Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles - Gwen Campbell's Story

Another death, another illegal abortion from my book Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles that tells of abortion before it was legal. Now that it is illegal again in many places the horror is back for many women and their families. For me, the most horrible part is that most of the laws passed against abortion are made by men, some of whom have been known to take their girl friends for abortions. Women should be the ones to write the laws on women's health along with medical experts.

Gwen Campbell Elliott’s Story

Abortions cross all racial lines. Gwen Campbell Elliot was called to the hospital where her mother lay dying. Like Sharon’s mom, Vivian’s last words to her children were to be good, also adding for her to be good in school.

Gwen was told that her mother died in childbirth. Only when she was in college and she saw the death certificate did she learn her mother died of an illegal abortion. Her father, she said, spent a lot of time trying to find out who performed the abortion. His hope for justice went unfulfilled.

Gwen showed the viewers the Jerusalem Baptist Church, a light-yellow brick building. She said the church was the foundation of the family.

In the 1950s, it was still the custom to lay the body out at home. Vivian Campbell was laid out at Gwen’s aunt’s. Gwen knows she was at the cemetery. She remembers thinking she could go to the cemetery and wake her sleeping mom.

Her parents were separated when her mother became pregnant and she’s not sure who the father was.

Not having a mother brought other traumas. She was raised by her grandmother, who was determined her granddaughter would not be sexually active. Gwen’s periods were irregular. To make sure she wasn’t pregnant, the grandmother took her to a doctor, who did an “internal.” He also asked her if she had had sex. Gwen wasn’t sure what sex was, but she’s convinced that if her mother was alive, she would not have to be humiliated and hurt in the doctor’s office. She didn’t communicate with anyone for weeks after that. “I was a scared kid.”

“There have to be more people like me out there. If we don’t speak out the abortion will go the wrong way,” she concludes.