted to take the girls to the beach for
two weeks. Gerri expressed fear that if he found out she was pregnant by
another man, he would kill her.
Clyde Dixon
talked with Dr. Milton Morgan, who told him how to do an abortion and loaned
Dixon the instruments. They decided that 8 June 1964 would be the day.
Joanie
remembers her mother leaving that night. She begged to go with her. When her
mother said “no” Joannie hid under a blanket in the backseat of the car. Her
mother saw her and sent her back into the house.
No one
knows where things went wrong. When did Dixon abandon Gerri? Was it when she
started to bleed out of control? Was it after she died?
Leona, who had been at her brother’s that night, came home to be told that Gerri
had called her and was crying,
but said she would call back later.
She never did.
The Children and Family Suffer
Too
The girls remember being told
that their mother had died in a car accident. Joannie said it didn’t make sense
because the car was in perfect condition. The story changed
to being hit while walking. Only later did they put it all
together.
When the
photo of Gerri on the floor of the hotel room became public, Joannie originally
reacted negatively to the treatment of her “beautiful mom,” but later she became active in the pro-choice movement, marching in
pro-choice events.v
Judy admits
having an abortion as a teenager. She says she believes abortions are wrong and
she will have to answer for what she did. At the same time, she is not willing
to make the choice for any other woman.
The film
shows Gerri as a loving mom. The girls talk about her always making their
Halloween costumes. Joannie says she does the same thing today for her own
children.
Clyde Dixon spent
a year in prison and returned to his wife and family.
He died in 1979. Sam Santoro
died the year previous.
Note: This is a chapter from my non-fiction book Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles, about abortion before Roe v. Wade. Over the next few weeks, I will publish all the chapters. Borrow freely if it will help reinforce anything that allows women to control their own bodies, a right that is systematically being taken from American women.
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