Barb's Story
In 1973 I went with my best friend to give her support for having an abortion. I knew she was making the right choice. She already had one child and could not financially support another one. Her ex-husband did not pay child support for their daughter. My best friend was on the pill for 6 years. Her blood pressure went up to 180/140! She went off the pill and had her tubes tied last year. Had she continued to take the pill, her doctor said she would have been dead in 3 years. She is doing fine although it’s difficult being a single parent. She barely supports herself and one daughter. I found a recipe in my mother’s recipe box. I glanced on the opposite side. There was an article titled “Abortion in America Today.” I had never heard of the magazine, Ladies Home Companion. No wonder, the issue was Oct. 1955. I was only a year old! Of course abortion was illegal then. Yet the article seemed to question this fact. It brought up the dangers of going to an abortion doctor and how some of these doctors performed abortions on women who weren’t really pregnant. Some women tried to perform their own abortions while others tried concoctions and special remedies to no avail. The article brought up the butcher deaths. We have come a long way since this article was written. Why do we want to go backwards? The question is why do we need to keep abortion legal today? Take my sister as one example. When she was 20 in the early sixties, she got pregnant. She had to drop out of college. It was taboo to a child out of wedlock. Abortion was not possible. My sister had here baby in an unwed mother’s home and put the child up for adoption. She truly had NO CHOICE. This took a year out of her life when she could have finished her degree in accounting. Today, my sister does the work of an accountant and more for about ½ the salary. Today she is a single parent with a daughter to support. She works two jobs. I am sure on a certain day each year, my sister wonders about that baby she put up for adoption. Putting a baby up for adoption is just as difficult if not more than having an abortion. Oh, by the way my niece is 13 years old. Her father was forced to pay child support. He is remarried and has another baby he cannot support. Making abortion illegal does not make a problem go away. We cannot get men in this country to support the children that are here by choice. It would be a disaster if abortion was made illegal. More and more women would be living below the poverty level. Who is going to take care of all the unwanted babies? The Church? Abortion is not just a moral concern, it is a political game. Men in this country are going to decide whether abortion will be legal or not. Preachers, doctors, Congress, and the President are mostly men. But do they carry the babies, feed them, and support them – no they make the decisions. I would feel better if every woman in this country made the decision. After all, we are the ones carrying them. Men only help make them, then they do not want the responsibility to care for children. I have not made myself heard about the issue of abortion until now. The situation has gotten out of hand. I am for the freedom to choose. The issue goes much deeper than women’s rights. When religious groups make statements like, abortion is against God, abortion is a sin, abortion is morally wrong, they are making judgments. At the same time, these religious groups are assuming everyone is a Protestant who believes in God. This is a very dangerous assumption, because they are telling what religion I should believe in. I would have no problem if only women were allowed to vote as to whether abortion is to be legal or not. I do have a problem with doctors, preachers, and presidents telling me what to do with my body. Abortion has become a game of political football when in reality, abortion is an economic right that we must never lose. Barb
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